Todd Simkin, Associate Director at Susquehanna International Group, explains why asymmetric upside in venture capital does not guarantee profitability without price discipline.
Insight
Simkin: Black-Scholes wrongly assumes stock distributions are right-skewed, not left-skewed
“The Black-Scholes model, which is literally Nobel Prize winning math, this is amazing stuff, has assumptions built into it that we know are just wrong. Among the assumptions that are built in is a normal distribution of stock returns, which would lead to a log…”
Insight
Simkin: Traders are made, not born, and can be taught
“That they had the firm belief that traders are Made, not born. So it's not the case that you have to find somebody who is inherently a trader, and then you just put them in the right spot, and they go. Instead, they said, if you bring us any smart person, if y…”
Insight
Simkin: Susquehanna refuses to lock in profits while expected value is positive
“At Susquehanna, we'd say, no, if anything, if we're able to buy more at 19, and we still think it's worth 20, then we would. The fact that we got to buy it for 10 is great, sort of confirmed now by the fact that someone's willing to pay 19, but that doesn't me…”
Disclosure
Simkin: SIG backed ByteDance for diversification, not foreseeing TikTok's global dominance
“I alluded to being fortunate enough to invest in ByteDance when it was a several million dollar company before it became a several billion dollar company. It'd be great in hindsight to say we are so good at figuring out what social media platform is going to b…”
What-if
Simkin: A five-year fund structure would have forced SIG out of ByteDance
“If we had entered our ByteDance position, and it was in a fund where the investors needed to get paid back in five years, we would have closed out of that position and made a little bit. It would have been happy day in the office, and we would have been out of…”
Insight
Simkin: Trading decisions function like intuitive grammar, not a mechanical checklist
“If I had a script for it, it'd be easy, because then I would just give people a script to use as a checklist like a pilot does when they're starting up their plane, or like a surgeon does when they're starting a surgery. I don't have a script, and I wish I did…”