Joel Greenblatt

Managing Principal & Co-CIO, Gotham Asset Management · 1 appearance on the record.

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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.

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

Assertion Supported

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…”

Joel Greenblatt Nov 23, 2020 ▶ 55:22 Joel Greenblatt – Common Sense for Value at Gotham Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.165)

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.

What they said34 What others said27 Episodes1

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

Insight

Greenblatt: Individual investors' main advantage is patience as institutional horizons shrink

“The big secret, just so you don't have to buy the book, was the advantage of the small investor has is patience. There's much more data available. Time horizons are shrinking. They're not growing.”

Joel Greenblatt Nov 23, 2020 ▶ 49:35 Joel Greenblatt – Common Sense for Value at Gotham Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.165)

Disclosure

Crowdsourced research models fail in oncology due to extreme sub-specialization

“Yeah, so we tried to have along the same lines as the Value Investor Club, almost set up identically where cancer researchers were actually posting their ideas, their research on the site, and it turned out that it's a very technical field. Even if you're a ca…”

Joel Greenblatt Nov 23, 2020 ▶ 1:06:12 Joel Greenblatt – Common Sense for Value at Gotham Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.165)

Assertion Supported

Unprofitable billion-dollar companies from 2019 surged 75% in 2020

“If you bought every company that lost money in 2019, so this is pre-COVID, that had a market cap over a billion, there were 261 of them, you'd be up 75% this year.”

Joel Greenblatt Nov 23, 2020 ▶ 1:16:18 Joel Greenblatt – Common Sense for Value at Gotham Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.165)

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Six broken deals in 1986 slashed Gotham's returns from 80% to 30%

“I had in my portfolio five or six merger deals that were going on, whether I had a piece of a security or I had some iteration of it, and I thought that was diversity. In my portfolio, but it turned out it was all the same bet. You know, is the financing going…”

Joel Greenblatt Nov 23, 2020 ▶ 17:42 Joel Greenblatt – Common Sense for Value at Gotham Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.165)

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Simon & Schuster blocked Greenblatt's original book title to protect Motley Fool

“The original subtitle was even if you're not too smart was originally supposed to be any fool can be a stock market genius, but it turned out my editor at Simon and Schuster had the Motley fools and he wouldn't let me use the word fool.”

Joel Greenblatt Nov 23, 2020 ▶ 23:36 Joel Greenblatt – Common Sense for Value at Gotham Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.165)

Assertion Supported

Greenblatt's early merger arbitrage failed after Cypress Gardens collapsed into a sinkhole

“One of the first deals I did in the first two months I was in business broke. I wrote about Florida Cypress Gardens was being bought by Harcourt Brace, and it was just a little theme park where they had alligators in the swamps and water skiing Santa Clauses, …”

Joel Greenblatt Nov 23, 2020 ▶ 25:11 Joel Greenblatt – Common Sense for Value at Gotham Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.165)

Disclosure

Value Investors Club has 500 members and a 3% acceptance rate

“And so we still to this day, I think there's probably about 500 investors. It's probably two or three percent of people who submit an idea get in, and it's very hard to get in”

Joel Greenblatt Nov 23, 2020 ▶ 43:31 Joel Greenblatt – Common Sense for Value at Gotham Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.165)

Disclosure

Greenblatt: Value Investors Club became an 'American Idol' for seeding hedge fund managers

“It sort of turned into an American Idol for hedge fund managers, where we really discovered some really smart people that I've been able to put money with over time. I don't do that anymore, but when it first got started, that was an unintended consequence tha…”

Joel Greenblatt Nov 23, 2020 ▶ 44:23 Joel Greenblatt – Common Sense for Value at Gotham Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.165)

Assertion Supported

Greenblatt: 90% of bottom quintile Americans have zero retirement savings

“Nine out of 10 people in the bottom quintile don't have any retirement savings.”

Joel Greenblatt Nov 23, 2020 ▶ 1:08:03 Joel Greenblatt – Common Sense for Value at Gotham Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.165)

Disclosure

Greenblatt's biggest mistake was misunderstanding operating leverage in a trade show company

“Operating leverage, I invested in a company that was a trade show company, where you could get unlimited space in Las Vegas, so it only cost them two dollars a square foot for the space, and they could re-rent it out for the trade show at 62 dollars. So the mo…”

Joel Greenblatt Nov 23, 2020 ▶ 1:17:07 Joel Greenblatt – Common Sense for Value at Gotham Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.165)

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 10 Steve Galbraith 5 Adam Wyden 5 Yen Liow 1 Ted Seides 1 Adrian Meli 1

Statements about Joel Greenblatt, by other people (4)

Insight

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…”

Steve Galbraith Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 27:58 Steven Galbraith – In the Boardroom (Capital Allocators, EP.48)

Assertion Not checkable as stated

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…”

Adrian Meli Sep 15, 2025 ▶ 12:51 Adrian Meli – Active Equity Excellence at Eagle (EP.459)

Disclosure

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.”

Yen Liow Apr 12, 2021 ▶ 41:22 Yen Liow - The Quest for the Right Tail at Aravt Global (Capital Allocators, EP.188)

Assertion Supported

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.”

Ted Seides Sep 5, 2022 ▶ 29:22 Ted Seides – Insights on investing and podcasting (Capital Allocators, EP.269)