George Mikulakis
Founder & CIO, Gladstone Capital Management. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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George Michelakis founded London-based long/short equity hedge fund Gladstone Capital Management and manages its flagship Lasker Fund. Previously an investor at Lansdowne Partners, he was formerly one of South Africa's top chess players, winning the 1993 South African National Championship and earning the International Master title.
Everything George Mikulakis said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Michelakis: Amazon Has Not Proven a Good Consumer Business Model
“Has Amazon proven that it has a good business model yet on the consumer side? Three percent margins. It's a good business proposition for customers. That's very different to it's a good business model for shelves.”
Michelakis: Gladstone Targets 20% Alpha Versus the 3% Platform Standard
“And then if you go all the way to the factor neutral world, it seems that three percent alpha works for everybody. That's fine. We're shooting for 20% alpha.”
Michelakis: Bottom-up fundamental equity analysis is now commoditized
“A lot of the emphasis, be it private equity or hedge funds, in the initial five years of one's career is bottom-up. And that's a bit commoditized. People now know how to use a spreadsheet. People know how to read 10 Ks. You're not gonna make better assumptions…”
Michelakis: L/S Funds Lacking Short Alpha Are Diluted Long-Only Managers
“If you're running a one 50 gross long short fund, and you've got good long alpha, but no short alpha, and you end up with one 50 50, what I mean is one 50 gross, 50 net exposure, that means you're a hundred long, so you're a long manager on that side of the ba…”
Michelakis: Single-Manager Equity Funds Resist Rigorous Performance Measurement
“I'd say data is something that people struggle with. Embracing data seems to be a challenge, at least in the long, short equity space. I'm sure I'll hear a lot of people say, no, that's not true, because they scrape data. But it's as simple as, okay, you keep …”
Michelakis: Hedge funds cannot constantly pivot research teams between longs and shorts
“You can't manage an organization to go from serving Italian food one week and Chinese food the next week. It just doesn't work.”
Michelakis: Platforms Define Talent Contracts Clearly While Single-Manager Expectations Remain Fluid
“And I think, again, the platforms, they got that right, because the contract gets set very clearly on day one. Whereas in the single manager contract, I think it's often quite fluid, and people are just expected to do more as they stay with the firm.”
Michelakis: Aggressive Accounting Is the Top Leading Indicator for Shorts
“If I had to pick one leading indicator on the short side, it's aggressive accounting tends to be symbolic of a management team that's trying to prove that it's better than it really is or trying to obfuscate something.”
Michelakis: Expanding long-short funds into long-only risks cultural dilution
“I worry about cultural dilution. I think long short is a very specific performance oriented business, where you have to be watching what are the great things that I want to be long, and where's the trouble, and what are the bad things happening where I want to…”
Michelakis: It Is Impossible to Have 1,000 Great Long-Short Managers
“I don't think it's possible to have a thousand great long short managers. It's just too hard, and it's too specific a skill set.”
Michelakis: The 300 VC Firms From the Tech Boom Will Peel Back
“How many great venture firms are there? Maybe 10. How many venture firms are around today as a consequence of the last TMT boom? Probably 300. So three hundred's gonna peel back. It has to. And it may be a decade long process.”
Michelakis: Shorting strong companies like Nvidia is trading, not fundamental investing
“On the investment side, I would say buy good companies and short bad companies. It's so, so, so simple. And the number of people that tell me they're going to shorten video or have it short in video, I'm just giving you a recent example. I've probably heard th…”
Michelakis: European fundamental single-manager long-short equity has few peers left
“At least in Europe, it's still somewhat unproven. Fundamental, long, short, single manager. There's just not many of us left in a way.”
Michelakis: Investors Severely Underinvest in Refining Short-Side Alpha Skills
“People underestimate just How many thousands of hours a tennis player might spend just looking at his backhand, and the idea that you're going to spend 50 hours getting a bit better at your short side. People under egg just how hard it is to get better, unless…”
Michelakis: Markets consistently underestimate management behavior and incentives
“There's various areas where, yes, there's a lot of information in the current stock price, but management behavior and incentives, I think, tends to be very underestimated in terms of the future prospects of a company.”
Gladstone: Longest-held portfolio positions are actually short positions
“In our portfolio, the longest standing positions are actually short positions.”
Michelakis: US Regional Banks Face Worst Operating Environment in a Decade
“As we speak, regional banks in the US, if you look at the environment they're operating in today versus any point in the last 10 years, it's the worst environment they've had.”
Michelakis: Gladstone team spends most time and effort on the short book
“And then on the short side, a very industrial process with a lot of names, but the majority of the investment team organization time and effort is on the short side.”
Michelakis: Financial sector investors naturally underweight management quality
“Take the financial sector. I think there's naturally an underweight of management assessment. The expertise lends itself to a lot of three letter acronyms and lends itself to detail and numbers and a lot of information. And people often just don't lift their h…”
Michelakis: Sub-$1B Market Cap Shorts Behave Like Survival Call Options
“When shorts get below a billion dollars, and we've probably had 15 stocks in our history that have gone from large to below a billion dollars, and when they get to that type of market cap, their behavior changes dramatically. It's a survival call option.”
Michelakis: Portfolio Construction Requires a Different Skill Set Than Stock Analysis
“And in long, short equity, I've seen a lot of people who, they're good at the analysis, they're good at saying this is a good company and that's a bad one. But populating a portfolio that actually produces outcomes, That's a totally different skill set, essent…”
Michelakis: Mastery Requires Analyzing Lost Games Rather Than Celebrating Wins
“I think this is one of the learnings from chess, is that you want to get good at chess, you probably have to spend the most amount of time looking at the games you lost, because there's something you didn't understand about that game, or somebody understood be…”
Michelakis: Gladstone Shorted US Regional Banks Before SVB Collapse
“And we were short ahead of the market recognizing that. The market just didn't want to believe that things were actually not good for the banks until SVB happened.”
The other half of the tape: George Mikulakis's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 2 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
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Capital Allocators 2
2024 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens George's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | Founder & CIO, Gladstone Capital Management | 1 | 25 | — | full record on Capital Allocators → |