Guide · 6 min read

Michael Burry ranks second among 76 investors, Warren Buffett does not

Two managers, the same 76-investor pool, two rankings that crown almost opposite winners. Burry's typical trade compounds faster than all but one tracked investor. Buffett's does not, and his headline weighted return of 98.8 percent is the reason both facts can be true at once.

Updated 2026-09-07

Michael Burry ranks second among the 76 super investors Tenachine ranks by median IRR, at positive 18.3 percent. Warren Buffett, tracked in the same ranking of the same 76 names, does not appear in the top ten at all.

Median IRR is Tenachine's own description of what this particular ranking is built to do: rank investors by annualised return per position so the page rewards consistent compounding rather than one or two outsized winners. That is a specific design choice, and it is worth taking at face value rather than treating it as another word for weighted return.

Glenn Welling, +18.8% median IRR, 29 trades
Michael Burry, +18.3% median IRR, 170 trades
Mohnish Pabrai, +13.9% median IRR, 43 trades
Robert Vinall, +13.2% median IRR, 20 trades
Richard Pzena, +12.0% median IRR, 205 trades
David Tepper, +12.0% median IRR, 171 trades
Duan Yongping, +11.8% median IRR, 21 trades
ValueAct Capital, +11.4% median IRR, 98 trades
Pat Dorsey, +10.5% median IRR, 33 trades
Guy Spier, +10.4% median IRR, 18 trades

Buffett is not on that list, and the reason is already on the record. Tenachine's guide on what a 13F filing does not show states Buffett's own figures plainly: 140 trades, a 68.6 percent win rate, a weighted return of positive 98.8 percent, and a median IRR of only positive 4.7 percent. That 4.7 percent sits well below Pat Dorsey's 10.5 percent at the bottom of this top ten, so Buffett's absence is not a gap in the data, it is exactly where his own published number puts him.

Two managers, two metrics, opposite patterns

Burry's weighted return is the smaller of his two numbers. Buffett's weighted return is the larger of his. Read either manager by only one of these figures and the picture flips.

What weighted return counts that median IRR does not

Weighted return sizes every position by how much of the book it represents, so a handful of enormous winners can carry the whole figure. Apple alone is 28.4 percent of Buffett's disclosed book, and a position that large, compounding for years, is enough on its own to pull a weighted return to 98.8 percent even if most of the other positions did far less. Median IRR does the opposite on purpose: every position counts once, regardless of size, so the number describes what a typical position actually did rather than what the largest one did. Burry's typical position, on that measure, compounded at 18.3 percent annualised, better than every tracked investor except one. His weighted return, only 4.5 percent, says his book overall did not grow that fast, because his largest position, the LULU stake covered in Tenachine's guide on 13F concentration, has been running at a loss.

Neither number is more correct than the other. They are answers to different questions asked of the same 170 and 140 disclosed trades. Tenachine's guide comparing win rate against weighted return makes a related point about a different pair of investors and a different pair of metrics, William Von Muefflingt showing up on both a win rate top ten and a weighted return top ten while almost no one else does. The lesson carries over here in a sharper form: the same two managers can occupy opposite ends of two separate, well-defined rankings, and asking which one is the better investor is a question neither ranking, taken alone, was built to answer.

This is not investment advice, and a strong showing on one ranking is not a forecast for the next one. It is a reminder to check which question a number is answering before deciding what it tells you about a manager.