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Dan Rasmussen

Founder and Portfolio Manager, Verdad Advisers · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderinvestorauthoranalyst@verdadcap ↗verdadcap.com ↗

Dan Rasmussen is the founder and portfolio manager of Verdad Advisers, an asset management firm applying quantitative strategies to public markets. He previously worked as an investor at Bain Capital and is an author and prominent market commentator.

35statements → 15claims → 8claims resolved → 75%fully supported → 3.69/5average certainty → 2.94/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 14said about them ↓

6 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted 7 not checkable as stated how the 15 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 13 assertions · 8 opinions · 12 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 15 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 8 are resolved, and 7 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Dan argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
CEO pedigree and elite education do not predict stock returns
“Turns out that going to business school empirically does not mean that your stock price does better. Turns out working at an investment bank or top tier consulting firm has no impact on the stock price of the company that you run. Turns out that your track rec…”
Dan Rasmussen Feb 17, 2020 ▶ 35:03 Dan Rasmussen – Private Equity Risk and Public Equity Opportunity at Verdad Advisers (First Meeting, EP.15)

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
The majority of private equity acquisitions are sponsor-to-sponsor deals
“These days, if you're buying a company, the majority of private equity acquisitions are from other private equity firms.”
Dan Rasmussen Feb 17, 2020 ▶ 16:51 Dan Rasmussen – Private Equity Risk and Public Equity Opportunity at Verdad Advisers (First Meeting, EP.15)

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
79% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Dan Rasmussen on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Dan Rasmussen said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Machine learning models finding non-regression factors are likely flawed
“So if your machine learning is finding something that standard regression models didn't find, it's probably not a good model.”
Dan Rasmussen Feb 17, 2020 ▶ 30:37 Dan Rasmussen – Private Equity Risk and Public Equity Opportunity at Verdad Advisers (First Meeting, EP.15)
Assertion Supported
Value investing advocates have been wrong for nine years in the US
“And all of these quantitatively educated CFA people that know the names Fama in French are saying, no, no, growth doesn't work by value. And you know what? They've been wrong now for nine years in the United States.”
Dan Rasmussen Feb 17, 2020 ▶ 49:20 Dan Rasmussen – Private Equity Risk and Public Equity Opportunity at Verdad Advisers (First Meeting, EP.15)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Data shows private equity firms are highly effective at operational cost-cutting
“I think the empirical evidence would show that private equity firms are good at cost cutting. They are good at cutting the fat. They are good at streamlining operations, and we saw that a lot in the data.”
Dan Rasmussen Feb 17, 2020 ▶ 16:40 Dan Rasmussen – Private Equity Risk and Public Equity Opportunity at Verdad Advisers (First Meeting, EP.15)
Assertion Contradicted
The majority of private equity acquisitions are sponsor-to-sponsor deals
“These days, if you're buying a company, the majority of private equity acquisitions are from other private equity firms.”
Dan Rasmussen Feb 17, 2020 ▶ 16:51 Dan Rasmussen – Private Equity Risk and Public Equity Opportunity at Verdad Advisers (First Meeting, EP.15)
Insight
Leveraged equities with multiple expansion deliver outsized returns
“We're going to focus on the ones that are levered because when they get multiple expansion and they're levered, that's where you really make a ton of money.”
Dan Rasmussen Feb 17, 2020 ▶ 28:26 Dan Rasmussen – Private Equity Risk and Public Equity Opportunity at Verdad Advisers (First Meeting, EP.15)
Insight
Quantitative stock ranking models disproportionately favor illiquid micro-caps
“Within the best ranked things, and this is true for most quantitative strategies, a disproportionate share of the most attractive things to virtually any quantitative ranking model are micro cap or small cap. And they're illiquid. So they're trading a few 100,…”
Dan Rasmussen Feb 17, 2020 ▶ 38:29 Dan Rasmussen – Private Equity Risk and Public Equity Opportunity at Verdad Advisers (First Meeting, EP.15)
Insight
Alpha comes from tedious trading that larger funds cannot execute
“Our logic, again, is that if we are doing things that other people are unwilling to do or unable to do, unwilling because it's tedious and boring, unable because of capacity issues, and we can do that, that should be where alpha is. I mean, that should be what…”
Dan Rasmussen Feb 17, 2020 ▶ 42:47 Dan Rasmussen – Private Equity Risk and Public Equity Opportunity at Verdad Advisers (First Meeting, EP.15)
Assertion Supported
Small-cap value underperforms or drops in 50% of years
“If you add up the years when the market is down, and then the years that small value underperforms the rest of the market, that's 50% of years.”
Dan Rasmussen Feb 17, 2020 ▶ 47:39 Dan Rasmussen – Private Equity Risk and Public Equity Opportunity at Verdad Advisers (First Meeting, EP.15)
Opinion
Quantitative investors leverage Twitter for superior peer feedback
“I think this is why so many quantitative investors use social media and Twitter especially, is Because the feedback on your ideas is so good, and the knowledge sharing is so good. And so I think that it's like going to the best section of business school.”
Dan Rasmussen Feb 17, 2020 ▶ 1:01:28 Dan Rasmussen – Private Equity Risk and Public Equity Opportunity at Verdad Advisers (First Meeting, EP.15)
Insight
The way to win is choosing the least competitive games
“Better off to build your base case around you not being the smartest guy in the room, and maybe not being the most athletic, and then figure out how to win. And the way to win is to choose the least competitive games.”
Dan Rasmussen Feb 17, 2020 ▶ 1:02:58 Dan Rasmussen – Private Equity Risk and Public Equity Opportunity at Verdad Advisers (First Meeting, EP.15)
Assertion Supported
The cheapest decile of price-to-book stocks averages sub-$400M market cap
“And I think for value, if you just rank by price to book, the average market cap of the cheapest decile is going to be less than four hundred million dollars.”
Dan Rasmussen Feb 17, 2020 ▶ 38:46 Dan Rasmussen – Private Equity Risk and Public Equity Opportunity at Verdad Advisers (First Meeting, EP.15)

The other half of the tape: Dan Rasmussen's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 12 times in 4 episodes on Capital Allocators. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Kip McDaniel 8Ted Seides 2Michael Mauboussin 1Hayden Brain 1

Statements about Dan Rasmussen, by other people (2)

Assertion Supported
Mauboussin: Equities rebound strongly three months after a 20% market drawdown
“After a drawdown of 20% in the S&P 500, you wait three months. So now from the beginning of March through early June, and then you get involved. And then they looked at small cap and large cap value, small cap and large cap growth. And what they found essentia…”
Michael Mauboussin Mar 23, 2020 ▶ 25:50 Michael Mauboussin – Consilient Observations in a Crisis (Capital Allocators, EP.127)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dan Rasmussen's Verdad Advisors interview was the most downloaded in 2020
“And the most downloaded show of 2020, it was first meeting episode 15, Dan Rasmussen, Private Equity Risk and Public Equity Opportunity at Verdad Advisors.”
Ted Seides Dec 28, 2020 ▶ 19:52 Ted Seides - Capital Allocators Year in Review (Capital Allocators, EP.170)

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0041822019202020212022episodesmentions
0122019202020212022episodes it came up in
0041822019202020212022episodesmentions per episode
2022 2 mentions in 1 episode
2020 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2019 8 mentions in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Dan Rasmussen – Private Equity Risk and Public Equity Opportunity at Verdad Advisers (Firs Feb 17, 2020 48m
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