Disclosure certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Orbis evaluates analysts every six months using 30-page data scorecards

Adam Karr · Adam Karr – Extreme Alignment at Orbis (EP.338) · Sep 14, 2023 · at 34:59

Adam Karr is the President and Portfolio Manager at Orbis. He describes how Orbis uses paper portfolio data and performance attribution to evaluate analyst skill.

0:00 / 0:39exact quote · 39.3s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“All of our analysts get scorecards every six months. These are 25, thirty-page documents. It's going to look at Success ratio. It's going to look at win or loser skew. It's going to look at slugging percentage. It's going to look at that voting track record from the investment committee meetings. It's going to show you a visual graph of every recommendation and how you've managed that position sizing wise based on how the stock is traded. And everything in those paper portfolios trades based on actual volume and VWAP from when you execute the orders. It's subject to the same compliance provisions that we have.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Adam Karr

Assertion Supported
Fleetcor's European EV charging business has better economics than fuel cards
“We can look at their business in Europe and we can see clearly that the economics on that are actually on par, in fact, better than their core combustible business.”
Adam Karr Sep 14, 2023 ▶ 49:47 Adam Karr – Extreme Alignment at Orbis (EP.338)
Disclosure
Orbis charges a zero base fee and refundable performance fee
“On our long only strategies, we Have a refundable performance fee. For our larger institutional clients, there's a zero base fee. So if we don't add value, generate alpha, client pays, zero fee. If we generate outperformance, we share that with a client whereb…”
Adam Karr Sep 14, 2023 ▶ 12:52 Adam Karr – Extreme Alignment at Orbis (EP.338)
Disclosure
Orbis held zero Japanese equities in 1990 despite a 45% index weight
“You go all the way back to inception, 1990. Japan was 45% of the world index, and we had zero.”
Adam Karr Sep 14, 2023 ▶ 43:03 Adam Karr – Extreme Alignment at Orbis (EP.338)
Disclosure
All 35 Orbis analysts run concentrated 10-stock paper shadow portfolios
“All of our analysts run paper shadow portfolios. So we've got 35 analysts around the globe, and after generally a year or two, they will launch a paper portfolio. And that tends to be a concentrated expression of, call it their 10 highest conviction Recommenda…”
Adam Karr Sep 14, 2023 ▶ 23:00 Adam Karr – Extreme Alignment at Orbis (EP.338)
Insight
Karr's personal data revealed that scaling into new positions detracted value
“My view is that the riskiest position is your newest position. You've got the least insight. And so I have tended to scale into a position when I'm undertaking a new position. Turns out data says that's not right for me in particular. If it's sufficiently good…”
Adam Karr Sep 14, 2023 ▶ 36:53 Adam Karr – Extreme Alignment at Orbis (EP.338)
Insight
An investment manager's time horizon is bounded by their clients' horizon
“You have to have an aligned client base that allows you to do it because your time horizon is only going to be as long as their time horizon.”
Adam Karr Sep 14, 2023 ▶ 44:24 Adam Karr – Extreme Alignment at Orbis (EP.338)
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 700 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.