Joel Greenblatt shares the historic 10-year track record of his hedge fund, Gotham Capital.
Disclosure
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.”
Insight
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…”
Insight
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.”
Insight
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 …”
Disclosure
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…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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…”