By microstock3D @ Shutterstock.com
Bloomberg’s Heejin Kim and Myungshin Cho report that Michael Burry of “Big Short” fame has called out what he says is a bubble in passive investing. They write:
Michael Burry shot to fame and fortune by betting against mortgage securities before the 2008 crisis, a trade immortalized in “The Big Short.”
Now, Burry sees another contrarian opportunity emerging from what he calls the “bubble” in passive investment. As money pours into exchange-traded funds and other index-tracking products that skew toward big companies, Burry says smaller value stocks are being unduly neglected around the world.
In the past three weeks, his Scion Asset Management has disclosed major stakes in at least four small-cap companies in the U.S. and South Korea, taking an activist approach at three of them.
“The bubble in passive investing through ETFs and index funds as well as the trend to very large size among asset managers has orphaned smaller value-type securities globally,” Burry, whose Cupertino, California-based firm oversees about $343 million, wrote in an emailed response to questions from Bloomberg News.
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