‘Big Short’ investor Michael Burry says 95% of us don't know what investments we actually own — and we like it that way. Is that such a bad thing?

Burry, whose story was adapted into the film The Big Short, didn’t provide any other context in his post; he didn’t say why he thinks that’s the case, how he came up with 95% as a figure, or even if he thinks this is a problem.

So it’s up to us to decide: Is he right? Are almost all investors unaware of what they’re investing in, and is that even a bad thing?

Here’s how the numbers break down.

To know what investors know, we first have to understand why they’re investing at all

Everyone invests for different reasons, which mean everyone’s investment strategies are necessarily different.

A study by Empower asked over 1,000 American adults about their investing habits. Only around 44% of said they were confident that they were able to make good investments. Around 30% said they went to financial advisors for investing information.

As for why people invested, over 85% of respondents said they invested with specific goals in mind; the most popular goal was “retiring on time,” at 40%. Only 12% said they invested without any specific goal, while 10% said they didn’t invest at all.

Not every goal Empower listed was long-term. For example, “affording experiences that bring joy” got 30% of the vote, while “building an emergency fund” got 29% of the vote. Those are generally considered short-term goals; investing strategies for short-term goals can differ pretty strongly from investing strategies for long-term goals.

For example, it’s likely that people who are investing for retirement will use a tax-advantaged retirement account to do so. But a retirement account is not generally a great place to keep your emergency fund, because it isn’t liquid. (In fact, it’s generally a good idea to keep an emergency fund in something more accessible than an investment anyway.)

That being said, retirement accounts are a common way that people invest. Almost 60% of U.S. adults said they have a retirement account, according to a 2025 Gallup poll The poll found the overlap between people who own stock and people who own a retirement account is high: 89% of retirement fund owners have stocks, while 86% of stock owners have a retirement account.

Many people who have a retirement account aren’t actively managing it. For example, retirement accounts frequently offer a target-date fund, which is supposed to manage your assets for you based on when you want to retire. These are set-it-and-forget-it options for people who want to save for retirement, but don’t know where to start when investing.

But it stands to reason that, if you’re investing in a target date fund, then never looking at your account again, you probably don’t know what exactly you’re invested in.

According to the Plan Sponsor Council of America, around 30% of 401(k) assets are invested in a target-date fund. They’re a popular option, but plenty of people don’t use them.

Of course, people who invest in mutual funds also might not know what exactly they’re investing in, because multiple financial instruments are bundled together. And if you invest following the S&P 500, do you know exactly which companies’ stocks you’re holding?