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WCM Investment Management

also referred to as: wcm

113 statements across 9 episodes · 40 bullish · 28 bearish · 7 people on the record · first statement May 7, 2018 by Paul Black · said 234 times in 12 episodes since 2018 · across every show →

Mentions by year

brought up most by Ted Seides (127), Sloan Payne (26), Paul Black (26), Sanjay Ayer (18), Dave Jerger (14), Mike Trigg (10), Jim Falbe (4), Ryan Batchelor (3)

tap a year for its mentions
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023201820192020202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
00251.5503201820192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 47 mentions in 1 episode
2025 34 mentions in 2 episodes 17 per episode
2024 19 mentions in 2 episodes 10 per episode
2023 4 mentions in 1 episode
2021 80 mentions in 3 episodes 27 per episode
2020 29 mentions in 2 episodes 15 per episode
2018 21 mentions in 1 episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about WCM Investment Management, oldest first

May 7, 2018 positive
Insight
Black: Expanding low-ROIC firms outperform stagnant high-ROIC companies
“We prefer a company, frankly, that would have maybe five years ago had a four percent ROIC growing to five, six, seven, eight. That's a much better investment. Than a company that's at a 12% ROIC that might be stagnant over that period of time and not growing.”
Paul Black May 7, 2018 ▶ 18:29 Paul Black - Gratitude, Fun, and Growth Stocks (Capital Allocators, EP.51)
May 7, 2018
Assertion Supported
Black: WCM stayed under $200M AUM for its first 22 years
“So for 20 years, from, actually 22 years, from 76 to 19 98, the firm never grew over two hundred million dollars. Never.”
Paul Black May 7, 2018 ▶ 29:09 Paul Black - Gratitude, Fun, and Growth Stocks (Capital Allocators, EP.51)
May 7, 2018
Insight
Black: Evaluating competitive advantages is fundamentally qualitative, not quantitative
“Kurt came from an engineering background, so he was trying to quantify a subjective process, and he saw everything through numbers, and if you ask Kurt now, he'd say, even though I'm an engineer and I get numbers, and it's not about that, the competitive advan…”
Paul Black May 7, 2018 ▶ 39:28 Paul Black - Gratitude, Fun, and Growth Stocks (Capital Allocators, EP.51)
May 7, 2018 bearish
Opinion
Black: Cross-Shareholdings and Opaque Cultures Make Japan Hard for Growth Investing
“You know, there's a lot of, you know, you still have the cross ownership of shares. You know, you still have a very paternalistic society and paternalistic companies. They're not very transparent, so it's very difficult for us to find names for that reason in …”
Paul Black May 7, 2018 ▶ 42:01 Paul Black - Gratitude, Fun, and Growth Stocks (Capital Allocators, EP.51)
May 7, 2018 bullish
Insight
Black: Investing in expanding moats makes initial valuations look cheap
“And what we learned because of our mistakes of significantly underperforming the market is you've got to stay focused on the direction of the competitive advantage because everybody's business, I don't care who it is, every organization, you're either getting …”
Paul Black May 7, 2018 ▶ 14:30 Paul Black - Gratitude, Fun, and Growth Stocks (Capital Allocators, EP.51)
May 7, 2018 positive
Insight
Black: Unconstrained companies outperform in downturns by out-investing weaker rivals
“Because in difficult periods of time, if you can own the company that isn't constrained by the financial markets, And can allocate their capital into the spaces where their weaker competitors cannot. What you find is that, that really, those companies hold up …”
Paul Black May 7, 2018 ▶ 50:26 Paul Black - Gratitude, Fun, and Growth Stocks (Capital Allocators, EP.51)
May 7, 2018
Assertion Supported
Black: WCM grew from $200M to $26B in AUM
“As a result, we've grown from two hundred million dollars to twenty six billion dollars in assets under management.”
Paul Black May 7, 2018 ▶ 32:58 Paul Black - Gratitude, Fun, and Growth Stocks (Capital Allocators, EP.51)
May 7, 2018 negative
Insight
Black: DCF models provide zero competitive advantage for investors
“Most people spend 95% of their time crunching numbers, running DCF models, which by the way, has zero competitive advantage, because you have thousands upon thousands of people doing the same work.”
Paul Black May 7, 2018 ▶ 22:05 Paul Black - Gratitude, Fun, and Growth Stocks (Capital Allocators, EP.51)
May 7, 2018 bearish
Insight
Black: Rapidly growing companies can be massive destroyers of capital
“The most rapidly growing companies, although they're kind of sexy and fun, they ultimately, they can be massive destroyers of capital.”
Paul Black May 7, 2018 ▶ 8:51 Paul Black - Gratitude, Fun, and Growth Stocks (Capital Allocators, EP.51)
Nov 2, 2020 positive
Opinion
Mike Trigg: David Moorhead's due diligence at Baylor is completely unique
“David Moorhead at Baylor is somebody that I have a lot of respect for as a person, and I think he does things really differently. His due diligence is unlike one we've ever really had, and then the way he's kind of monitored his investment in the firm has also…”
Mike Trigg Nov 2, 2020 ▶ 1:01:14 Mike Trigg – Defying the Fade at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.162)
Nov 2, 2020 negative
Assertion Supported
Trigg: WCM's AUM dropped from $4B to under $1B by 2010
“By the time 2010 came, we had gone from four billion when I started to a little under a billion dollars in assets.”
Mike Trigg Nov 2, 2020 ▶ 18:46 Mike Trigg – Defying the Fade at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.162)
Nov 2, 2020 positive
Insight
Trigg: Four criteria define durable economic moats in outsourcing businesses
“The first thing we would look for is we want a runway of outsourcing. You don't want to invest in outsourcers when the majority of the market has already been outsourced. And that can take a really long time to be honest with you. These things are actually pre…”
Mike Trigg Nov 2, 2020 ▶ 25:00 Mike Trigg – Defying the Fade at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.162)
Nov 2, 2020 negative
Insight
Trigg: Precise DCF Valuation Is Ineffective for Dynamic Growth Companies
“For one, I've learned that it's just ridiculous to think that you can precisely determine what a company's worth. I mean, things are changing constantly, and particularly if you're investing in companies that are in growing industries with moats that are growi…”
Mike Trigg Nov 2, 2020 ▶ 36:26 Mike Trigg – Defying the Fade at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.162)
Nov 2, 2020 negative
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Trigg: WCM Underperformed by Over 2,000 Basis Points in Five Quarters
“We're underperformed by over 2000 basis points in the first five quarters that I joined the firm.”
Mike Trigg Nov 2, 2020 ▶ 15:36 Mike Trigg – Defying the Fade at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.162)
Nov 2, 2020 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Trigg: WCM Used Paper Ballots From All Staff for Investment Committee Consensus
“Every single person in the room, I mean, you could be in operations, you could have been in sales. I mean, everybody wrote down on a piece of paper what they thought we should do with the next trade in the portfolio. And then all those votes were tallied up an…”
Mike Trigg Nov 2, 2020 ▶ 17:12 Mike Trigg – Defying the Fade at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.162)
Nov 2, 2020 negative
What-if
Trigg: Buying Dell and Yahoo over Apple and Google damaged WCM
“We were buying Dell instead of Apple, eBay instead of Amazon, Yahoo instead of Google. I mean, those three trades alone would have had, had they been done differently, would have had dramatically different results for that domestic product.”
Mike Trigg Nov 2, 2020 ▶ 20:15 Mike Trigg – Defying the Fade at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.162)
Nov 2, 2020 positive
Insight
Trigg: Enduring luxury compounders require ultra-high pricing and direct distribution
“And we studied about 50 luxury companies over the course of 30 years and tried to find What were the markings of the ones that really compounded returns at really high rates for a long period? I'm not the ones that, you know, sure, there's many of them that ha…”
Mike Trigg Nov 2, 2020 ▶ 30:30 Mike Trigg – Defying the Fade at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.162)
Nov 2, 2020 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Trigg: Data-driven culture analysis via ESG will become a major differentiator
“The next big foray for us and things we're spending a lot of time on now is more data oriented culture work. And I think that's going to become a source of meaningful differentiation. And some of that's being enabled by a lot of the work that's going on in the…”
Mike Trigg Nov 2, 2020 ▶ 45:46 Mike Trigg – Defying the Fade at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.162)
Nov 2, 2020 positive
Assertion Supported
Trigg: WCM International Outperformed by 900 Bps Annually for Six Years
“I think we outperformed by 900 basis points annually in the first six years of the product, and it still took us that long to get to a hundred million dollars.”
Mike Trigg Nov 2, 2020 ▶ 21:19 Mike Trigg – Defying the Fade at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.162)
Nov 2, 2020 neutral
Insight
Trigg: It takes over a decade to evaluate true investor skill
“You know, it can take 10 years or longer to know if somebody's actually a really great investor. There's a lot of noise. There's a lot of luck involved.”
Mike Trigg Nov 2, 2020 ▶ 48:32 Mike Trigg – Defying the Fade at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.162)
Nov 2, 2020 negative
Insight
Mike Trigg: Investment analysts must generate unique insights, not just gather information
“Ultimately we're paid and we're supposed to be making unique insights. And so people that just are more information gatherers, as opposed to making insights, that tends to be a pet peeve of mine as well.”
Mike Trigg Nov 2, 2020 ▶ 57:18 Mike Trigg – Defying the Fade at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.162)
Nov 2, 2020 positive
Insight
Trigg: Alpha Exists in the Gap Between Market Fade Expectations and Reality
“And it's that delta between what the market's expectations for the fade are and when they actually takes place is where all that alpha generation opportunity exists.”
Mike Trigg Nov 2, 2020 ▶ 38:16 Mike Trigg – Defying the Fade at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.162)
Sep 6, 2021 bearish
Opinion
Tian: Visa's economic moat trajectory is narrowing and growth is stalling.
“My personal opinion, which doesn't necessarily reflect the views of WCM as it were, is that the trajectory is narrowing here. The story is getting tougher to believe in today than it was, say, three, four years ago.”
Mike Tian Sep 6, 2021 ▶ 19:27 Mike Tian – Moat Trajectories and Investing in China at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.212)
Sep 6, 2021 negative
Insight
Tian: Efficient scale is the weakest moat because competitors act irrationally.
“And number five, which is really the least important mill source, I think, is efficient scale. And that's the idea that You have a very niche market that perhaps can only support one player. And if somebody else were to get into it, you will destroy the econom…”
Mike Tian Sep 6, 2021 ▶ 11:01 Mike Tian – Moat Trajectories and Investing in China at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.212)
Sep 6, 2021 negative
Insight
Tian: Commoditization is the primary risk for almost all investments in China.
“So the risk we're always fighting against for almost all of our investments is commoditization. When you have a robotics company or whatever it is, there's like literally hundreds of robotics companies in China chasing that. If you're going to invest in semico…”
Mike Tian Sep 6, 2021 ▶ 42:53 Mike Tian – Moat Trajectories and Investing in China at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.212)
Sep 6, 2021 bullish
Disclosure
WCM invested in Wolwo Pharma, a high-margin Chinese dust mite monopoly.
“We're investors in a company that, believe it or not, makes dust mites. So if you have an allergy, what do you do is that, you know, if you want to, you can take a drop of basically pulverized dust mites on your tongue, and over time, your immune system will g…”
Mike Tian Sep 6, 2021 ▶ 41:37 Mike Tian – Moat Trajectories and Investing in China at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.212)
Sep 6, 2021
Disclosure
WCM skips financial modeling to rely almost entirely on qualitative analysis.
“Almost everything we do is qualitative. We're not really big on modeling or anything like that, and even modeling out market shares and whatnot, this is sort of like a finger in the air type of thing. We don't really put a whole lot of stock in that.”
Mike Tian Sep 6, 2021 ▶ 16:13 Mike Tian – Moat Trajectories and Investing in China at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.212)
Sep 6, 2021 bearish
Disclosure
Tian: WCM has long been underweight in high-quality Chinese internet companies.
“It's interesting, because we've been underweight China internet for a long time, which actually is surprising for me to say that, just because you think we're high-quality investors, and those are, most people will consider them high-quality businesses.”
Mike Tian Sep 6, 2021 ▶ 35:41 Mike Tian – Moat Trajectories and Investing in China at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.212)
Sep 6, 2021 neutral
Insight
Tian: Detecting corporate culture breakdown in real time is incredibly difficult.
“How do you recognize in real time when a culture is perhaps breaking down a bit, and that's actually causing a problem longer term for the business? That is actually an even harder problem than recognizing a great culture in the first place, because when you'r…”
Mike Tian Sep 6, 2021 ▶ 48:52 Mike Tian – Moat Trajectories and Investing in China at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.212)
Sep 6, 2021 bullish
Disclosure
Tian: Hundsun Technologies holds a near-monopoly on Chinese financial software.
“We're investors in a company called Hunson Technologies, and what they are is a near monopoly maker of critical financial software for brokerages, banks, the stock exchange, and things of that nature. Obviously, extremely sticky business with 99.9 renewal rate…”
Mike Tian Sep 6, 2021 ▶ 40:13 Mike Tian – Moat Trajectories and Investing in China at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.212)
Sep 6, 2021 positive
Disclosure
WCM used developed-market patterns to invest early in Chinese drug manufacturers.
“For example, we were super early into the contract resource organizations or contract drug manufacturing organizations, as far as like Wuxi AppTech, Wuxi Bio, names like that, because we've been investing in these companies in the developed markets for years a…”
Mike Tian Sep 6, 2021 ▶ 23:31 Mike Tian – Moat Trajectories and Investing in China at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.212)
Sep 6, 2021 neutral
Disclosure
Tian: WCM prefers expanding competitive advantages over highly profitable incumbents.
“I would much rather take the more Complex heavier one that's actually growing in terms of competitive advantage and relevance, even if it has much lower profitability today.”
Mike Tian Sep 6, 2021 ▶ 31:14 Mike Tian – Moat Trajectories and Investing in China at WCM (Capital Allocators, EP.212)
Sep 16, 2021 positive
Disclosure
Black: WCM did under 2% of typical due diligence on Clifford Capital
“It's probably less than two percent of the work that most people do on our firm. As I said, like them, passionate, good track record, probably high probability of success going forward.”
Paul Black Sep 16, 2021 ▶ 7:54 Ryan Batchelor – Clifford Capital Partners (Manager Meetings, EP.11)
Dec 20, 2021 positive
Insight
Black: Competitive advantage trajectory matters more than static moat size
“We began to wrestle with that whole idea of what is important with a competitive advantage, and part of that was it wasn't about the absolute size, it was about the direction of that competitive advantage.”
Paul Black Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 9:18 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021 negative
Insight
Black: Asset managers should focus on business culture over DCF models
“Our business worships At the modeling of discounted cash flows on businesses, and everyone thinks the magic is in the DCF, and very, very little of the magic is there. That's just a tool, and that tool's only as good as the input. So, from my perspective, I th…”
Paul Black Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 1:04:13 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021
Disclosure
Black: WCM built around weak performers multiple times over twenty years
“I can tell you that in the last 20 years, I've probably done that Seven or eight times where I've just built around somebody that was weak, as long as Mike said, they weren't toxic to the culture.”
Paul Black Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 50:22 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Black: WCM had only $3M in international strategy after five years
“That five-year record's phenomenal, but even after five years, we literally had three million dollars in the portfolio.”
Paul Black Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 7:36 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021
Insight
Trigg: Framing colleagues as friends increases accountability rather than lowering standards
“In fact, I have always said that a group of friends, some people have said, well, if you're all friends, nobody's going to want to hold each other accountable. And you're going to just be having fun all day and messing around. And I said, it's actually the exa…”
Mike Trigg Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 40:46 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021
Insight
Black: Asset management succession requires founders to accept a significant haircut
“What we concluded is the best way to transition wealth is the founders have to be generous. The founders ultimately have to take a significant haircut in order to make sure that the company continues to prosper.”
Paul Black Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 53:40 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021 neutral
Insight
Black: Leaders must act the moment weak employees drag down top performers
“The moment they start bringing down your stars is the moment you've got to move.”
Paul Black Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 50:42 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021 bearish
Opinion
Black: Buying wide-moat businesses cheaply is flawed today
“That whole notion, and we've talked about this before of buying wide moat businesses cheaply, I think is flawed today because everybody's trying to do the same thing.”
Paul Black Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 8:54 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021
Disclosure
WCM to sunset retiring founder Kurt Winrich's 20% stake over seven years
“So we've chosen to basically sunset Kurt. That means for the next seven years, he will receive his dividend every year for the next seven years. And then that will retire into treasury and it'll be accreted to everybody else.”
Paul Black Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 53:54 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021 negative
Insight
Trigg: Hiring a head of HR leads leaders to outsource vital duties
“When you hire someone to be the head of HR, what do you do? You start outsourcing, I think, very important duties as a leader. You know, if I suddenly need to let somebody go, I'm not going to go do that. Or if I do have a difficult conversation with somebody …”
Mike Trigg Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 27:33 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021 negative
Insight
Black: Debt-financed founder buyouts ruin asset management firm succession
“The firms that have failed have been the ones that have taken on massive amounts of debt in order to finance the buyout of the founder, and that's fine as long as everything's going well, but when it's not, inevitably the younger people who have all the debt t…”
Paul Black Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 26:10 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Trigg: Moat trajectory investing may lose its edge within 10 years
“To some extent, motor trajectory may not be the significant advantage 10 years from now that it was 10 years ago.”
Mike Trigg Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 19:36 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021
Insight
Black: Firms in crisis should absorb income cuts at the principal level
“You make sure you don't fire any of your good young talent because you do want to live to fight another day, but you take the income hit all at the principal level.”
Paul Black Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 6:07 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021
Disclosure
Trigg: WCM hired an analyst recruited from an anonymous Twitter account
“We hired somebody two years ago that we actually originally found on Twitter. He had a Twitter handle under a fake name. He was someone that we followed, we liked. It was very much, in a way, Paul's experience with me in the newsletter, just saying things that…”
Mike Trigg Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 32:56 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021 neutral
Insight
Black: Money manager culture only reveals itself during underperformance
“The time when you really see Whether the culture is healthy or not is when performance suffers, and inevitably performance is going to suffer in a money management firm.”
Paul Black Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 20:54 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021
Assertion Supported
Black: WCM lost almost all its $4B AUM after five years underperforming
“Running a large cap US domestic portfolio, you underperformed dramatically for five years. You get fired by pretty much all of that four billion dollars in assets.”
Paul Black Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 5:54 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021 neutral
Insight
Trigg: Employees usually signal when a colleague must be fired
“The reality is, nine out of 10 times, your people tell you that that needs to get done before you actually have to make that decision yourself”
Mike Trigg Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 49:25 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021 neutral
Disclosure
Black: WCM built an entirely new client base for international strategy
“We had a whole different client base with the domestic strategy than we ultimately had with the international strategy, because we could not go back to the consultants and the allocators that we had raised money for. On the domestic side and then turn around a…”
Paul Black Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 18:12 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Dec 20, 2021 positive
Disclosure
Trigg: WCM is launching internal Artist Studio R&D lab for alpha
“We have a something now called the WCM Artist Studio, which is effectively an R&D lab that we're building inside the research team that's going to spend a lot of time exploring those New fields of compounding knowledge to see if there's new sources of alpha th…”
Mike Trigg Dec 20, 2021 ▶ 19:54 Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)
Jun 8, 2023 positive
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
WCM's Paul Black serves on the board of Saguaro Capital Management
“Paul's actually on our board now because of that.”
Jim Falbe Jun 8, 2023 ▶ 30:04 Jim Falbe – Modern Value Investing at Saguaro (Capital Allocators, EP.320)
Feb 5, 2024
Insight
You can recover from overpaying for great companies, but not bad ones
“You can overpay for a great and improving company, but you'll recover over time. It might take a long time, but you'll recover. There's a pathway for recovery, whereas if you misvalue a bad business, there's no pathway to recovery.”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 23:08 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 negative
Insight
Learning the right lesson at the wrong time compounds investment underperformance
“Actually the worst possible outcome, in my view, is learning the right lesson at the wrong time. At least in the medium term, you'll end up compounding the mistake you just made and drag out a hundred performance for many years.”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 51:52 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 positive
Insight
Ayer: Building high-trust teams starts with leadership vulnerability
“If you want to build a high trust team, you've got to get all the noise out of the way, the frictions, the insecurities. And I think starting with vulnerabilities, at least I've found to be the best starting point.”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 1:03:16 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024
Insight
Without time guardrails, investment research naturally drifts toward expiring market noise
“There's a gravitational pull towards expiring knowledge. There's so much noise out there, and if you don't build guardrails around how you spend your time, you're gonna fall into this notion of just gathering more information, having a reactive mindset, benchm…”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 19:35 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 positive
Disclosure
WCM engages in candidate dialogues spanning years before hiring
“We like long dialogues over, in some cases, years, where we exchange thoughts with a candidate.”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 37:16 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 bullish
Disclosure
WCM owns MercadoLibre for its candor and external competitive awareness
“We own a company called Mercado Libre, which you probably know is like the Amazon slash PayPal in Latin America. And what we always loved about them was the level of candor they had about mistakes they made. And the level of external awareness.”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 45:35 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 positive
Insight
Moat and competitive advantage frameworks provide scalable, compounding investment knowledge
“As we think about mode frameworks, how to think about competitive advantage, that's another field of compounding knowledge. If you can build patterns around it, that's more evergreen, that's more scalable, and you can apply it to multiple judgment calls.”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 21:10 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 positive
Insight
Ayer: Finding an authentic personal voice transforms communication and client meetings
“I think you can borrow ideas, but once you develop your own voice on the topic and lean into your journey around it changes everything. Your disposition changes, your body language becomes much more engaging, meetings transform from a test or a conversation, a…”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 1:06:48 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024
Insight
A valuation-first investment mindset steers analysts toward deteriorating value traps
“One is to save valuation for the end of the process. I think if you have a valuation-first mindset, it steers you towards value traps, effectively, companies that are becoming less good on the margin.”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 23:24 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 positive
Insight
Ayer: Understanding corporate culture boosts investment decision batting averages over time
“If you understand a company's culture, you can overlay that culture onto each of those judgment calls over a period of time. So maybe that boosts your batting average by a few percentage points, but that can compound significantly over time.”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 20:55 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 negative
Insight
Ayer: Young professionals trap themselves by griping without offering solutions
“I think if you can't think of a solution to a problem, or at least a pathway to a solution, don't make your identity just constantly griping about the problem. Amplifying drama around it. I feel like a lot of young people especially get trapped in that identit…”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 1:04:20 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 negative
Insight
Long-term investing has among the poorest feedback quality of any profession
“The problem in investing is that feedback quality is poor, at least for our flavor for investing. You're long-term, you're not making that many decisions, takes a long time to get the feedback, multiple years if you're right or wrong, and then there's just a t…”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 46:39 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024
Insight
Investing is fundamentally about mapping the convergence of market expectations
“I started to reframe that insecurity into an asset, thinking if I can understand why people have different opinions, and then maybe map out why those opinions will converge over time, why, how, and when, that would be an interesting approach, and it dovetails …”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 7:49 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 neutral
Disclosure
Ayer: WCM's research pipeline became too lopsided before 2022
“I think we got a little bit lopsided in the types of names we were writing up. For a few years, and so that was a change we've made since.”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 53:25 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 neutral
Insight
Unconstrained professional environments cause people to minimize risk rather than innovate
“The one thing I've learned is you would think an unconstrained environment leads to more creativity, but it's the old playground analogy. If you put a fence around a playground, the kids start to spread out and explore. If you take away the fence, everyone sta…”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 17:47 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024
Insight
Evaluating corporate culture is about moat alignment, not whether employees are happy
“I think a lot of people think about culture as touchy-feely, right? Are employees happy? And for us, that's not the question. It's more about alignment. Are employees behaving in a way that will help that company grow its moat?”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 44:06 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 negative
Insight
Ayer: Cultures centered on individual career optimization degrade judgment
“If you have a culture where people optimize for themselves and their own career path, you really just introduce a bunch of Unspoken friction into the process that just bubbles underneath the surface and gets in the wake of judgment.”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 34:52 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024
Disclosure
WCM built a proprietary journaling app to log and analyze all decisions
“And one major initiative we actually completed recently to address this feedback quality problem in investing is building out a fully fledged proprietary journaling app that's custom made for investing. And so we've long here at WCM had a journaling culture to…”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 47:30 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 negative
Insight
Being praised for a 'magic touch' gives stock pickers a fixed mindset
“I think if you're greenlight a movie, it's kind of picking a stock. You often get described as having the magic touch. If that's how you're judged, it's natural that you're going to develop fixed mindset, especially if there's some luck and cause and effect qu…”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 17:13 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 neutral
Disclosure
WCM replaced generic investment risk write-ups with structured pre-mortems
“So one significant process tweak we made is replacing our, what was a generic risk section in our write-ups with now what we call a premortem section.”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 29:53 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 bullish
Insight
Outsourcers that evolve into R&D partners can expand their economic moats
“We found historically a lot of outsourcing companies in various industries that can climb the value chain over time and evolve from low value outsource manufacturers, which is tend to be how outsourcing companies are born to high value outsourced R&D partners.…”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 39:46 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024 negative
Insight
Five-year strategic planning creates blinders and causes missed immediate opportunities
“We think about that a lot because we're not big strategic planners, five-year vision type of manager, because we think it can create blinders, right? You miss opportunities right in front of you.”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 1:00:18 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024
Disclosure
WCM leaders presented a 50-point deck of their past mistakes at offsite
“We did an offsite several years ago where Mike Trigg and myself, we got up, and we just talked about every mistake we made over the last 10 years, and that was, it was like a fifty-point PowerPoint deck, and showing about these mental models that were just, yo…”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 1:02:13 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Feb 5, 2024
Disclosure
WCM analysts take biannual screen-free weeks to reflect and improve
“So right now, actually, we're doing a reflection week internally. We do it twice a year. We carve out a week, and you're turning off all your screens. You're not looking at stock quotes or news, and you're just reflecting in the spirit of getting better.”
Sanjay Ayer Feb 5, 2024 ▶ 24:55 Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
Oct 27, 2025 neutral
Insight
Ayer: Portfolio Correlation Issues Stem From Correlated Research Pipelines
“One of the conclusions was the portfolio was too correlated, but the root cause of that was the research pipeline had become too correlated.”
Sanjay Ayer Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 12:34 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025 negative
Insight
Ayer: Industry Incentives Push Asset Managers to Hug Benchmarks and Coast
“Every incentive today is to Enter preservation mode, become benchmark hog, coast on the brand, and now it's really about staying true to who we are, and being different, and getting better, and serving others.”
Sanjay Ayer Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 58:02 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Trigg: WCM Built Custom Taxonomies to Replace Standard GICS Classifications
“And coming out of that period, we basically created a hundred different categories across about 700 companies.”
Mike Trigg Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 13:56 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025 bullish
Opinion
Trigg: Aerospace and Turbine Post-COVID Trades Are Far From Done
“I think that we still believe that there's pretty significant tailwind to go, and it's, these trades are far from done.”
Mike Trigg Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 26:03 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025
Insight
Ayer: Unchecked Team Collaboration Degenerates Into Bureaucratic Coordination
“What was happening is collaboration was tipping into coordination. It started to feel bureaucratic. This was a very low lift way of making a light touch collaboration, which is important without meeting creep.”
Sanjay Ayer Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 21:49 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025
Disclosure
Trigg: WCM analysts initially rejected the moat trajectory investment framework
“There was a moment years ago when we were trying to go all in on this concept of mode trajectory and pattern recognition. And several of the analysts at the time were questioning whether this was the right thing to do. And most of the people in the room said, …”
Mike Trigg Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 20:04 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025 neutral
Disclosure
Ayer: WCM Sold Louis Vuitton and Costco to Buy Rolls-Royce
“I mean, you're selling names like Louis Vuitton and Costco and buying names like Rolls Royce and Siemens Energy.”
Sanjay Ayer Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 15:23 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Trigg: WCM Built AI Models to Detect Moat Trajectory Changes
“We're building tools to really codify mode trajectory and culture into a model. How do you diagnose change in the company's mode? Look at it today. Put all this data in there, whether it's SEC filings, transcripts, sell-side reports, expert transcripts, and lo…”
Sanjay Ayer Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 38:56 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025
Insight
Trigg: Long Bull Markets Tempt Asset Managers to Over-Concentrate Research
“When you go through a lawn bull market, like you did up to 20, 22, it's easy to focus your energy and resources around things that are doing really well. With the benefit of hindsight, after 10 years, you could maybe have looked back at the focus list and said…”
Mike Trigg Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 11:14 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025 negative
Insight
Ayer: Long-Termism Is Sometimes a Lazy Crutch for Asset Managers
“Oftentimes playing the long game is the right strategy, the market's myopic, stick to your knitting, but there are occasions where long-termism is a lazy crutch.”
Sanjay Ayer Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 6:35 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025 negative
Opinion
Ayer: Creativity Is Shockingly Hard to Find Among Professional Investors
“Creativity is shockingly hard to find in the investment community. People who can Truly live a few years in the future and envision how today's fundamentals and narrative can evolve. There's just such a reflexive tendency to drag current or recent results forw…”
Sanjay Ayer Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 36:50 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025 bullish
Assertion Partly supported
Trigg: WCM's First Private Investment Was Anduril at an $8B Valuation
“Our first investment was in Andrel at an eight billion dollar valuation. We were also the first crossover fund to invest in Andrel.”
Mike Trigg Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 45:11 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025 negative
Disclosure
Ayer: WCM Faced Client Pushback Selling Software Before 40% Rally
“During those months that what we had sold was snapping back, you'd get email chatter internally. We'd do client calls and be like, are you sure you guys made the right moves here? These software stocks, for instance, are up 40% in the last month. You just sold…”
Sanjay Ayer Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 18:30 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ayer: Pre-COVID Decade Lulled Investors Holding Legacy Compounders Like Costco
“We'd been through this ten-plus year period heading into the COVID bull market where backward and forward-looking quality and growth were highly correlated. Effectively, you could just keep owning the same thing and do well. Names like Louis Vuitton, they just…”
Sanjay Ayer Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 9:41 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025 bullish
Disclosure
Trigg: WCM Co-Led Two Databricks Rounds and Invested in Anthropic
“Fast forward, we got an amazing opportunity to co-lead two rounds with Databricks. We were just involved with the Anthropic raised.”
Mike Trigg Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 45:48 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025
Insight
Trigg: Culture Analysis Must Assess Social Reinforcement, Not Just Stated Behaviors
“You can have two, three, five companies that talk about the exact same behaviors, whether it's lean or the Danaher business system. All these companies are talking about the exact same behaviors, but maybe they don't have the right social reinforcement mechani…”
Mike Trigg Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 49:39 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Oct 27, 2025
Insight
Ayer: Asking 'How Can I Help?' Unfairly Burdens the Receiver
“That question is very well-intentioned, but it effectively puts the burden on the receiver. So then you have to think through this person in their shoes with their context they have, with their skill set, how can they help me? Versus this notion of there are p…”
Sanjay Ayer Oct 27, 2025 ▶ 52:55 Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
May 4, 2026
Insight
Jerger: Treating mistakes as survivable makes employees report errors earlier
“When you Treat mistakes like that. You tell people that they're survivable. And then when they believe that, they tell you the truth. They tell you it earlier. And then when they tell you the truth about anything, we just solve problems faster and better.”
Dave Jerger May 4, 2026 ▶ 28:59 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Jerger: WCM managed billions before hiring its first in-house counsel
“When I came on board, they were running billions of dollars and hadn't had a single in-house counsel doing anything.”
Dave Jerger May 4, 2026 ▶ 7:58 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 positive
Insight
Payne: A dedicated culture officer becomes essential once headcount reaches 50
“You need a dedicated person building into the culture, reminding people of good relationship habits, helping people interact in ways that reduce friction, that encourage connection and collaboration, and that's Matt's job. It probably would have been useful at…”
Sloan Payne May 4, 2026 ▶ 35:29 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
A single WCM employee migrated Salesforce to HubSpot in under three months
“We had some outside consultants that told us it was going to take, I don't know, Two years to get migrated and all the relational connections between the data. He did it with very little help in less than two and a half or three months.”
Sloan Payne May 4, 2026 ▶ 47:33 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 positive
Insight
Payne: WCM overtrusts employees in roles before they prove readiness
“We want to overtrust people before they're ready, put them in roles before they've proven they can do them. That's our whole mantra. And then we pay them really, really generously.”
Sloan Payne May 4, 2026 ▶ 14:43 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 positive
Insight
Payne: Deliver performance feedback sooner rather than louder
“We say we have a saying that you do that sooner, not louder, before you build up a story about it. You give the person feedback before it's expanded into a narrative that's a fiction as much as it is the truth.”
Sloan Payne May 4, 2026 ▶ 41:18 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fewer than four employees have voluntarily left WCM since 2004
“The number of people that have left WCM voluntarily in that time span, it's less than three or four.”
Sloan Payne May 4, 2026 ▶ 12:53 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Sloan Payne will retire in two years, with Dave Jerger succeeding him
“I'm retiring in two years, and he's taking over my job.”
Sloan Payne May 4, 2026 ▶ 13:23 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 positive
Insight
Non-punitive mistake handling turns a six-person compliance team into a hundred
“When you expand that scope out to the whole firm, you essentially turn your compliance team of five to six to a compliance team of a hundred. You have everybody looking out for the firm in the same way. And because they know they're not going to come to me and…”
Dave Jerger May 4, 2026 ▶ 30:10 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 positive
Insight
Wide autonomy with clear boundaries enables teams to self-correct mistakes
“Our view is have a really big field with really right fences and let people run. This weird thing happens where People know where the fences are. 95% of the time, they don't have to check. They know. And when they don't know, that five percent of the time wher…”
Sloan Payne May 4, 2026 ▶ 26:32 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 positive
Disclosure
WCM partners receive seven years of profits before returning equity at book
“So our thing is the own equity. We'll continue to pay your dividend. You participate in the profitability of the firm for seven years. After that, you give your equity back at book value, which at an investment management firm is nothing.”
Sloan Payne May 4, 2026 ▶ 52:32 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Jerger: WCM employees can start AI projects without permission or bureaucracy
“Anybody who wants to take on a project with a tool that they have access to on an AI side, they can just jump in and do it without question, without permission, without any bureaucracy.”
Dave Jerger May 4, 2026 ▶ 42:11 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
WCM Co-Founder Kurt Winrich gave 66% of his equity to employees
“Kurt, who's now retired, owned 90% of the firm. When he retired three years ago, he owned 24% of the firm, a firm that was hundreds of times larger than it was when he started, and he handed the rest of that equity to the rest of the employees at virtually no …”
Sloan Payne May 4, 2026 ▶ 20:49 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
WCM Investment Management has almost blown up at least three times
“We've almost blown up at least three times that I know of, but because it is a high margin business with good recurring revenue, you can afford to pay people.”
Sloan Payne May 4, 2026 ▶ 46:18 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 neutral
Insight
Jerger: Documenting corporate values gives firms an excuse not to live them
“The second you write something down, you give yourself an excuse not to do anything else. And I think that's what's the hard part about our culture is it requires a lot more work Than just putting these concepts on a piece of paper. It's acting on those concep…”
Dave Jerger May 4, 2026 ▶ 22:54 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026
Assertion Supported
WCM Investment Management manages $120 billion in global assets
“We're running one hundred and twenty billion dollars globally.”
Sloan Payne May 4, 2026 ▶ 16:37 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Payne: WCM operates without multi-year business plans
“Since I've been here, we have never had a five-year plan. We have sales targets and we have some projects we're trying to complete every year, but we don't have a business plan for the next one, two, three, four or five years.”
Sloan Payne May 4, 2026 ▶ 56:51 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 positive
Disclosure
WCM built an internal AI assistant to analyze earnings and expert networks
“We have a thing called Sherpa, which is this internal AI research assistant. It's built by the investment team, and it's a data scientist and an AI guy we brought in. It does deep research on earnings transcript, expert data networks, aggregating colossal amou…”
Sloan Payne May 4, 2026 ▶ 42:30 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
May 4, 2026 positive
Opinion
WCM hires for self-awareness through personal networks rather than credentials
“There's a layer of nepotism here that's worked incredibly well. Because people are pre-vetted, and if you're hiring not for credentials, but for self-awareness for the whole person, that's the whole ballgame for us.”
Sloan Payne May 4, 2026 ▶ 9:51 Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger – Why Culture Matters (EP.500)
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