Michael Burry

“Fresh, clean water cannot be taken for granted. And it is not - water is political, and litigious. Transporting water is impractical for both political and physical reasons, so buying up water rights did not make a lot of sense to me, unless I was pursuing a greater fool theory of investment - which was not my intention.”

“Subprime mortgages, typically defined as those issued to borrowers with low credit scores, make up roughly the riskiest one-third of all mortgages.”

“I started trading stocks, options and futures while I was at UCLA, using my earnings from working summers at the old IBM plant on Cottle Road. I never lost interest in how companies work. It's fundamental to who I am.”

“What you want to watch are the lenders, not the borrowers. The borrowers will always be willing to take a great deal for themselves. It's up to the lenders to show restraint, and when they lose it, watch out.”

“One of the risks for anybody in the lending business is that being conservative can harm your competitiveness.”

“The post-crisis perception, at least in the media, appears to be one of Americans being held down by Wall Street, by big companies in the private sector, and by the wealthy. Capitalism is on trial. I see it a little differently. If a lender offers me free money, I do not have to take it.”

“In early 2005, I really studied the prospectuses of these mortgage pools that were tranched out into different-rated slices rated by agencies like S&P and Moody's. They had names like Park Place and People's Choice. It was clear to me that many of the buyers of these repackaged subprime mortgages were doing little analysis.”

“I believe that agriculture land - productive agricultural land with water on site - will be valuable in the future.”

“If you are going to be a great investor, you have to fit the style to who you are.”

“Throughout the universe of public and private funds, managers are measured quarterly against one index or another, defined by statistics, and corralled into this category or that category so that fund of funds, pensions, and other institutions can make comforting - if not necessarily prudent - asset allocation decisions.”

“Lost dollars are simply harder to replace than gained dollars are to lose.”

“It is a tenet of my investment style that, on the subject of common stock investment, maximizing the upside means first and foremost minimizing the downside. The deleterious effect of permanent capital loss on portfolio returns cannot be overstated.”