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 76 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 5 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
Papic: Trump and Biden will both maintain elevated fiscal spending
“I think both of them are likely to pursue very similar policies that keep fiscal thrust, the G in the GDP equation, at a much elevated level than the last cycle for sure.”
Papic: Painful rotation from big tech to value will happen
“I think there is a rotation that would have to happen and it could be quite painful. So rotation out of the big tech sector that's obviously benefited from low rate environment for a very long time into more value sector. That, that rotation is unlikely to be …”
Papic: Big Tech will not achieve a global TAM due to foreign trade barriers
“I think a lot of these big tech companies are still being priced in for a global TAM, which they will not get. And they won't get it, not because China, like, bans them. But because I think every economic region, every major economy has an incentive to impose …”
Papic: Growth stocks are only worth holding when general economic growth is scarce
“You don't need to, and you don't want to own growth stocks when there's plenty of growth. You want to own them when there isn't.”
Papic: Multipolar World Orders Prevent Clean Economic Bifurcation Between Rivals
“A multipolar ordering, where there's multiple countries that kind of have a ability to pursue foreign policy and trade policy on their own, that's an ordering that doesn't produce bifurcation. In fact, enemies have to continue to trade with one another.”
Papic: US-China yield divergence will favor carry trades in China
“So the yield divergence between US and China is going to favor carry trades in China because they're adopting far less stimulative policies.”
Papic: Regulatory scrutiny on private equity will push capital to VC
“There's a good chance that legislators started looking into this, and I think that that's going to cause a shift in allocation to much more smaller players into private space, more VC investments, and other more exotic strategies that don't rely on kind of rol…”
Papic: Significant Upside Potential in Oil Markets Under a Trump Victory
“I think there's a lot of upside potential in oil markets, and that's both because there's this risk, upside risk to oil prices of a Trump victory”
Papic: Iran Will Not Negotiate With the US if Trump Wins Re-Election
“And so I think if Trump wins again, they see the writing on the wall, and I don't think they're gonna reach out by thinking of, oh, let's negotiate with the U.S.”
Papic: UK and EU will likely reach a skeleton Brexit deal
“In negotiations, look, I think the odds are that we do get some sort of deal, likely a deal on a skeleton that they will then negotiate through twenty-twenty-one.”
Papic: Brexit negotiation outcome will probably harm the UK economy
“And so I think the consequences of even what people will hail as a successful conclusion to the negotiations, I think even the consequences of that would probably be negative for the UK economy.”
Papic: Bearish on India until domestic investment conditions improve
“India has just not done that. It hasn't created the conditions domestically, either through force or through incentives to be an investment-friendly economy. And I think until they do that, I am bearish in India.”
Papic: Multipolar world will see higher frequency of geopolitical conflict
“And it's a environment in which the frequency of geopolitical conflict is going to be higher.”
Papic: Russia built FX reserves to $550B and its biggest surplus since 2006
“Russia has built up a massive current account surplus, biggest since 2006. Their FX reserves are five hundred fifty billion. They've rebuilt them since 2014.”
Papic: Polling shows 80% of Russians expected no war with Ukraine
“Only about 25, 30% of Russians would want to be in a single state. And vast majority of Russians, 80%, according to some of the polls I've seen, expected there not to be a war.”
Papic: Every post-WWII conflict was a market buying opportunity except Yom Kippur
“In my book, I literally have that table that goes through every conflict ever, and every single one of them, Ted, was a buying opportunity, except for the Yom Kippur war.”
Papic: Green energy transition is redrawing global commodity supply chains
“I think we're redrawing the commodity supply chains because suddenly things like cobalt become extremely relevant to the future of your energy supply. And most of it is found in the Congo and China has really good reach in the Congo.”
Papic: Finance is not Newtonian, or finance PhDs would be billionaires
“Because if economics and finance was predictable, if it was just a Newtonian exercise, then folks who have PhDs in finance would be billionaires, and we all know that's not the case.”
Papic: Two Mega Tailwinds Drove Global Markets From 1980 to 2010
“They were the wind in our sails from 1980 until 2010. You had these two really important mega trends. One was American hegemony, and so you could kind of ignore the geopolitical stuff like, you know, Azerbaijan, Armenia go to war in early nineties, much less o…”
Papic: Geopolitical analysis must focus on constraints rather than preferences
“Preferences are really not the starting point of analysis, because they're a derivative. They're subject to something else, and that's something else's constraints, because unlike preferences, Constraints are not optional.”
Papic: Institutional allocators hold only ~2% China exposure versus 20-25% global GDP share
“Look, right now, from what we understand at Clocktower, the allocation to China is about two percent. For real money allocators, and it's like 20, 25% of global economy.”
Papic: Bullish on the euro and gold amid dollar weakness
“I am bullish the euro. I think that if you are bearish on the dollar for the next decade, you gotta be bullish on something. There's obviously gold, which I would be bullish on, but I think the euro is interesting.”
Papic: Top investors prioritize performance over intellectual elegance
“That's why I think some of the best managers are not necessarily people who went to the best schools or not necessarily people who are the best educated in terms of like the length of their education. They're all extremely smart, but they're promiscuous intell…”
Papic: 'Why Nations Fail' is essential reading for long-term and emerging-market investing
“I think what Acemoglu and Robinson do is really powerful, and it's a really, really good book, and it really tries to distill, like, a thousand years of history of successful countries down to really one thing, setting up institutions that will allow successfu…”
Papic: Fed cut rates 100 bps while yields surged 100 bps
“And we saw a hundred basis point cut in the Fed funds rate, and a hundred basis point moving the yields higher, which hadn't happened since the eighties.”
Papic: US Households Gained $10 Trillion in Real Estate Over Five Years
“Households have made 10 trillion dollars in real estate over the last five years, and if you get yields down, not only would they start buying homes again, but they might dip into that home equity through HELOCs.”