[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.