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 235 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
Charles: 80% of Recent Sports Team Buyers Come from Tech or Private Markets
“If you look at the people who have purchased control of North American sports teams over the last decade, 80% of them come from tech or private markets.”
Pompliano claims average VC funds outperformed QQQ by 400 basis points
“QQQ's been compounding it, call it, 1313 and a half, maybe 14%, depending on what their starting point over the last decade or so. The average venture fund, if you give them all the credit for their paper marks, 17% a year or something, maybe 18%. So if you ju…”
Miller: Global Oil Demand Fell Only 10% During Peak May 2020 Lockdowns
“It was in May of 2020. Not a car on the road, not an airplane in the sky, not a cruise ship on the ocean. Oil prices went to -37 dollars a barrel. What do you think global demand was down? You think it was 50% that month? 70%? It was down 10%.”
PE multiples held steady at 13.5x to 14.5x EBITDA since 2021
“Public markets have gone from 13 and a half times to 21 and a half times LTM EBITDA. Private equity has stayed consistently between 13 and a half to 14 and a half times.”
Morehead: Large-cap to small-cap spread is the widest ever
“Both those things impact small caps more so than large caps, and so the spread between large caps and small caps is the widest it's ever been.”
Milken: Non-investment grade debt returned 100% unleveraged in 1974
“And so at the end of 74, if you bought a portfolio of non-investment grade debt, by the end of 74, you made 100% on your money, unleveraged.”
Milken: Nifty 50 stocks lost 90% inflation-adjusted over a decade
“Adjusted for inflation, you lost 90% of your money in the next decade.”
Mauboussin: Sponsor-to-sponsor sales became the primary buyout exit mechanism
“Obviously the number one technique for buyouts to exit was selling to other buyout firms.”
Tangen: 650 NBIM staff can speak publicly, up from four
“In the past, there were four people who could talk on behalf of the fund. Now, 650 people can talk on behalf of the fund.”
Levy: There are 15 million manufactured housing pads in the US
“There are fifteen million pads, sites in America, where you might use the word trailer park, that might be a common word, but it's manufactured housing, where millions and millions of Americans live.”
Hutchinson: Arctos will add another 20 sports teams to its portfolio
“I'm confident we'll have another 20 teams in that portfolio.”
Heitzmann: The gaming industry was twice the size of movies in 2005
“People didn't realize that gaming was twice the size of motion pictures, even in 2005”
Daniel: Regulated banks cannot make unsecured corporate loans due to risk weights
“Regulated banks do not want to make an unsecured loan to corporate borrowers. They're not allowed to, for the most part. The risk weights are too high.”
Mullen: Pretium bought its first 59,000 homes individually
“Our first 59,000 houses, we bought one at a time.”
Wong: Around a dozen dedicated healthcare firms manage over $1B
“I don't know the exact number, but healthcare dedicated firms that are managing meaningful amounts of capital, like north of a billion dollars is probably, you know, a dozen plus or minus something like that.”
Domain complexity prevents intermediaries from operating in the TRA market
“I would say there are no intermediaries in the space that we deal in as a function of a number of things. Domain expertise as well as the size of each underlying opportunity prevents many intermediaries from engaging in earnest on this space.”
Rodman: All US Nuclear Waste Ever Accumulated Fits on One Football Field
“In the United States, all the nuclear waste we've ever accumulated, you know, over the last
Can fit on a football field 10 feet.”
Philpot: US has more navigable waterways than rest of world combined
“We have more navigable waterways than the world, rest of the world combined, and so we have the ability to move it around.”
Thomas: Most global impact capital focuses on environmental rather than social issues
“Because even if you think about impact investing, a lot of the emphasis in dollars globally Have really focused on the environmental side of the equation and not as much on the social impact side.”
Marshall: Institutional secondary sales generally range between $100M and $300M
“Secondary sales can't really happen in a world for like under a hundred million dollars. They don't really go out in more than bulks of like 203 hundred million dollars.”
Tom Majewski: CLO opacity means investors need to be in the club
“CLOs are not reported on trace, for example. So it's a little more of an opaque market where you need to be in the club to be able to really outperform.”
Smith: Kenya's Equity Group compounded dollar EPS at 20% annually for 20 years
“It started as a listed entity around 20 years ago, and since then it has grown its dollar EPS by over 20% per annum.”
Gave: Chinese bond yields remained tightly bound between 2.6% and 3.2% for five years
“Now, Chinese bond yields have been between two 63 20 for the past five years. U.S. Bond yields have been all over the shop.”
Bitar: Venezuelan Operating Margins Have Historically Outpaced Latin America
“Venezuela was traditionally one of the most profitable markets in Latin America in every industry. When we were working in telecoms, margins in telecoms company was like, 40%. The rest of the region was 25. Food was the same, and we still see it to date.”
Friedman: Drexel and Milken Created the Original New-Issue High-Yield Bond Market
“There was no such thing as a new issue high yield bond before Mike and Drexel. The only high yield bonds were fallen angels, investment grade bonds that had been downgraded.”
Friedman: Private high-yield issuance surpassed public high-yield around 2019
“Two or three years ago was the first year that the high yield market privately issued high yield exceeded publicly issued high yield.”
Citrone: Europe will enter recession within months if not already
“I think Europe is, if not in recession now, be in recession within a few months.”
Dixon: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram pay zero ad revenue to creators
“Twitter and Facebook have zero dollar revenue share. Instagram is zero dollars. So Instagram makes all their money on advertising. They pay zero out to the creators.”
Dixon: OpenSea paid out around $5B to creators last year
“We're investors in OpenSea, which is an NFT platform. We put a report out recently where we calculated how much OpenSea had paid out to creative people. And it was something on the order of five billion dollars last year with a B”
Dixon: a16z invested in all 15 Coinbase funding rounds pre-IPO
“So Coinbase, as an example, I was on the board and we invested in but they did 15 rounds of financing before they went public and we invested in every single one of them.”
Veremis: Most institutions treat crypto as a venture capital sub-allocation
“I think at this point, It is considered a sub-allocation to venture capital by the vast majority of institutions, and it's just a much more volatile subset of venture capital because there, there's early liquidity, you know, portfolios start having marks, they…”
Libby: US flared natural gas exceeds Africa and Japan's total energy use
“There's more natural gas that gets flared in the US every year than the amount of energy consumed in Africa and Japan.”
Barber: Every Drexel Burnham lender and equity holder recovered all their money
“And one of the things most people don't know is not only did every lender to Drexel Burnham get all their money back. We, as equity holders got all our money back at the end of the day, it was a short term downturn in the high yield market with too much concen…”
Xu: Zara tests five price tags across five stores for new SKUs
“Zara uses tests, like every new piece come up, they give five different price tag, and then they sell it to five different stores. After a while, they find whoever sells the best is their final price.”
Lamont: By 2000 there were 3,000 public biotech companies and 5 approved products
“That there were 3000 public biotech companies, and only five approved products.”
Oak HC/FT companies accounted for 30% of $100M+ sector rounds in 2021
“I mean, we were, last year, we were, 30% of the rounds that were done, over a hundred million in our sectors, were OKCFT companies. And that is a pretty powerful stat, and those were all over a billion dollar rounds, in terms of valuation.”
Lamont: Series B and C round sizes have tripled over five years
“Well, I think the industry solved it for us because the size of a Series B and C is three times what it was five years ago.”
Kayden: Venture carry is rising while management fees remain flat
“Carry is going up.
Fees are staying the same regardless of fund size.”
Montgomery: CrowdStrike is fastest growing cloud software company ever
“CrowdStrike is the fastest growing cloud software company ever.”
Cook: Low-quality businesses have outperformed in public equities throughout 2021
“Historically speaking, that tends to mean that low quality outperforms, which is what you've seen over the last call it, 12 months.”
Singh: PAR Technology was running out of money, forcing day-one layoffs
“The first thing I had to do as a CEO, literally the first day in the office, I had to go and terminate 25% of the workforce because we're running out of money.”
RIAs allocate under 2% to alternatives compared to wirehouses' 10-15%
“What's interesting though, however, and where the opportunity is, is that the RIA channel has allocation rates to alternative investments less than two percent. Their colleagues in the larger wealth management firms, the wirehouses, on average have allocation …”
Graña: Russia Holds the Vast Majority of Global Titanium Reserves
“The vast majority of the world's
Known reserves of titanium are in Russia.”
Owl Rock Pioneered Institutional Permanent Capital for Direct Lending
“When we went out to raise permanent capital, it had only been raised retail. Nobody had really done it institutionally.”
Grantham: Emerging market equities are at an unprecedented low relative valuation
“Emerging equities, emerging markets, are not only at an unprecedented low relative, but they are actually quite cheap, absolutely, compared to the US, and on their own.”
Grantham: China will drive over 30% of global growth over 20 years
“China, who is going to represent, according to the World Bank, over 30% of the entire world's growth over the next 20 years”