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 2,685 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 35 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
Apple's 1985 intellectual property license covered all future versions of Windows
“Apple does do a deal to license a lot of quote unquote their intellectual property, which of course came from Xerox, to Microsoft. Apple, I think, was under the impression that it was just for Windows one point oh, but the actual terms of the agreement are thi…”
Medallion generated higher 30-year returns than Berkshire Hathaway or George Soros
“Their thirty-year track record managing billions of dollars has better returns than anyone you have ever heard of, including Berkshire Hathaway, Bridgewater, George Soros, Peter Lynch, or anyone else.”
Simons made as much from First Round as Morgan made from Renaissance
“I think Jim made as much money from his investments in first round as Howard did from his LP stake in Rentech.”
An estimated $150 billion to $200 billion has been distributed from Medallion
“I would estimate probably a 152 hundred billion dollars that have come out of Medallion over the last 35 years.”
Rosenthal: Medallion Fund achieved a 7.5 Sharpe ratio in 2004
“And I believe, if I have my research right, in 2004, they actually achieved a Sharpe ratio of 7.5.”
Renaissance raised Medallion carry to 44% before expelling all outside investors
“Okay, so, in 2001, they raised the carrier to 36%. 2002, they raised it to 44%. And then, in 2003, they actually say, hey, we can't incentivize you out of the fund, outside investors. We are gonna kick you out. So, starting in 2003, everybody who's an outside …”
Medallion generated 136% gross returns in 2007 and 152% in 2008
“2007 medallion does a 136% gross. 2008 medallion does a 152% gross.”
Medallion delivered 68% gross returns and $60 billion in carry over 34 years
“So during the entire lifetime so far of Medallion, from 1988 To twenty-twenty-two, that's 34 years. The total net annual return number is 40%. Four zero over 34 years after fees. It's 68% before fees. Which equates to total lifetime carry dollars for the whole…”
Renaissance Technologies employees have their 401(k) retirement accounts invested in Medallion
“If you work there, your four oh one K is the medallion fund.”
Jim Simons personally paid $670 million in Renaissance's IRS tax settlement
“Over time, eventually in 2021, the IRS said, no, you made all those trades. That was not a completely separate entity. And so you guys owed 6.8 billion dollars in taxes that you didn't pay. You're going to need to pay that with interest, with penalties. And by…”
Rosenthal: Renaissance Restructures Its Entire Trading Model on a Two-Year Cycle
“Two years is kind of what I heard. That the model is fully restructured every two years. It's not like on a date every two years. It's being restructured every day, but collectively it's about a two-year cycle.”
Hermès empowers local store managers to personally select their own store inventory.
“Basically, they embrace this idea that every store is for the local clientele, and that store managers know their clients the best. So therefore, store managers should get to pick what is in each store. And headquarters does not dictate what every store stocks…”
Denmark required Novo to repay World War II profits
“It is important to note, though, after the war, the Danish state did require both Novo and the Peterson brothers personally to repay most of the profits that they made during the war back to the Danish state.”
Three pharmacy benefit managers control 80% of the United States market
“Despite there used to being hundreds of PBMs, there's now fewer than 30, and there's essentially three that cover about 80% of the market, and those are Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and OptumRx, which is actually owned by UnitedHealth Group.”
The Novo Nordisk Foundation blocked a proposed Serono merger in 2004
“Management comes in, they present in two board meetings, first in August, 2004, and then the second one in September where they get a do over and they fail to convince the foundation board. So they block the merger.”
Novo Nordisk's CEO declared in 2005 that obesity was not a business
“As recently as 2005, 2005, like same year Baeta came out, Novo Nordisk's own official position on the obesity category, as articulated by the then CEO Lars Sorensen, was quote, Obesity is primarily a social and cultural problem. It should be solved by means of…”
Semaglutide is twice as effective as liraglutide for weight loss
“Two, and much more important for the near term, it is twice as effective as liraglutide for weight loss.”
Novo Nordisk's 84% gross margins surpass Microsoft and Google
“Gross margins are better than software. They run about 84%. Lilly is also a very high margin company, running about 80%. For context, Microsoft has a gross margin of 70% and Google is 56%.”
Research shows up to 68% of patients discontinue GLP-1s after a year
“There's some research that points out that as many as 68% of people roll off it after a year, and part of this is related to price, or changing insurance that doesn't cover it, or that it's hard to find since they're still supply constrained, or maybe there ar…”
United States officials alleged Novo increased insulin prices 600% since 2001
“In 2021, U.S. Officials alleged that Novo Nordisk increased prices more than 600% between 2001 and 2019 in lockstep with competitors to the detriment of diabetics.”
Novo Nordisk Foundation's $120 billion endowment doubles the Gates Foundation
“Novo Holdings, which is the vehicle by which the foundation holds their stakes in Novo Nordisk and Novozymes, they're sort of assets under management and thus the endowment of the foundation.
Is worth a hundred and twenty billion dollars, which makes it the si…”
Novo Nordisk awards no stock options to executives or board members
“Executives and board members are not given stock options as a part of their compensation.”
Only 10% of clinical drugs reach market, with one driving profits
“If you look at the pipeline of a hundred drugs that enter clinical development, 10 actually make it to market, and one provides, get this, half the profits.”
The pharmaceutical industry ROIC is 13%, comparable to trucking and electronics
“When you actually look at their return on invested capital numbers, the ROIC, they are not through the roof. They're like 13% industry-wide, but hold for Novo for a second. It's totally in line with other industries, like trucking, broadcasting, electronics, w…”
Rosenthal: The best venture capitalists get calls right at most 20%–30%
“They are, at least on the diligence and investing side of the equation, making these calls in real time, and the very best of them only get it right, what, 20% of the time? At most? You know, 30% of the time?”
DOJ granted an antitrust clearance letter to form Visa's predecessor
“So, they actually get a letter from the DOJ saying, like, Hall Pass, you're good on this one.”
Visa's $18B IPO proceeds provided a secondary selling lifeline to banks
“That eighteen billion dollars was secondary selling to the banks that owned the company, which I think for many of them proved to be a total lifeline through the financial crisis that helped them survive.”
Cash-paying households pay $149 annually subsidizing card costs, Fed finds
“The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, determined that on average each year, a household that uses cash to pay for things, pays a 149 dollars inflated prices, because all prices, no matter how you pay, have to go up in order to make it so that paying in cash and …”
Card-using households receive $1,100 per year in value on average
“A card using household receives 1100 dollars in value.”
Costco co-founder Jeff Brotman stepped aside as CEO after board struggle
“They had originally agreed that Brotman would be the chairman and CEO, because he was his idea. He founded the whole thing, but Senegal decided, no, I have to be the CEO. So, it was a big, unfortunate board meeting, a big internal struggle, and Brotman moved a…”
Berkshire borrowed Japanese yen at 0.5% to buy 5%-yielding trading houses
“The interest rates in Japan were half a percent per year for 10 years. And these trading companies were really entrenched old companies, and they had all these cheap copper mines and rubber plantations, and so you could borrow for 10 years ahead all the money,…”
Huang: Quake and Unreal were the first two killer consumer 3D apps
“If he hadn't decided to go to OpenGL and accelerate, accelerate for Quake frankly, you know, what would be the killer app that put us here? And so Carmack and Sweeney, both between Unreal and Quake, created the first two killer applications for consumer three …”
DeMuro: Almost 30 online car auction copycats launched and failed
“We, I would say, 30 other auction, car auction, online car auction sites popped up in the last couple years, and 29 of them have failed, or 27, and the other three are barely hanging.”
Nvidia bifurcated its architecture to monopolize TSMC's CoWoS packaging capacity
“And by NVIDIA bifurcating their chip architectures into a gaming segment that does not have this latest COWAS technology, this allows them to monopolize, like, a huge amount of TSMC's capacity to make the COWAS chips, specifically for these H-one hundreds, whi…”
DGX Cloud rental pricing yields a three-month capex payback on A100 hardware
“A listener helped us out and estimated that the cost to actually build an equivalent A-one hundred DGX system Would be today something like a 120 K. Remember, this is the previous generation. This is not H-one hundreds. And you can rent it for 37 K a month. So…”
OpenAI is reported to have exceeded a $1 billion annualized revenue run-rate
“ChatGPT made it so OpenAI is rumored to be doing over a billion dollar run rate now. Maybe multiple single digit billions, and still growing, meaningfully.”
AMD lacks Nvidia's TSMC advanced packaging capacity and CUDA developer ecosystem
“AMD doesn't have all this capacity reserved from TSMC, at least not for the 2.5 D packaging process for the high end GPUs. AMD doesn't have the developer ecosystem from CUDA.”
Costco's Kirkland Signature generates more revenue than all of Nike
“Their store brand, Kirkland Signature, does more revenue alone, not including anything else in the store than all of Nike.”
Sam Walton launched Sam's Club after Sol Price shared his playbook
“Also in 1982, Saul gets a call from his old buddy Sam Walton... Saul tells him all about Price Club, how the model works, the cash flow dynamics, everything. Sam, of course, goes back to Bentonville, and within 12 months, guess what pops up? Ben Gilbert: Sam's…”
Costco was the first company to hit $3 billion revenue within six years
“And three billion in less than six years, which is the first company ever to hit that milestone, too.”
Costco has the lowest retail prices and the wealthiest major customer base
“They have the lowest prices, but they have the wealthiest consumers of any major retailer.”
Kirkland Signature is America's largest consumer packaged goods brand
“It's America's largest consumer package brand.”
Costco likely generates net revenue from its Citi and Visa co-branded cards
“I'm pretty sure that this has never been disclosed, and I haven't asked anyone about it, but if you sort of read trade publications, people seem pretty convinced that Costco is making money, which of course they are, on the deal that they cut with Citi and Vis…”
Costco is the largest buyer for most of its suppliers, ahead of Walmart
“For most if not all of their suppliers, they are by far the biggest buyer of their goods. Even bigger than Walmart, because they have so many fewer SKUs in the store.”
Early Nike Faced an FBI Fraud Investigation Over Bounced Payroll Checks
“Like, he got kicked out of multiple banks. The FBI got involved. They were playing it a little bit too fast and loose, where they were using every available penny to, you Buy inventory, and so there would be checks that bounced for payroll and things like that…”
Nike Hired Steve Prefontaine for $5,000 to Bypass Amateur Sports Rules
“So what Phil does is he decides to employ Pri as a corporate employee of Nike as the National Director of Public Affairs for 5000 dollars a year.”
Nike Improperly Used Nissho Inventory Financing to Secretly Purchase a Factory
“They use Nisho's money Which was supposed to be to buy inventory, instead to plow it into capex of buying and rehabbing a factory, and then they were secretly operating their own factory with money that was not supposed to be used for that purpose.”
Jordan Earned Royalties on All Incremental Nike Basketball Shoe Sales
“Also in the deal, the previous year, Nike had sold 400,000 pairs of Nike basketball shoes. They include a clause that Jordan gets a royalty on incremental sales in future years beyond the baseline of Everything in the Nike basketball line.”