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 27 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
Drobny: The modern Yale model is effectively a levered S&P 500 position
“The problem with it today, as we discussed, is that most of the investments are equity allocations, and so you're basically getting a levered S&P position.”
Jain: Position sizing should follow credit analyst logic, not equity conviction
“The sizing should be based on how a credit analyst would think. You can't have a very large position in monoline business, which operates a very narrow niche. Can't do it. So if you think about how does S&P would give AAA, it would never give AAA to an E&P com…”
Grantham: Super-Bubbles End When Speculative Market Leaders Dramatically Underperform
“I developed a singular rule that only has occurred four times in U.S. History. The stocks that have been leading the charge up 70% in 1928, the meme stocks in twenty-twenty, up huge amounts. When they start to underperform dramatically, the market, as the bull…”
Lyon: Private equity falsely held 2022 valuations flat despite public market plunges
“If you looked at 2022, the S&P was down 20%. The NASDAQ was down 30%. Let's say private equity lives somewhere between those two worlds. Private equity was flat for the year.”
Paul: Bitcoin is a risk asset that drops with equities during recessions
“And we were strongly convicted that that's nonsense, that Bitcoin is a risk asset. And while it might not be correlated one to one on a five percent S&P move, If S and P falls enough, Bitcoin is going to catch up to the downside because that's wealth destructi…”
Ariely: Human capital factors almost universally outperform the S&P 500 in backtests
“It turns out that all of those strategies but one, all of these building blocks at one, beats the S&P on that time period, and the one that does worse is like tiny bit worse. Not all of them do as well as others. It's a You know, there's a range, but one from …”
Kleinman: Apollo will roll out lower-leverage active equity strategies over next 5 years
“My only point is there are lots of ways that over the next five years, we will begin to bring other forms of equity to investors that isn't necessarily private equity, i.e. Levered equity buyout type capital that gives Premium to the longterm S&P with more sta…”
Meli: S&P 500 is less attractive due to high multiples and AI
“So today I would look at that same asset and I'd say, okay, higher multiple. Less diversified. More of a factor bet on AI and power. We've run the economy hot, tons of fiscal deficit problems. If I just look at that, and you didn't tell me the name was the S&P…”
Van Vleet: Public REITs and convertibles act as equity, not real estate or bonds
“Public REITs are not real estate. On any given day, it's equity. And convertible bonds, surprise, surprise, are not bonds. It's equity. And it's fine. You know, convert, convertible bond is a .8 S&P and a REIT is a .9 S&P and high yield is, we call it a .4 S&P…”
McKeon: NFTs are probably crypto's least correlated asset to the S&P
“Out of all the things in crypto, NFTs are probably the most uncorrelated with things like the S&P, because they're really more like a consumer product.”
Grantham: Oil dropping to 2.5% of S&P is largest historic sector loss
“Oil as a percentage of the S&P had come down from 25% in 1982 and 16% in oh eight to two and a half percent yesterday. This is the biggest loss of value in the history of the major groups of the S&P that goes all the way back into the 20.”
Biscardi: Comparing hedge funds to the S&P 500 demonstrates financial illiteracy
“I hate when I read articles and I see comments on the hedge fund industry not keeping pace with the S&P, and I know that the person behind the article probably doesn't know what a Sharpe ratio is. We're doing a different thing than the S&P is doing.”
Seides: Inflows and competition eroded hedge fund upside-downside capture post-Lehman
“The other thing that happened was, and it really started post Lehman, hedge funds disappointed. Hedge funds in the past, say equity long, short hedge funds, had a certain kind of Capture of, if the S&P went up 10%, you might expect them to make five or six per…”
O'Shaughnessy: S&P 500 still beats hedge funds on a Sharpe ratio basis
“I think on Sharpe ratio, it still would have been the S&P.”
Jain: US utilities offer 5-to-10-year visibility of 8% to 10% EPS growth
“You can buy utilities in the US, but they'll be giving you five to 10 Year visibility of eight to 10% EPS growth. That's faster than S&P.”
Khoury: Real Estate Is the Only S&P Sector Down Since 2022
“You're talking to somebody who's investing in the only GIC sector in the S&P that's still materially down since 22. The GIC and REITs is down almost 20%, while the S&P is up 40. We've now, since the beginning of 22, underperformed the S&P by 60%. I believe the…”
Peters: Rebalancing hedging profits during drawdowns boosts post-bear market compounding
“Even though equities are deeply discounted, but you're rotating money back into the S&P. When that market correction or bear market ends, you're now compounding from a much higher base than if you just owned equities the whole time.”
Peters: Chasing S&P Outperformance Often Causes Investors to Exit at Bottoms
“Some of them try to outperform the S&P, and they end up oftentimes taking on a lot of additional risk that's quite correlated to underlying equities. It works great in the right market environment. And then when the market turns against those players, the loss…”
Peters: Stacking Leveraged Beta With Convexity Drives Massive Compounding Through Rebalancing
“The result of it is if you combine equity beta in a leverage way, like a portable alpha type return stacking way, with what we do at this firm, our strategies are negatively correlated, positively convex, So anytime there's a wobble in the market, what we do s…”
Children's Health prioritizes cash liquidity over beating the S&P 500
“I like the downside protection, and frankly, the goal of our institution's program is not to beat the S&P. It's not to beat some arbitrary benchmark. It is to make sure that we have cash on hand when the institution needs cash.”
Allocators holding 5,000 equities have very little chance of generating alpha
“If you did a look through analysis in Allocator, and you owned 5000 equities, and your top 10 were nine percent, There was really very little chance that you were going to generate substantial alpha over the S&P, right?”
Dorsey: Moody's and S&P Brand Moats Significantly Lower Corporate Borrowing Costs
“Moody's and S&P, there's a value to that that's been developed over time, that if people see that Moody's is rated the bond, that S&P is rated the bond, they'll pay a lower interest rate than if the bond is rated by Pat's rating service or Ted's rating service…”
Bessent: Kynikos gained ~50% in 1990 while the S&P dropped
“Maybe in 1990, the S&P was down, high teens, 20, and we were up 50.”
André Perold: S&P 500 gained 9% annually since 2005, 3% from multiples
“You know, the last 15 years that we've been in business, if you look at the return on the S&P, it's nine percent a year since the late 2005. Of the nine, three percent a year has come from multiple expansion, and that three percent a year is entirely consisten…”
Biotech underperformed tech and matched the S&P 500 over five years
“It's interesting that if you go look at the biotech industry relative or any of the small cap biotech industries relative to the NASDAQ or relative to the S&P, they've underperformed the NASDAQ, so they've underperformed tech the last four or five years. They'…”