Why is Michael Burry's disclosed 13F book so much smaller than Warren Buffett's?

A 13F only reports long US equity positions above the SEC's reporting threshold, and different managers run funds of very different sizes with very different mandates. Burry's Scion Asset Management runs a small, concentrated fund by design, currently three disclosed positions. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway runs one of the largest disclosed equity books in the world. Neither figure says anything about which manager has the better track record, only how much disclosed long US equity capital each one is currently reporting.

Does a bigger disclosed 13F book mean a better investor?

No. Size and skill are separate questions. Tenachine's own guides on these same three investors already show them ranking differently by win rate, by expectancy, and by the Kelly criterion's formula-implied bet size, with the smallest disclosed book, Burry's, posting a median IRR ahead of both of the larger ones. Disclosed book size measures scale, not quality.

Guide · 6 min read

Buffett's disclosed book is 2,278 times the size of Burry's

Warren Buffett's disclosed 13F book is worth 137.7 billion dollars. Michael Burry's is worth 60.5 million, smaller than a single mid-sized position in Buffett's. Li Lu's sits between the two at 2.2 billion. Trade count and win rate never showed this gap. Disclosed book size does.

Updated 2026-09-23

Warren Buffett's disclosed 13F holdings total 137.7 billion dollars. Michael Burry's total 60.5 million. That is not a typo and not a rounding difference, it is a gap of roughly 2,278 times, both figures read directly off Tenachine's own investor pages for the two managers. Li Lu's disclosed book sits between them, at 2.2 billion dollars, itself more than 36 times Burry's.

Disclosed 13F book size, three investors with a full per-trade record

Buffett's book is drawn to the same scale as the other two, which is why Li Lu's and Burry's bars barely register next to it.

What one position in the biggest book buys

Tenachine's guide on 13F concentration already states Apple's share of Buffett's disclosed book, 28.4 percent. Apply that share to the 137.7 billion dollar total and Apple alone accounts for roughly 39.1 billion dollars, a single position worth more than 646 times Burry's entire disclosed book of 60.5 million. None of this says one manager is better than the other. It says the three investors compared across several of this site's guides, by win rate, by expectancy, by Kelly criterion output, are operating at scales that are not remotely comparable, and none of those earlier comparisons carried that fact on its own.

Why the smaller book is not automatically the more concentrated one

Tenachine's guide on Burry's trade-to-holdings ratio already covers his 3-stock current book from a turnover angle: 170 disclosed trades against only 3 positions held now. Add the size figure and the picture sharpens further. A 60.5 million dollar book split three ways is a fund small enough that a single stock's earnings surprise could move the whole disclosed position by a meaningful share of the total. A 137.7 billion dollar book, even concentrated in four names the way Buffett's is, moves on a different kind of risk entirely, one closer to the risk of the underlying businesses than to the risk of any one filing quarter. Small and large books can both be concentrated. What a small book adds is less room to be wrong before the number moves.

This is not investment advice and not a ranking of the three managers by size. A bigger disclosed book is not evidence of a better track record, and Tenachine's own figures on win rate, expectancy, and median holding period, covered in earlier guides, already show the three managers ranking differently on every one of those measures depending on which one is asked. Disclosed 13F value lags real positions by up to a quarter and only ever shows a long US equity book, never the fuller picture, the same limit Tenachine's guide on what a 13F filing does not show already states about position weight specifically. What the size figure adds is a fourth axis, alongside win rate, expectancy, and turnover, on which these three investors do not look anything alike.