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 10 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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
Asness: Private equity volatility is higher than public markets despite reported metrics
“Where private equity is well to the left of public equity, and it's concentrated off in levered equity. So if that's vol on the x-axis, it is not to the left.”
O'Shaughnessy: OSAM has almost zero portfolio overlap with AQR and LSV
“Our overlaps with other quants are shockingly low. Like we have this little cool program that we can show people this on the fly and they won't believe us. Like they'll ask about AQR and LSV and these other great managers, you know, really, really, really stro…”
Asness: AQR shrank by half and restructured into small research teams
“I think, and this was excruciating and had a human cost, but having to shrink by half made us make very hard decisions about being blunt, who are absolute best commando team researchers, men and women who just excel. We started out this way and we're back to t…”
Asness: AQR models live factor returns at half the backtested result
“Literally, since our Goldman Sachs days, this is more than 25 years ago, we've generally used half a backtest out of sample as a bogey. And life has worked out fairly close to that.”
Asness: Personal cynicism delayed AQR's machine learning adoption by years
“I think I probably slowed us down on some of the machine learning stuff by a couple years with a little cynicism along the lines of exactly what you're talking about, that we could turn over more of the decision to the machines.”
Asness: AQR trades crypto exclusively via small trend-following positions
“The most extreme example I'll give you is there's a one place in our entire business. We trade crypto, pure trend following strategies in places that we have a broader model where we're doing macro that is valuation carry doesn't have any of those, or at least…”
Asness: A prolonged shallow drawdown damages asset managers more than a fast crash
“Duration of pain is as important as intensity of pain to how damaging it is to both your future life expectancy and to your business. A crash that quickly reverses itself. Almost by definition, people are tense. Why'd that crash? You have to talk about it. You…”
Blitz: The importance of trading and execution is dramatically understated
“I think the, it's so dramatically understated the, you know, how important trading is in any investment strategy, market impact, implementation.”
Drogen: Starkiller models its investment approach on AQR and Tiger Global
“We try and pattern ourselves off of some mix of AQR and Tiger Global, and I think he's done it right, and he's taken his lumps along the way sometimes, but Times like this, he gets to come back and say, Hey, look, you know, the process works.”
Prosek: Alternative Asset Managers Only Began Hiring Marketers Around 2015
“If you look at the landscape, AQR being an example, they just made their head of marketing a partner, which shows you how seriously they're taking marketing, right? But these firms have only had marketers the last three or four years, if that. Most of them are…”