By Daniel Shvartsman
Investing.com -- Michael Burry's Scion Asset Management fund turned over nearly its entire portfolio in Q4 2022, as disclosed on their latest form 13F filing. The famed Big Short investor made a bet on two China-based giants while closing his cable industry bets and reducing his private prison industry positions. All figures are as of December 31st, 2022.
On the adds side, Burry bought 50,000 shares of Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), a position in the Chinese e-commerce giant worth $4.4 million. He also opened a $4.2M position in JD.com (NASDAQ:JD), perhaps anticipating the reopening process China started this year.
He also opened a position in Black Knight (NYSE:BKI), a merger arbitrage given the mortgage software firm's agreement to a deal with Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE), and Coherent (NASDAQ:COHR), a semiconductor equipment and laser company that itself is the product of a merger from II-VI and Coherent. Black Knight is flat on the day and Coherent is up .8%, despite the Nasdaq being down nearly 1%.
Burry's biggest position remains GEO Group (NYSE:GEO), the private prison REIT, but he reduced his position by 50% on a shares basis. GEO Group is down over 13% today on its earnings release today. Given the REIT rose 42% in value in Q4, the value of the position is still outsized for Burry. The value investor did close his position in GEO Group's peer, CoreCivic Inc (NYSE:CXW), and also reduced his position in Qurate Retail Group (NASDAQ:QRTEA) by 75%.
Other positions Burry sold include Charter Communications Inc (NASDAQ:CHTR), Liberty Latin America Ltd (NASDAQ:LILAK), and Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc (NYSE:AJRD).
Burry's last three positions are in MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM), SkyWest Inc (NASDAQ:SKYW), and Wolverine World Wide Inc (NYSE:WWW). SkyWest is up 3% and Wolverine World Wide is up 2% in mid-day trading.
Michael Burry runs a concentrated portfolio, though in recent years his holding period has been shorter. His Twitter account has gotten increasing notoriety over recent years, and he tweeted "Sell" with no further elaboration two weeks ago in a subsequently deleted tweet. While he does not publicly discuss performance, InvestingPro's tracking of his holdings suggests he has outperformed the SPDR® S&P 500 ETF (NYSE:SPY) with 11.3% performance vs. the ETF dropping 3.5%.