Michael Burry’s account of his GameStop investment reads less like a confession and more like an autopsy. In a detailed Substack post published Monday night, the investor best known for anticipating the 2008 housing collapse revisited one of the most scrutinized trades of the past decade: his early bet on GameStop — and his decision to exit months before it became the defining symbol of meme-stock excess.
Burry’s involvement with GameStop began quietly in the summer of 2018, long before retail traders turned the struggling video-game retailer into a cultural and financial phenomenon. At the time, GameStop was broadly written off by Wall Street as a business in terminal decline, squeezed by digital downloads and shifting consumer behavior.
Burry saw a different picture. He believed the stock was deeply undervalued and mispriced relative to its cash flows and balance sheet.
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In his post, Burry laid out the logic behind the trade with the precision of someone reconstructing an old model. He pointed to an upcoming console refresh cycle in 2020, historically a boost for GameStop’s sales. He flagged the potential for a buyout, the possible sale of its Spring Mobile unit, and what he described as strong cash generation paired with a sizable cash balance.
That combination, he argued at the time, created room for a “very big and consequential buyback” that could materially re-rate the stock.
Yet the market remained unmoved. After months of stagnation, Burry exited the position in the second quarter of 2019. The lack of price response undermined his confidence. Still, the story did not end there. Within weeks, he was back.
By July 2019, Burry re-entered GameStop, this time more forcefully. One factor had changed: short interest. GameStop had become one of the most heavily shorted stocks in the U.S. market, and Burry viewed that as a fresh catalyst layered on top of his original fundamental thesis. He wrote that he bought the stock “with both hands,” making it one of his larger holdings.
Burry did not rely solely on spreadsheets. He said he visited a GameStop store to test whether his thesis aligned with reality on the ground. The visit raised doubts rather than confidence.
“It did not work,” he wrote. “Even the stuff that was not on sale looked like it should be on sale.”
Still, he stuck with the numbers.
He also took an activist stance, writing directly to GameStop’s board and pushing for changes. That activism led to correspondence with two figures who would later become central to the GameStop saga: Keith Gill, the retail investor later known globally as Roaring Kitty, and Ryan Cohen, the Chewy co-founder who would go on to become GameStop’s chief executive.
Burry disclosed that his second entry into GameStop was at a split-adjusted average price of about 83 cents per share. He accumulated nearly 5% of the company and held the position for more than 16 months. During that period, lending his shares to short sellers generated substantial income. He said the lending rates, often in high double digits, were “lucrative” and formed a significant part of the overall return.
By late 2020, however, Burry’s patience had worn thin. Despite tangible developments — buybacks, board changes, and progress on asset sales — the stock price and short interest showed little response. He wrote that these outcomes, which he considered “home run/slam dunk activist successes,” had “zero impact on price or short interest.” That disconnect convinced him the market was unlikely to reward the thesis.
Burry exited the position by the end of November 2020, selling his shares at an average price of $3.38 — more than four times his entry price. By traditional investment standards, it was a clear win.
What followed reshaped market history. In January 2021, retail traders coordinating on online forums such as r/WallStreetBets launched an unprecedented short squeeze. GameStop shares surged to an intraday high above $120 on January 28, triggering massive losses for hedge funds and turning early retail participants into paper millionaires.
At the peak, Burry estimated that his multi-year investment could theoretically have turned roughly $12 million into $1 billion. But he dismissed that scenario outright.
“That was never a possibility,” he wrote, noting he would have sold long before prices reached those levels.
Even so, Burry did not avoid self-examination. He acknowledged that he could have analyzed the situation better. He believed he understood GameStop’s fundamentals, the short interest, and the trading dynamics. What he underestimated, he said, was how those elements could interact with a mass retail movement untethered from traditional valuation logic.
“I was blinded by what I saw as execution risk,” he wrote.
When GameStop shares jumped after Ryan Cohen disclosed his stake, Burry seized the opportunity to close the trade.
“I had no idea what was coming,” he added. “I had no idea that a Roaring Kitty existed.”
He also said he did not foresee what he described as a “widely distributed gamma squeeze” evolving into what he called “the one and only legal market corner.”
Roughly 50 days after his exit, the company he once characterized as an “ignominious crappy business” became, in his words, the “belle of the ball.”
“The entire world could not take their eyes off her,” Burry wrote. “And neither could I.”
Burry’s reflections extended beyond personal regret. He described the early 2021 meme-stock surge as spectacular, hilarious, and tragic in equal measure. By mid-year, as speculative fervor spread into non-fungible tokens and a wide range of physical assets, his tone darkened. He said he feared retail investors would ultimately be “shredded” and felt compelled to warn them.
That impulse, he explained, was shaped by an older failure: not having been more effective in sounding the alarm ahead of the 2005–2007 housing bubble. Speaking out during the meme-stock era, he suggested, was an attempt to avoid repeating that silence.
Burry also hinted that his GameStop story is not finished. He teased an upcoming post offering a fresh assessment of the company as it exists today. He described it as a “melting ice cube” with some capital-structure optionality, broadly similar to how he viewed it in 2018. The differences are notable: short interest has fallen to about 16%, the financial figures are far larger, and Ryan Cohen now runs the company — “for better or worse,” Burry wrote.
The account stands as a rare, candid look at how a fundamentally sound trade can still miss a once-in-a-generation market event — and how even investors with a reputation for seeing around corners can be overtaken by forces that sit outside conventional financial analysis.