Prediction Open · timeframe Jan 2031
Monk: New Mexico SIC will soon surpass Alaska as largest US sovereign fund
“Because of the scale of that organization, they're gonna add 20 to thirty billion dollars. They will soon be the biggest sovereign fund in America, passing Alaska.”
Insight
Monk: Fast co-investment turnaround is efficiency, not institutional innovation
“Oftentimes a pension fund will say, oh, we're really innovative. We're an amazing partner to our funds. They bring us a co-investment and we respond in 15 days. I have to remind them, what you've just described is speed and efficiency. It's the opposite of inn…”
Insight
Monk: Allocators who only back Fund III overpay for managers
“If you only invest in fund three, you've decided you're going to overpay for managers because they don't need your money.”
Insight
Monk: Neurodiversity generates alpha by interpreting data differently
“There's some neurodiversity throughout our industry, and we're trying to write a paper that says this is how you can see the same data set differently. That's the pathway to alpha.”
Insight
Monk: Standard finance credentials fail to teach asset owner operations
“You can get a PhD in economics. You can get a CFA or a CAIA designation and not necessarily truly understand how sovereign funds operate, how pension funds operate.”
Opinion
Monk: Institutional investment management industry over-indexes on people
“In this industry, we tend to over-index on people. We think that if we can get the right people in the right seat, we can deliver the performance.”
Opinion
Monk: Allocators building their own tech stacks internally is crazy
“Some of these investors are trying to do it on their own, frankly, also, which I think is a bit crazy, given what I've already said about tech capability and tech governance at these organizations”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Monk: Traditional fund cash flow forecasting relies on GP guesswork
“The traditional tools we use for predicting how a mid-market buyout fund in Europe draws capital and returns capital. A lot of that is putting the finger in the air and hoping for the best and looking at historical means or turning to the manager and asking th…”
Opinion
Monk: Endowments are highly secretive to prevent strategy copying
“I see a lot of that in the endowment space. Very secretive organizations that are quite worried that whatever secrets they have are going to get out and be copied.”
Opinion
Monk: ESG ratings are like Big Macs—cheap, accessible, but opaque
“You know, I joke with my students sometimes that the ESG ratings are like Big Macs. They're easy to get. They're cheap. They taste pretty good. But it's not clear they make you healthier, and you definitely don't know everything that's inside.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Monk: Investors will abandon ESG ratings for granular factual data
“So ultimately, you will move away from ratings that are really hard to unravel and really, frankly, hard to know what to do with, and we're going to move towards facts.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Monk: Better ESG data will lower cost of capital via performance links
“And I think the reason it will drive lower cost of capital is because the ESG movement will be more effectively tied to long-term performance of these assets.”
Insight
Monk: Sharpe ratios fail mathematically in negative return environments
“That sharp ratios are largely wrong. There's a bunch of reasons why the sharp ratios kind of distort our understanding of the risk we're taking, and it's not wrong in the sense that it's not a useful tool to use just to look, but as long-term investors, sharps…”
Opinion
Monk: Pension funds and endowments are Earth's most important organizations
“I really truly do believe, Ted, that these are the most important organizations on the earth, and that's full stop. I don't even have a caveat around that or a constraint.”
Insight
Monk: Pension active-passive debates always boil down to governance
“And without fail, that active-passive conversation inside a pension fund actually boils back to governance.”
Insight
Monk: Institutional investors get fired for innovating or violating social missions
“In fact, I'd say there's only a handful of ways to get fired in this industry, and one of them is innovation and looking different from your peers. The other is if you've been shown to do something that kind of Is seen as against the social mission of the fund…”
Opinion
Monk: Australian superannuation funds represent the future of pensions globally
“Australian super and the Australians in general, they're just the future of pensions in the world.”
Assertion Supported
Monk: Australian pension fund REST settled member lawsuit over climate negligence
“And oh, by the way, Ted, one of them rest retail employee super trust was sued by a member for not taking climate change seriously. And yes, the lawsuit was settled.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Monk: Data shows ESG provided downside protection during recent crisis
“Like we've seen through the recent crisis, ESG does offer some downside protection. That's in the data.”
Insight
Monk: Innovation and efficiency are opposites because innovation inherently requires failure
“And by the way, you cannot innovate without failure. The two are inextricably linked. It's like saying we want to be efficient and innovative at the same time. They're opposites. Innovation is failure and learning how to manage failure.”
Opinion
Monk: Financial Services VC Focuses on Fee Extraction Over Long-Term Value
“When I moved over to venture capital, which was my hope that, you know, this would be much more aligned with long-term value creation, even there, because I was doing financial services venture capital, the focus was as much on fee streams and transactions and…”
Opinion
Monk: Australian superannuation funds set the global standard for retirement management
“Like when you look at Australian super or first date super or CBUS, these are top notch organizations that are really setting the standard I'd almost say globally for what the next generation of retirement organizations will look like. Like I think here in the…”
Opinion
Monk: New Zealand Superfund is the world's best asset-owner organization
“The New Zealand Superfund, which just clocked 20% return this year, and I would argue is the single best investment organization on the asset owner side in the planet today”
Assertion Partly supported
Monk: CalPERS paid $4B in private equity carry over five years
“CalPERS is having it now.
They realize they, what was it, four billion dollars in private equity carry was paid to GPs alone over a five-year period.”
