Knightshade
Well-Known Member
IIRC the initial major reports on Burrys actions were from a May report that (as of March 31) his firm held 8001 puts on TSLA. With no info on the strike of the puts, the expiration of the puts, the premium paid on the puts, etc... We don't even know when in Q1 they bought them. Could've been when the SP was $800 plus most of January and early Feb.
Even if we assume he bought them as late as March 31, SP was $667.93 then. It dropped as low as $563.46 (ignoring intraday lows) in May, and $572.84 in early June.
They could easily have made substantial profits on those positions from when they were opened.
On Aug 16 it was reported they hold like 1100 puts as of June 30... but again we don't know when they bought them or any of the details, or even if any of them are the same ones they held the previous quarter.
If these were new positions (their having taken profits in Q2 on their Q1 puts for example and buying new puts on a spike in Q2) or even if they were just 300 more added in Q2, they could've bought puts when SP was as high as $762.32 in early April- These are tougher than the Q1 puts to still be holding end of Q and turn a large profit- but hardly impossible. July saw a number of closes in the $640s.
Now, they also could be terribly underwater on all this if they picked different times to get in/out, but without the details we simply can't know.
Remember how everyone called Gary Black an idiot for getting out of TSLA in early Feb? ($863.42 SP close the day this was reported).
He bought back in later- at considerable discount.
There's a lot of ways to make money on stock, bearish and bullish. Even one it's obvious is going up a lot long term.
Some folks have more patience, others have more willingness to take risks, others just are luckier.
(a great example of Burry being unlucky BTW- they sold off their gamestop stock by end of Q4 2020... they did net perhaps as much as 34 million on their original investment... but missed out on like 800+ million if they'd sold at the height of the WSB squeeze)
