A conviction buy is not the same thing as a good buy
Two managers on the same conviction buy screener, one whose overall record is strong and one whose is not. The screener alone cannot tell you which case you are looking at, and neither can either single position on its own.
Michael Burry's largest disclosed position is Lululemon, at 29.98 percent of Scion's reported book. It is also down 39.45 percent from his average buy price of 233.97 dollars, against a current price of 141.66. Tenachine's conviction buys screener surfaces it for exactly that reason: a position worth at least 5 percent of a manager's portfolio, opened within the last four quarters, now trading at least 20 percent below the average price paid for it.
That definition finds real patterns. It also cannot tell you, on its own, whether any single name on the list is a smart position being built into weakness or a mistake being ridden down. Two cases from the same screener make the difference concrete.
The screener's own disclaimer adds a second layer of caution worth stating plainly: the discount is computed against the average reported buy price, and it does not account for share count changes, stock splits, or fundamental news since the filing was made. A manager could have trimmed a position significantly after the quarter closed and the discount figure would not move until the next filing catches up. The number is real and it is also, like every 13F derived figure, a photograph rather than a live read.
Case one: a large bet, a strong overall record
Burry's LULU position is the single biggest number on the whole screener by portfolio weight. Tenachine's guide on 13F concentration already covers this position from a different angle, as the largest slice of a three-stock book. Here the same position shows up because it is also 39.45 percent underwater from where Burry built it, starting in the quarter it was initiated. Taken alone, that looks like a bet going wrong.
Taken alongside the rest of Burry's disclosed record, it looks different. Across 170 trades, his win rate is 64.1 percent, his weighted return is positive 4.5 percent, and his median IRR is positive 18.3 percent, all figures this site has published before. A manager with that overall record holding one large position that is currently down a lot is a normal thing for an active, concentrated investor to have happen, not obvious evidence that the position itself is a mistake.
Case two: three bets, a weak overall record
Dennis Hong appears on the same 14 name conviction buy list three separate times. CSGP is 9.25 percent of his portfolio and down 50.41 percent from his average buy. FOUR is 13.73 percent and down 42.62 percent. BRZE is 8.55 percent and down 39.83 percent. Three different tickers, three different initiation quarters, the same pattern each time: a meaningful position, opened recently, now well underwater.
That record, when checked, points the other way from Burry's. Tenachine's ranking of the worst performing tracked super investors places Dennis Hong third from the bottom of 81, at a weighted return of negative 2.0 percent across 23 trades. Three conviction buys currently underwater are not an isolated event for this manager. They sit inside a broader record that is, on the numbers available, weak.
Neither case proves anything about what happens next. Burry's LULU position could keep falling, and Hong's three names could recover. Past performance is not indicative of future results for either manager, and a strong or weak win rate across many trades does not guarantee the outcome of any single one still open. What the two cases show is narrower and more useful than a prediction: the same screener criteria, position size plus a recent purchase plus a price decline, produced one name backed by a track record worth taking seriously and three names backed by one that is not, and nothing in the discount percentage itself marks that difference. Checking the manager's full record before checking any single position on their list is the step the screener does not do automatically.