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Paul Sonkin

Author & Private Investor · 2 appearances on the record.

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

investorauthoracademicanalystpitchtheperfectinvestment.com ↗

Paul Sonkin is a veteran value investor specializing in micro-cap and nano-cap equities who spent 14 years managing The Hummingbird Value Fund before joining GAMCO Investors. He taught for 16 years at Columbia Business School and co-authored prominent investment books, including Pitch the Perfect Investment.

10statements → 3claims → 2claims resolved → 3.7/5average certainty → 2.1/5average debate potential → 1said about them ↓

1 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 assertions · 6 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 1 names 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 Paul 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
Sonkin: U.S. Exchange Listings Halved From 8,000 in 1996 to 4,000
“So the companies in 1996, there were 8000 companies on organized U.S. Exchanges, which doesn't include the pink sheets and the OTC bulletin board. And that is 4000 companies now, even though on our levels of GDP, it should be 10,000.”
Paul Sonkin Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 26:29 Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin – The Perfect Investment (Capital Allocators, EP.32)

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 Paul Sonkin on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

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

Assertion Partly supported
Sonkin: Highly creative people show much higher rates of neurodivergence and mood disorders
“The people that are the most creative, if you look at, again, this 90 years of literature, they tend to, many times above the population They have mood disorders, depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, Asperger's, OCD.”
Paul Sonkin Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 44:19 Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin – The Perfect Investment (Capital Allocators, EP.32)
Insight
Sonkin: Top long-term outperforming investors have less specialization than allocators expect
“The other problem that we kind of see with allocators is that they're looking, well, and you can opine on this more than I can, is that they're looking for specialization, and if you look at the people that have really outperformed over long periods of time, t…”
Paul Sonkin Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 48:43 Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin – The Perfect Investment (Capital Allocators, EP.32)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sonkin: Quant crisis of August 2007 was driven by model uniformity
“We talk about the quant crisis of August of oh seven as a perfect example when you don't have diversity in the shareholder base. And that was what really caused it, is that you had so many quants that were using the same models, so there wasn't a lot of divers…”
Paul Sonkin Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 17:52 Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin – The Perfect Investment (Capital Allocators, EP.32)
Assertion Supported
Sonkin: U.S. Exchange Listings Halved From 8,000 in 1996 to 4,000
“So the companies in 1996, there were 8000 companies on organized U.S. Exchanges, which doesn't include the pink sheets and the OTC bulletin board. And that is 4000 companies now, even though on our levels of GDP, it should be 10,000.”
Paul Sonkin Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 26:29 Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin – The Perfect Investment (Capital Allocators, EP.32)
Insight
Sonkin: Scaling an investment position requires transferring idea ownership from analyst to PM
“In order to get the portfolio manager to actually scale the position, there has to be a transfer of ownership from the analyst to the portfolio manager, and the problem that you have is that there's a lot of subconscious emotions going on in the portfolio mana…”
Paul Sonkin Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 32:49 Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin – The Perfect Investment (Capital Allocators, EP.32)
Insight
Sonkin: Optimal analyst-PM relationships require both doing 90% work, claiming 48% credit
“In order to have an optimally functioning relationship between the analyst and the portfolio manager, each of them have to do 90% of the work and take 48% of the credit.”
Paul Sonkin Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 35:35 Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin – The Perfect Investment (Capital Allocators, EP.32)
Insight
Sonkin: PMs Won't Buy Stocks Unless Pitches Clearly Articulate the Edge
“Where most people screw it up is they don't fully articulate why the stock is mispriced, and a portfolio manager subconsciously, unless they feel as though they fully understand that, They're not going to buy the stock, and if you think about it, if you can ex…”
Paul Sonkin Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 37:37 Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin – The Perfect Investment (Capital Allocators, EP.32)
Insight
Sonkin: Generating investment alpha is fundamentally an act of creativity
“The definition of creativity, the formal definition in cognitive science, is something which is novel and that has value. So if you think about a variant perspective that is a view that is different from the consensus, which is something novel, and then you ha…”
Paul Sonkin Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 42:31 Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin – The Perfect Investment (Capital Allocators, EP.32)
Disclosure
Sonkin: Has not read a finance book in years, prefers journal papers
“Like, I'd say that I probably read like a few hundred journal papers a year, and there aren't, like, there aren't very many good finance books that come, come out. So, I haven't read a finance book in years.”
Paul Sonkin Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 1:00:27 Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin – The Perfect Investment (Capital Allocators, EP.32)
Insight
Sonkin: Convincing yourself and pitching others require different skill sets
“So what we've always thought is that first you have to convince yourself on an idea, and then you have to convince someone else, and those require two very different Skills.”
Paul Sonkin Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 10:00 Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin – The Perfect Investment (Capital Allocators, EP.32)

The other half of the tape: Paul Sonkin's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on Capital Allocators. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Ted Seides 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0011112018episodesmentions
0112018episodes it came up in
000.50.5112018episodesmentions per episode
2018 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Gary Klein with Paul Sonkin and Paul Johnson – Conducting Pre-Mortem Analysis (Capital All Sep 23, 2019 4m
Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin – The Perfect Investment (Capital Allocators, EP.32) Nov 27, 2017 22m
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