[cinquemb]

Yeah, I think people knew it would eventually play out because of the marco, but for traders its important to figure out how to get the cheapest exposure to the short until it happens.

Even in the big short, they show the routes different traders took to get short exposure and all took various amounts of heat until it payed off.

Same is true now wrt to corporate bonds (or I should say was true, way more expensive now to short than it was say during the entire time of 2019), one know's they will go tits up, but getting the cheapest exposure will enable to either build the position with minimal/fixed draw down or sweat every bps move against you.

[icelancer]

The Big Short covers it fairly well, but doesn't give Burry enough credit / blame. His crowning achievement wasn't in deducing the bonds were overvalued/fraudulent, it was in finding suckers to take the other side of the bet. This is alluded to in the casino with the Cornwall Capital guys, but was a real thing. Plenty of people wanted to make the moves they did, but had trouble finding outs.

[JackFr]

I worked as a software developer for a subprime prop trading desk at a big bank from 2006 to 2009. Our two main RMBS traders were short from about 2005. They would get beat up every week in capital committee meetings, and were told “what is wrong with you guys, the guys on the dealer side are crushing it with this stuff”.

Finally in 2008, these guys booked like $100 million in profits. But it didn’t matter at all cause the dealer side lost $50 billion.

[johnvanommen]

> His crowning achievement wasn't in deducing the bonds were overvalued/fraudulent, it was in finding suckers to take the other side of the bet.

I thought that was one of the most interesting / exciting parts of the book.

The fact that they literally had to go and find people who would sell them insurance on the mortgage backed securities.