The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 15 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Mauboussin: Venture capital continues to have high performance persistence
“If you look across asset classes, the asset class that continues to have high persistence is actually venture capital.”
Mauboussin: Buyout fund performance persistence has melted away over 20 years
“That persistence used to have to happen in buyouts. But that effect is mostly melted away in the last 20 years, and it's very difficult to find persistence in public markets at all.”
Mauboussin: Venture return dispersion leaves median and bottom firms with dismal results
“What we know is that there's huge dispersion in returns in venture capital. So if you own the top decile or top Quintile type of firms you do spectacularly well over time, but if you own the median firm or a bottom quartile firms, the results are actually quit…”
Mauboussin: Less than 5% of public companies drive all market value creation
“Work by Hank Bessenbinder demonstrates that in public markets over long periods of time, most companies, public markets earn Returns less than the treasury bill rates. And it's like a handful, less than five percent of companies basically drive all the value f…”
Mauboussin: Empirical data shows odd-numbered investment committees outperform even-numbered ones
“Three is better than two. That's a best practice. And by the way, five is, is not five is better than four. For instance, these odd numbers tend to be good things in terms of, and there's good data. Pardon me. There's good data to back all that up”
Mauboussin: Venture capital excess returns are highly episodic and short-lived
“If you look at long-term public market equivalent, so, so this is how academics are measured is public market equivalent for venture capital. It's actually been pretty good over long periods of time, but it's extremely episodic. So almost all the returns are e…”
Mauboussin: Buyout funds consistently beat venture capital on a PME basis
“Buyouts, by the way, have consistently been a little bit better than private equity have been a little bit better than venture. They're much less episodic or dramatic, and they tend to chug along a little bit over one PME.”
Mauboussin: Scattershot investing strategies will shift primarily to later rounds
“So there's gonna be a bottleneck at, in terms of how many firms can actually do that at a very successful level. And this is sort of Series A really adding value at the Series A level. So I think when, the more the scattershot philosophy can be later rounds pr…”
Mauboussin: Literature proves people are bad at forecasting macro events
“There is a large literature demonstrating that people are not good at forecasting those things.”
Mauboussin: The 1987 Crash Appears Minor on Long-Term Charts
“And then I would encourage you now to look at a long-term stock price chart and go find the crash of 1987 on there and look at it and see like how significant it is. Right. So the, at the time it seemed to be very profound at the time it was earth shattering. …”
Mauboussin: US stock volatility in 1920s-1930s far exceeded recent financial crisis
“Go back and look at volatility. And, you know, you see that the volatility we've seen in the last 10 or 15 years, even including the financial crisis, really doesn't hold a candle to the volatility we saw in the 19 twenties and thirties in the United States. T…”
Mauboussin: Expected Long-Term Equity Returns Have Increased Significantly in 2022
“When you look at even 20, 22, Expected returns for equities have gone up a lot. I don't know if the markets are going to be good the next month, three months, six months, but I think expected returns look pretty good.”
Mauboussin: Corporate capital allocation has shifted predominantly to intangible assets
“We've had in the last few decades, a huge rise in intangible investment, right? So companies used to invest in factories and machines and inventory, old fashioned stuff. And the accounting for that was a certain way. Now companies are investing mostly in intan…”
Mauboussin: US 10-year real interest rates experienced a 240-basis-point swing
“When the United States, for example, we went from on the tenure negative a hundred basis points, real interest rates, -100 basis points today, about a 140 positive basis points. So it's a 240 basis point swing in real interest rates.”
Mauboussin: Bill Gurley pioneered applying return on capital and increasing returns
“I think he's very early on understanding the importance of return on capital investment returns, cash flows, and he applied it right away. Very successfully, by the way, in investments. The second is he was very early on and understanding Brian Arthur's work o…”