What's "The Big Short" guy doing?
The movie The Big Short is based on a guy named Michael Burry, who runs a hedge fund called Scion Asset Management.
Scion Asset Management owns 6 stocks right now. 2 are prison companies, 1 is a defence company, and 3 are media companies. Over 50% of the portfolio is the 2 prison companies.
Why? Because Michael is betting on the crime rate to continue to go up. In Chicago, Motor Vehicle theft is up 122% from 2019, and Grand Larceny and Burglary are up over 30% each in New York. Almost every other crime stat I checked is going up (link to police data below).
So Michael expects more people to go broke from this recession and turn to crime, driving up demand for new prisons.