‘Big Short’ star Michael Burry names FT Alphaville charts quiz winner as successor

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Michael Burry’s tapped out:

As MainFT reports:

[Burry], the investor made famous for his bet against the US housing market ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, is closing his hedge fund as he warned that market valuations had become unhinged from fundamentals.

Scion Asset Management this week terminated its registration with US securities regulators, according to a filing.

Burry told investors that he would “liquidate the funds and return capital — but for a small audit/tax holdback — by year’s end,” according to two people with direct knowledge of a letter he sent to investors.

Here’s Burry’s letter to investors, dated October 27th (high-res). Given it’s all over the internet, we figure the ship has sailed on unauthorised reproduction and distribution, but we’ve scrubbed some contact details nonetheless:

How this all spills out in terms of the timing of Burry’s (possibly) successful recent short of Palantir will presumably be revealed in due course, but in the meantime there’s a far more interesting detail: his successor. To quote Burry:

I do suggest investors contact my associate PM Phil Clifton regarding his coming endeavors.

Extraordinarily dedicated FT Alphaville fans will recognise Phil Clifton (who Burry calls “a tremendous young talent in the field of investment — and the most prodigious thinker I have ever encountered”) as…

…a previous FTAV Friday charts quiz winner!

In fact, Clifton is so dedicated to the trivia game that he was present as a member of one of the prestigious ‘Rando’ straggler teams at our NYC pub quiz earlier this week.

And, yes, he was wearing one of the exclusive FTAV Fridays charts quiz winner t-shirts. And, yes, our idiot photographer failed to take any pictures from the front. So here are some photos of his back:

Unfortunately, Clifton’s team (Randos Omega) came an inglorious 23rd out of 30:

Which, if anything, just goes to show how many prodigious thinkers attend these things.

Reached for comment, Clifton told us:

I can’t believe “database” instead of “data” wasn’t an acceptable answer for Question 1. Team Omega was robbed of 22nd place! 

Further reading:
— You won, Jane Street. Enjoy the t-shirts, we hope they make you happy