Joel Greenblatt
Managing Principal & Co-CIO, Gotham Asset Management. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorauthoracademicfounderexecutivegothamfunds.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Joel Greenblatt is the Managing Principal and Co-CIO at Gotham Asset Management, which he originally founded as Gotham Capital in 1985. He is a former adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and the author of several investment books.
2shows
2appearances
50statements
12resolved
11supported
0contradicted
92%fully supported
28said about them ↓ Everything Joel Greenblatt said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Greenblatt: Nikola held a $6.5B valuation despite appearing completely fraudulent
“I was just looking after it's turned out that it appears to be mostly a fraud and they really haven't come up with anything that they promised still has a market cap of six and a half billion.”
Greenblatt: Being too timid on rare good ideas is investors' biggest mistake
“Position sizing is the most important thing. Being too timid on the few good ideas that come your way is like the biggest mistake people make.”
Greenblatt: Position sizes are determined by downside risk, not upside potential
“The biggest positions I've had are not my best ones. The ones that I think will go up five or 10 times. I'm really looking down, not up when I take a big position. So in other words, I will size the position larger if I don't think I can lose much money.”
Greenblatt: US government should lock in 30-year debt while rates are free
“I think our average maturity is like six years. So I think that's insane. I think we should borrow it over 30 years for free. That would be my one suggestion to anyone listening. We should extend our maturities when they're lending us money for free.”
Greenblatt: Past capital allocation predicts future performance better than executive stories
“And the best rule of thumb that I learned was if this management team was good at allocating capital, before I walked in the door, the assumption that they would continue to be good was a really good assumption. And if they were really bad at it, no matter wha…”
Greenblatt: Incomprehensible Financial Statements Usually Signal Intentional Obfuscation
“And I just figure if I can't figure it out, they don't want me to figure it out. And I got to go to the next one. I mean, I'll spend a lot of time doing it, but if I can't figure it out, then I just assume that's intentional. And I don't view that as a good th…”
Gotham Capital traditionally concentrated 80% of its portfolio in six ideas
“Well, the big picture, our portfolio six to eight ideas were traditionally 80 plus percent of our portfolio.”
Position sizing must be determined strictly by downside risk, not upside potential
“And I think the key to sizing them, if you want to know my portfolio management philosophy, is look down, not up. Meaning, the largest positions were not the ones I thought were Absolutely the best or that I was going to make the most money in sizing all had t…”
Concentrated investing is a great investing model but a terrible business model
“I don't think that's a business model. I think that's a great investing model. I don't think that's really a viable business model, except for the longest term investors.”
Leveraged long-short portfolios require broad diversification to prevent catastrophic negative compounding
“And we ran through the math of it and it turned out you made more money when you go long, short and put on leverage with more diversified portfolios than concentrated portfolios because those bad periods end up in negative compounding and negative compounding …”
Gotham hires elite quant engineers for risk balancing but bars stock selection
“We have a tech guys who are very sophisticated, you know, one guy, one Google code jam, another one's MIT chess jam. And we need those guys to balance our portfolios, but they're not picking stocks. I picked those guys because they have no idea how to pick sto…”
Greenblatt: Active management business will suffer, but stock picking opportunities will grow
“I think the world will continue to get harder for active managers as far as a business is concerned. But if you're a stock picker, if you're an active manager and you're an individual stock picker, the world's getting better for you because less people are doi…”
Success Academy's 20,000 low-income students outperform wealthy suburbs on state standardized tests
“We now have 20,000 kids. The vast majority, close to 90% are minority low income kids. They're only in New York City. And if you look at the 20,000 kids as a group on the math and English state test, they outperform the wealthiest suburbs. So they outperformed…”
Trailing five-year fund performance has near-zero correlation with future returns
“And we know that the last one, three, five years of performance correlate almost nothing with the next one, three, five. So the way to get the next one, three, five is looking at process and looking if it makes sense and looking if the manager is going to stic…”
Greenblatt: Wide 52-week price swings disprove efficient market hypothesis
“And so they would show every single stock really, the high for the year was a hundred, the low for the year was 42. And every year that happened for every stock. And it didn't make sense to me that the value of the business was right at all those times. And in…”
Greenblatt: Investors only truly learn by losing their own money
“You really don't learn unless you're really investing your own money and feeling how it feels to be wrong and lose a lot of money.”
Greenblatt: Tech mega-caps driving the market are not irrationally valued
“Most of the big indexes are driven by the Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and those businesses don't seem very irrational to me. Those are some of the greatest businesses that man has ever created partially due to the internet interconnectedness of the world…”
Greenblatt: A basket of 299 unprofitable billion-dollar companies gained over 100%
“There are now 299 companies that lost money in 2019. So this is pre-COVID. So there were money losers in 2019 with a market cap now over a billion dollars. And if you bought every single one of those money losers, those 299 companies with market caps over a bi…”
Greenblatt: Success Academy's low-income students outperform New York's wealthiest districts
“There are now 20,000 kids in 47 schools, and they would be the top district in New York City, and most of the kids 87% are minority low income. Kids. And yet they beat all the wealthiest school districts.”
Standard risk arbitrage offers an unfavorable asymmetric risk-reward profile
“Risk arbitrage, betting on whether a deal's going to go through, and if it breaks, you lose 15 dollars. If it goes through, you make a dollar or 75 cents, but you made it in two months, so it was a great annualized return. So lose 15 dollars, make a dollar. Se…”
Gotham Capital generated 50% annualized returns before fees over its first decade
“We made 50% a year for those 10 years before our fees.”
Greenblatt: Investors can succeed without knowing market direction
“I think you can be successful without knowing which way the market's going.”
Greenblatt: Staking small fundamental hedge funds is inefficient and overly labor-intensive
“I'm not wild about the idea of owning a piece of business where it's very labor intensive. These are usually very small shops with one, two or three managers who are working really hard to get a good return. And so while it's very helpful to get them started i…”
Greenblatt: Top 50 urban minority students face 1-in-11 college graduation rate
“If you live in a top urban center, top 50 urban center, and you are low income or a minority, your chance of graduating college are one out of 11. We know that college graduates earn 70% more than high school graduates and high school graduates earn 30% more t…”
The other half of the tape: Joel Greenblatt's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 24 times in 7 episodes across the shows. 4 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Hayden Brain 10Steve Galbraith 5Adam Wyden 5Yen Liow 1Ted Seides 1Josh Wolfe 1Adrian Meli 1
Statements about Joel Greenblatt, by other people (4)
Galbraith: Appointing trusted friends to corporate boards improves governance
“And so, you know, some people would argue that's nepotistic, or it's not the way you're going to lead to good governance. I couldn't disagree more. I mean, because we know each other, Joel Greenblatt's on the board as well, Charlie Johnston, who had run distri…”
Meli: Spinoffs and special situations have become priced more rationally
“You didn't used to have dedicated distress funds of the size you have today. The special situations were really interesting. The Joel Greenblatt stuff. You could see a spinoff, a big fund house would get a stock, sell the stock, Indiscriminately. And you could…”
Liow: Aravt sizes top 10 positions by downside risk, not upside
“We're pretty concentrated in our top 10, but we do it facing downwards, not upwards, where how much money can you lose in the big positions, not how much money that can you make. That's the only way you navigate for duration.”
Seides: Joel Greenblatt's early Gotham fund compounded at 50% for ten years
“And not only were they six to eight positions, but he took as much risk as he could. He used to use leaps instead of just cash, you know, securities or stocks. And they compounded at 50% a year for 10 years, and then he retired.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Capital Allocators 23
the Knowledge Project 1
2025 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2022 16 mentions in 2 episodes 8 per episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 1 mention in 1 episode
2017 4 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Joel'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 | Managing Principal & Co-CIO, Gotham Asset Management | 1 | 34 | 100% 9/9 | full record on Capital Allocators → |
| KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Managing Principal & Co-CIO, Gotham Asset Management | 1 | 16 | 67% 2/3 | full record on the Knowledge Project → |