Joel Greenblatt
Managing Principal & Co-CIO, Gotham Asset Management · 1 appearance on the record.
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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.
34statements → 16claims → 9claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 3.88/5average certainty → 2.12/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 27said about them ↓
9 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 7 not checkable as stated how the 16 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
3 predictions · 13 assertions · 12 insights · 6 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 16 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 9 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 Joel 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
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…”
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 Joel Greenblatt on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Joel Greenblatt said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
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…”
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…”
Greenblatt: Charter schools cannot scale enough to solve U.S. public education
“Charter schools are only seven percent of all the public schools, and they're in the best places that have the best charters, New York, Massachusetts, California. They're very challenged. It's going to be very hard to open even any more. So it's not going to e…”
Greenblatt: Alternative certifications will iterate to match college degrees
“And that's what I think would happen with alternative certification. That these standards that were developed over time, companies would figure out what works well in lieu of this college degree, what tests or courses or whatever you have to do. Some of the te…”
Greenblatt: College functions primarily as a signaling device
“Really most of college is a signaling device to say that, Hey, you pass through these hurdles. And you jump through these hoops, and you made it there.”
Ordinary risk arbitrage historically yielded 60% to 100% returns in pedestrian years
“Cause I mean, a pedestrian year back then was you made 60 or a hundred percent doing risk arbitrage.”
Greenblatt: Milken agreed to seed Gotham Capital after a single phone call
“And three years into it, one day I called my friend who was working for Mike Milken. And I said to him, gee, if I could raise X dollars, I'd go out on my own and run a fund. And he called me back the next day and said, Mike said fine.”
Milken doubled Greenblatt's ask while keeping Ron Perelman waiting on Revlon
“So I kept him there for an hour and I actually literally had Ron Perlman waiting in the next room to do the Revlon deal. And I kept him waiting there and he finally gave up on me and walked out, sent his brother in. And I got the deal from his brother and then…”
Greenblatt: Concentrated portfolios face 20% to 30% drawdowns every couple years
“When you run such a concentrated portfolio, every couple of years, there are a few days where you lose 20 or 30% of your assets because one or two of your ideas aren't going your way. And that's just part of the way it works.”
Greenblatt: Buying Good Businesses Naturally Expands Margin of Safety Over Time
“Pretty quickly we realized that being involved in good businesses expands your margin of safety because you might buy in with some margin of safety, but the value of the business keeps going up. It expands your margin of safety. The value of the business is go…”
Greenblatt: Private equity buys cash flows, not price-to-book factors
“I would argue that no private equity firm would buy a business because it's low price book or low price sales. They're looking at cash flows and how much they're going to grow and how secure those cash flows are, how certain they are of those cash flows. That'…”
The other half of the tape: Joel Greenblatt's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 23 times in 6 episodes on Capital Allocators. 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 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
2025 1 mention in 1 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
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Joel Greenblatt – Common Sense for Value at Gotham Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.165) | Nov 23, 2020 | 1h 0m |