Michael Mauboussin
Head of Consilient Research, Counterpoint Global · 5 appearances on the record.
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Michael Mauboussin is Head of Consilient Research at Counterpoint Global and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. He is known for his research on decision-making, capital allocation, skill versus luck, and analyzing competitive moats.
120statements → 47claims → 42claims resolved → 88%fully supported → 3.83/5average certainty → 1.98/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 48said about them ↓
37 supported 4 partly supported 1 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 47 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
3 predictions · 44 assertions · 6 opinions · 67 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 47 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 42 are resolved, and 5 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 Michael 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
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
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 Michael Mauboussin on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Michael Mauboussin said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Mauboussin: US public companies declined from 7,300 in 1996 to 4,200
“In 1996, we reached the apex, which is a little over 7300 companies. Today, we don't have the 20, 23 numbers yet, but it's gonna be around 4200. So we're not only way lower than the peak, we're lower than we were in the 19 seventies.”
Mauboussin: US IPOs averaged 280 annually before 2001 vs 120 since
“The main way companies get added are initial public offerings, and what we've seen is IPOs from 76 to 2000 averaged about 280 per year. They're a couple years way above that, and since 2001, they're about a 120. And by the way, the last couple years, Have been…”
Mauboussin: Finding superstar compounders creates difficult portfolio diversification challenges
“The one thing I'll point out though, I guess to state the obvious, is if you do find one or two or three of these superstar companies, They appreciate a lot, and they get really big in your portfolio, and so you get in these interesting challenges with diversi…”
Mauboussin: DOJ and FTC antitrust focus chills strategic M&A exits
“We've seen a really substantial uptick in antitrust focus. Whether or not the Justice Department or FTC wins these cases, it creates friction and makes managers and executives, it creates uncertainty as to whether they want to do these things.”
Mauboussin: Sponsor-to-sponsor sales became the primary buyout exit mechanism
“Obviously the number one technique for buyouts to exit was selling to other buyout firms.”
Mauboussin: Mandatory long lockups in VC and PE benefit investors
“And because venture and buyouts have essentially longer time horizons, whether people like it or not, they have to sit in their seats for a while. And that's actually, I think probably been to their benefit versus to their detriment.”
Mauboussin: Non-Financial Companies Built Cash Rather than Investing During Easy-Money Era
“What did companies actually do? None of that stuff. They actually didn't invest more. And so what capital structures got more conservative cash balances. Built up on balance sheets is excluding financial services companies.”
Mauboussin: Investors must understand underlying economics before using valuation multiples
“I always tell my students, you have to earn the right to use a multiple. In other words, you can demonstrate that you understand what the economic implications are. That always bothers me that people are very comfortable throwing around heuristics or multiples…”
Mauboussin: An activity involves skill if you can lose on purpose
“You know there's skill in the activity if you can lose on purpose.”
Mauboussin: Decision-Making Under Stress, Not Technical Skills, Separates Great Investors
“A lot of what led to great investors versus good investors had nothing to do with actually those technical skills. Those were requisites to get into the game prerequisites for the game, but not the keys. It was really how they made decisions and especially the…”
Mauboussin: The Biggest Decision Failure Is Failing to Consider Alternatives
“If I had to put this under one big banner, the big banner I would probably select is they fail to consider alternatives.”
Mauboussin: Combining Inside and Outside Views Is Best Decision-Making Approach
“What I think Kahneman and many other psychologists have demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt is the combination of this inside and outside view is the best way to think about things.”
Mauboussin: Base rates are vastly harder to apply in power-law domains
“So some Base rate distributions are fairly well behaved, you know, things like sales growth rates for companies, obviously things like, you know, a lot of things that are normally distributed in life, like the heights of people and so forth. And then there is …”
Mauboussin: Exploration Naturally Decreases and Exploitation Increases With Age
“When you're young, you know, exploration is much more interesting than exploitation, right? So you want to try out the new restaurant, meet new people and so on and so forth. And as you get older, right? Well, your payoffs are much more finite, right? And ther…”
Mauboussin: Assigning Probabilities Compels Deeper Analysis and Better Discussion
“Just asking people to assign a probability, just that app, as you point out, compelled sort of a much more thoughtful process, which then led to a much more, you know, much richer discussion around the issues. So you're right. Probably the calibration is sort …”
Mauboussin: Losing initial cash flows reduces a company's present value by only 10-20%
“Somewhere between it can be 10 to 20%, but that's sort of the high end.”
Mauboussin: Perpetually elevated volatility has only occurred in the 1930s
“The only time we've ever seen sort of perpetually elevated Volatility was back in the 19 thirties. So right after the crash of 1929.”
Mauboussin: High yield debt provides a direct comparability benchmark for equities
“High yield typically trades not dissimilarly to equities. It's a little bit more of a senior claim. And so you have sort of something that's not too far off in terms of a comparability and allows you to sort of calibrate.”
Mauboussin: Bond markets faced widespread bid-ask freezes in Q4 2018
“I think that came to the forefront in the fourth quarter of 2018.
I think there were people that wanted to trade bonds that simply there weren't bids and offers out there for the most part.”
Mauboussin: Market information cascades propagate using identical network dynamics to physical viruses
“This is also how ideas spread. We talk about this really much in the context of markets. What is an information cascade? It's an idea propagating across a network. Why do we all come to uniform beliefs and markets from time to time? Same basic. It's a mind vir…”
Mauboussin: Frequent Portfolio Monitoring Amplifies Myopic Loss Aversion
“The more frequently you look at the market, the more likely you are to see losses. And so myopic loss aversion says for people who frequently revisit their portfolios, they're more likely to see losses, hence suffer from aversion, and hence increase their equi…”
Mauboussin: Markets Will Probably Revert to Pre-Crisis Levels Within 3–24 Months
“One of the answers is, literally, if you're, especially for individuals, is don't look at that And recognize that in three, six, 12, 24 months, things would probably revert back to something that's pre-crisis levels.”
Mauboussin: Doing the boring thing protects decision-makers while optimal risks invite criticism
“Just doing the boring thing never gets you fired, but doing the risky thing that's the right thing exposes you to potential criticism.”
Mauboussin: Luck-Driven Strategies Require Larger Sample Sizes to Prove Skill
“The more luck there is, essentially, actually, the more patient you have to be to see if a good process is going to reveal a skill over time. So it's sort of this backwards thing, like, you need larger sample sizes when there's more luck.”
The other half of the tape: Michael Mauboussin's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 47 times in 28 episodes on Capital Allocators. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Ted Seides 14Annie Duke 7Patrick O'Shaughnessy 4Mason Morfit 4Paul Enright 3Cameron Hight 3Mark Baumgartner 2Jason Karp 2
Statements about Michael Mauboussin, by other people (1)
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2025 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
2024 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2022 11 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
- Annie Duke – The Power of Quitting (Capital Allocators, EP.273)
- Paul Enright – Inside Long-Short Equity Investing (Capital Allocators, EP.266)
- David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
- Josh Wolfe – Caution and Innovation at Lux Capital, Venture is Eating the Investment World 8 (Capital Allocators, EP.236)
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2020 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2019 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
2018 11 mentions in 7 episodes 2 per episode
- Clare Flynn Levy and Cameron Hight - Moneyball for Managers (Capital Allocators, EP.43)
- Mark Baumgartner – Luck, Risk and Uncertainty at the Institute for Advanced Study (Capital Allocators, EP.77)
- Ben Reiter – Moneyball 2.0 (Capital Allocators, EP.64)
- Brian Portnoy – From Complex to Simple (Capital Allocators, EP.57)
- Basil Qunibi - Moneyball for Allocators (Capital Allocators, EP.42)
- Annie Duke - Improving Decision Making [Capital Allocators, EP.39]
- Seth Masters – Investment Polymath (Capital Allocators, EP.38)
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 6 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
- Jeffrey Solomon – Vision, Tenacity, and Empathy (Capital Allocators, EP.09)
- Deep Dive into Hedge Funds (Capital Allocators, EP.34)
- Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin – The Perfect Investment (Capital Allocators, EP.32)
- Chris Douvos – Venture Capital's Super LP (Capital Allocators, EP.14)
- The Bet with Buffett (Capital Allocators, EP.05)
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
Appearances (5)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Michael Mauboussin - Pattern Recognition and Public Markets (EP.370) | Feb 19, 2024 | 37m |
| BONUS – Michael Mauboussin on the Decision Education Podcast | Feb 4, 2021 | 27m |
| Michael Mauboussin – Consilient Observations in a Crisis (Capital Allocators, EP.127) | Mar 23, 2020 | 33m |
| Michael Mauboussin – Who's on the Other Side (Capital Allocators, EP.99) | May 13, 2019 | 43m |
| Michael Mauboussin – Active Challenges, Rational Decisions and Team Dynamics (Capital Allo | Jan 8, 2018 | 55m |