The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 13,421 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 112 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Walthour: NJ Director said State Investment Council opposed minority-owned firms
“And McDonough says to me, Jake, the SIC is not a fan of investing in minority owned firms.”
Grantham: The AI bubble will break, led down by Nvidia
“This is exactly where you'd expect the bubble to break, and you would expect, other things being even, that it will be let down by NVIDIA, followed closely by the other giants.”
The private capital secondary market will reach $1 trillion by 2031
“I'm on the record for saying that the secondary market is going to get to a trillion dollars by 2031. Whenever I say that, the first reaction is, you're crazy. And I've heard that a few times, I guess, in my career. But I have a deep conviction around this pre…”
Daniel: Multi-managers like Citadel are new shadow banks relying on Fed bailouts
“So I really, truly believe that they are the new shadow banking system, that whenever something goes awry, there's a reason why Millennium hired who they hired, why Citadel hired who they hired, to make sure that when the calamity occurs, they call the Fed for…”
Gave: Europe's Energy Policy May Have Emboldened Russia's Invasion
“I think if Europe hadn't followed such a boneheaded energy policy, perhaps Russia wouldn't have invaded Ukraine.”
Sternlicht: Lordstown Motors committed fraud and lied about vehicle orders
“They front run the trade. They lied about their orders. They made up the car. It was a fraud. The model they showed the street was not active.”
Grantham: The market bubble will likely break in weeks or months
“So I think this is an indicator, not a certainty, but a strong possibility that we are quite close to the bubble breaking in terms of psychology. Perhaps a matter of weeks or months, not years.”
Fisher (2020): At 5% interest rates, every real estate investor goes bankrupt
“No, not a chance. They go to five to six percent. Every real estate investor that we know is bankrupt. They're not hanging on. They're broke and dead. And every home builder in America has no customers. That's a fact.”
Peters: Private equity is done and managers will emerge looking terrible
“This is the kind of thing that may make me look foolish. I think private equity is done. I think that it will always be an investment style like it has for over the course of my career. It was just LBO investing when I started, I guess now it's private equity,…”
Schwimer Claims MLBPA and Agents Oppose BLA Because They Ignore Minor Leaguers
“The MLBPA looks at is players just lost ten million dollars because they don't care. About the minor leaguers. And to see the amount of pushback we're getting from them and from agents that obviously don't care about their players and care more about them keep…”
Seides: Believed Buffett was 'the patsy' for picking the S&P 500
“I thought Warren was the patsy at the poker table, because he threw out the S&P as the index. I thought that was the wrong index to be picking, and it was something that was going to be an easy hurdle to overcome.”
Dorsey: Buffett's Maxim About Idiot-Proof Businesses Has Done More Harm Than Good
“That phrase from Buffett has probably done more harm than good over time to a lot of investors in not interrogating the quality of management or underweighting signals that maybe capital allocation is poor, that management's incentives aren't aligned because t…”
Dorsey: Founder-Run Businesses Perform No Better Than Non-Founder-Owned Companies
“I don't think they're any better than non-founder owned businesses.”
Dorsey: 99.9% of American CEOs Are Overpaid Relative to Value Created
“99.9% of American CEOs are overpaid relative to the value they create.”
Jain: Semiconductor barriers to entry are declining as China ramps capacity
“Semiconductor industry, the barriers to entry are getting lower, not higher. Chinese are coming in a very aggressive way, including into semi-cap site, equipment site, memory site, the ramping up capacity. That's a far lower barrier to entry business than what…”
Jain: If Chinese firms compete in an industry, they will overproduce
“One of the big lessons investing is if Chinese are a competitor, be very careful because they will overproduce and kill you.”
Jain: Google's operating margin would be single digits without depreciation changes
“If you look at Google, if they had not changed the depreciation policy, the margin would be high single digits, operating margin.”
Jain: AI is powerful, but infrastructure economics are structurally bad
“Our view is that this is a powerful technology, but the economics are really bad. And time is not a friend. So if you're trading here, different matter. But the economics are not good economics.”
Jain: Over half of hyperscaler backlog stems from OpenAI and Anthropic
“Now we're getting more clarity that more than half of the backlog, hence probably the revenue too,
Is coming from basically anthropic slash open AI.
If you look at Google and Microsoft is more than half open AI.
Amazon is more than half.
So they invest with op…”
Jain: CoreWeave and GPU cloud providers are bleeding heavily from underpricing
“When you're underpricing everything, if you look at CoreWeave and EBS, they're bleeding heavily.
That means they're not covering the cost.
The real test of shortage is when you're priced appropriately.
It's a capitalistic system, so when you subsidize somethin…”
Jain: Sector specialists are usually wrong at major market inflection points
“Because specialists at major inflection points are usually wrong. If you're not able to compare, you don't know what good or bad is.”
Grantham: Goldman and JPMorgan will never tell clients to exit overpriced markets
“You will never hit a Goldman Sachs or a JP Morgan Tell you to get out of the market because it's ludicrously overpriced. Everybody knows today it's ludicrously overpriced, but no one can tell you, and they never will.”
Grantham: US housing never bubbled nationwide until Greenspan and Bernanke
“The American housing market had famously bubbled in Chicago and bust in California, bubbled in Florida, etc. Never altogether until Greenspan and Bernanke.”
Grantham: Endowment boards struggle to manage giant egos of wealthy PE and VC donors
“Many committees are a nearly impossible task where, particularly in the endowment business, colleges, because rich graduates who've made big donations, Would love to sit on the board. They are treated with kid gloves because they're wonderfully good at making …”
Grantham: South Korea Will Cease Being a Viable State Within 50 Years
“That South Korea cannot be a viable political entity in as little as 4050 years. Cannot.”
Grantham: Alan Greenspan and Larry Summers Are Unaccountable 'Teflon Men'
“My biggest investment peeve is that the Greenspans and the Larry Summers, they get away with murder. I call them the Teflon men. I was heartbroken when they kept getting reappointed by new presidents that I had higher hopes for, even as they had just presided …”
Grantham: Capitalism Must Change or Humanity Ceases as Successful Species
“Capitalism will either change, or we will cease to exist as a successful species.”
Algorithms eliminated value investing alpha because computers do not feel embarrassment
“I do think this is why a lot of fundamentally based value strategies have struggled for a long time, because the alpha in those strategies Was being willing to own these stocks that other people were embarrassed to own because they were so out of favor. And yo…”
Baker: VC operational value-add is wildly overstated and unappreciated by founders
“The short answer is a lot of the operational value add from a lot of these firms is wildly overstated. The wise advice is super not appreciated.”
Grefenstette: China venture capital is the world's least crowded trade right now
“Right now it's the least crowded trade in the world is China venture.”
Jain: Had Jain Global not launched, he wanted to create charter prisons
“If I hadn't started the hedge fund I would have run with that I've done nothing on is I was heavily involved in the charter school movement earlier in my life. I wanted to start charter prisons, basically private, not-for-profit prisons. Charter, the right win…”
Gilmore: AIGFP had great people and Joe Cassano was super smart
“One of the things that really impressed me was the quality of the people at AIGFP. They had really good people. I thought a lot of Joe Cassano, who ran the place. He was super smart, very knowledgeable across many things.”
MacDonald: Spinning out HMC internal teams to pay 1.5-and-20 was illogical
“All these initiatives at Harvard lead to spinning out these firms. You think about Adage, Highfields, Convexity, Charles Bank. Now you go from them being internal paying them that to them being external in paying them one and a half and 20. And pause some of t…”
MacDonald: Harvard's oil and gas divestment caused meaningful financial losses
“The loss to Harvard by not investing in a sector of oil and gas over the last eight, 10 years is very meaningful because it was a target rich environment for returns that go to support the financial aid for students.”
U.S. hegemony as the primary global capital magnet is over
“A target-rich environment promoted by the fact that U.S. Hegemony in terms of being a magnet for capital is over.”
Kleinman: Semi-liquid PE will fail to deliver a good client experience
“It's not going to give the client, i.e. The wealth client, a good experience in the long run.”
Seides: Many Private Equity Firms Have Already Raised Their Last Fund
“There are a lot of private equity firms out there today who don't realize they've already raised their last fund.”
Wolfe: Smart employees at mega VC funds will likely never see carry
“The smart employees at those funds know that they will likely never see a dollar of carry. The larger the fund you raise, the harder it is to return in venture.”
Wolfe: AI infrastructure buildout will destroy hundreds of billions in capital
“On the capital market side, you see hundreds of billions of dollars destroyed of people that play the same game that you did back in 2000 with fiber optic cables.”
Lyon: Building a diversified portfolio of 20 distressed companies is impossible
“I don't believe it's possible for any single person to assemble a reasonably diversified portfolio of 20 broken things. You can have an edge in one or two things where you think there's possibility to turn it around. You might know an operating executive or un…”
Lyon: Risk managers are entirely useless in private drawdown funds
“I used to laugh whenever a drawdown private fund has a risk manager. I'm like, well, what does that person do? Because you don't hold cash. You don't hedge. Are they on your investment committee telling you what not to do? Because all of your risk comes from s…”
Credit investors never know companies as well as private equity investors
“What I learned back then, and it remains true to this day, no matter what anyone else may say to the contrary, credit investors do not know companies as well as private equity investors, and no one will ever convince me otherwise.”
Global Power Demand Is Forcing Energy Addition Rather Than Energy Transition
“The world, from our perspective, is going through an energy addition, not necessarily an energy transition, and I think AI is really amplifying that, in that we need more energy.”
Meli: Public equity markets may be growing less efficient due to indexing
“I have a sneaking hypothesis that I'm hesitant to say out here because there's a high probability I'm wrong, but I will say it. I feel like the market's becoming a little less efficient in certain areas, and I'll explain it.”
Arndt: Future Fund avoids large buyouts, viewing them as fee-eroded levered equities
“Our portfolio has no large buyout at all, because we think that large buyout is really just levered equities, typically. And if there's skill added on top, and there might be, then most of that goes away in fees. So we don't think it adds a lot for the portfol…”
Future Fund avoids brand-name PE managers that rely on leverage over operations
“Well, there's a lot of brand names we don't have, and it varies why, but one of the most significant reasons is because they just use leverage we found to juice up their returns, and we don't think that's attractive.”
Bitar: Perceived investment risk in Venezuela substantially exceeds actual risk
“It was a situation where there was a perceived risk much greater than the real risk, in our view, and a country that was overlooked by investors for understandable reasons, and that created an opportunity where you could find very High quality assets at very a…”