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 1,504 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
Baker: Private Markets Suffer Far More Bad Behavior Than Realized
“There is more bad behavior in private markets than I think people realize. FTX, it's very public, but these companies, they're not filing always audited financials. They don't have the controls. Particularly when something starts to go bad, there's a lot of ba…”
Grefenstette: Venture pricing is most distorted in early-stage AI startups
“The pricing is probably most distorted in the early stage about AI, because you look at these companies, and of course, no one has a crystal ball, but you're looking at something and saying, hey, this could potentially be a trillion-dollar outcome. The bet is …”
Gilmore: CalPERS historically destroyed value through pro-cyclical de-risking during crises
“One of the things that has attracted value from the CalPERS experience has been a tendency to be too pro-cyclical. If you think back to the time of the financial crisis, Various assets were liquidated. Risk was taken off. That was done in part because of conce…”
Lewinsohn: Direct lending shifted from overhyped to underrated
“Direct lending, which is a big part of what we do now, got very hyped up. Everyone's saying, oh, you have to do it, whether it's allocators, investors, GPs. And now has gone all the way to the point that people are so afraid of it. They miss what's great about…”
Lewinsohn: Wall Street is running out of places to hide credit residuals
“We think that Wall Street is getting a little short on places to stick the stumps. They're coming up in special situations funds. They're coming up in interval funds. They're coming up in places that people may not appreciate what happens when you're not getti…”
Global leadership in emerging market asset management is an unoccupied space
“Global leadership in EM asset management is an empty space. There is nobody out there who can answer the question for allocators, big or small. How much should I invest in emerging markets? In what asset class? In what region? In what style? With whom? And whe…”
China is currently a trade, not a long-term investment
“Since then, China went from the darling to uninvestable to today. It's a trade. It's not an investment.”
Sacerdote: Tesla S-Curve Collapsed to Zero as US Adoption Matured
“Tesla and the EVS curve was amazing, and they had a great competitive advantage, and they had underappreciated earnings power. But then that S curve went from being a 10 out of 10 to a zero out of 10 because it was mature in the USA. And the underappreciated e…”
Sacerdote: Blockchain is a technology looking for a problem and a false S-curve
“It was always a technology looking for a problem. The use cases were few and far between. Also, there was an element of it where there were all these meme coins, and it wasn't solving any true productivity gains. We thought that was somewhat of a false S curve…”
Wolfe: Anduril is the 800-pound gorilla next-prime defense contractor
“Anduril has raised several billion dollars now. There are a few companies that are competing with them. There's a long tail of wannabe next gen defense tech companies, but Anduril is the 800 pound gorilla next prime.”
Wolfe: 2D AI is saturated, the next frontier is biology and robotics
“The next wave that I'm bullish about is going from two-dimensional AI in this current wave, which is pretty much saturated. That is everything from voice, video, images, text, code, anything that's popping off a screen, to thinking about the next wave of three…”
Ripley: Leveraged 2x gross PE buyout strategies aren't worth it
“Especially in private equity, you meet a lot of folks who look good in a blue suit. We're trained to buy A plus assets and A plus auctions at very high prices with a lot of leverage. And that shows well to a committee. People like that. It feels good. A lot of…”
Wagner: Private credit is too competitive to deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns
“When I look at what's going on in that market right now, it strikes me as pretty competitive and not really a great place to find attractive risk adjusted returns.”
Seides: Median private equity has a 40% chance of outperforming the S&P
“I wrote in this piece that I think the chances of private equity average, so the median private equity outperforming S&P's 40%.”
Seides: Public markets alone no longer provide a globally diversified portfolio
“It's not clear that you can get the globally diversified portfolio of assets just in the public markets the way you definitely could 25 years ago.”
Seides: Private equity risks hedge-fund-style fee scrutiny as returns compress
“You had this one and a half and 20 And the net returns were 10 to 12, and everyone was happy, and when they got to be six, all of a sudden, people have scrutiny. I think that's the concern with private equity today.”
Arndt: Stock-Picking Skill in Equities Is Rapidly Arbitraged Away by Technology
“We don't think that skill is widely available in equity markets today. Technology means that it's being arbitraged away very quickly.”
Arndt: Large multi-strategy hedge funds often charge alpha fees for pure beta
“Those large hedge fund, sort of multi-strategy hedge funds, Many of them have delivered significant beta, whether it's equity beta or credit beta, and that is not something we want to pay for.”
Sullivan: Buyout firms likely exit top-performing companies too quickly
“In fact, if anything, I'd say that buyout firms are probably too quick to sell their good businesses. Rather than churning over your good companies every three or four years, maybe you want to let them run a little longer and let them compound for maybe five o…”
Ovitz confirms James B. Stewart's DisneyWar accurately portrays his Disney tenure
“I mean, they wrote a book about it called Disney Wars, and it's quite accurate. Jim Stewart is not a guy that Writes things that aren't true in anything he does, and it just didn't turn out the way I thought it was going to turn out.”
Barth: International betas are the most attractive in 15 to 20 years
“I think the betas are more interesting than they've been in 15 or 20 years because of not just the entry point, but because of the deglobalization, and you've got a declining correlation of those markets, and the only free lunch we get as allocators is diversi…”
Barth: Dislocated biotech sector presents massive multi-asset investment opportunities
“One of the places where we see public, private, and credit incredibly dislocated, unloved, and where we think there's huge opportunity is biotech. It has been such a bubble through the pandemic where biotech and vaccines were going to solve everything, and now…”
Breach: Growth equity has shifted from enterprise software to AI
“Most of those companies can't raise growth equity anymore because growth equity is running more towards AI than software.”
Breach: Institutions Alone Cannot Supply Enough Capital for Vista's Strategy
“Was an institutional play for a very long time, but I don't think that the institutions alone can provide the capital that we need to capture our opportunity.”
Mogelof: The Biggest Risk in Wealth Alternatives Is Advisor Mis-Selling
“I think the biggest thing that could go wrong is that these products are not sold appropriately. We saw a little bit of that in the past, but I think the biggest risk here is that advisors don't spend the time to fully understand the liquidity profile, the ris…”
Forman: Having Zero Crypto Exposure Is Now Becoming a Contrarian View
“Not having a position today, despite the increased regulatory clarity, despite the institutionalization, despite the use cases, I think is becoming a bit more of a contrarian view than a consensus view.”
Gave: Investors should aggressively buy undervalued Latin American assets
“That leaves me, actually, super bullish to Latin America. It was very interesting that in these tariffs, Latin America was completely spared. Not only did they get a blanket 10%, but pretty much everything they export, whether copper, silver, lithium, et ceter…”
Gave: Chinese distressed debt at 10 cents on the dollar offers amazing risk-reward
“The one that stands out the most to me is Chinese distressed debt. Chinese distressed debt was trading at 50, 60 cents on the dollar. When Russia invaded Ukraine, everybody decided China's uninvestable. Everybody redeemed. There was no markets. This stuff is s…”
Gave: Devaluing the renminbi within six months would be a big mistake
“James, I think here we're at a super interesting crossroad where if in the next six months China does devalue the renminbi, it would have been a big policy mistake.”
Aitken: Private sector lacks balance sheet capacity to intermediate Treasuries
“There is not enough private sector balance sheet capacity to intermediate this enormous stock of treasuries. It's a capacity problem.”
Papic: U.S. Private Market Assets Are More Overbid Than Publics
“And obviously, if you want to talk about where U.S. Assets are massively overbid, I think privates are even worse than public.”
Gave: Structured Products in Private Banks Create Catastrophic Hidden Downside Leverage
“My fear is that over the past 10 years, private banks all around the world, private banks in Europe, in Asia, in America, Have made a lot of money selling structured products to private clients that essentially the clients where it's selling vault. They sold p…”
Marks: Private credit is no longer special and is now fairly priced
“And I would say that the aspect of being undiscovered and unloved is over. It's a reasonable thing to do if you do it carefully, but I don't think it's a special strategy. It's just fairly priced.”
Reynolds: Past three years have been harder for fundraising than 2008-2009
“My reflection is that for the last three years, it's been the hardest time to raise capital in the 2005 years that I've been doing this, and that includes 2008 and 2009. It's actually been harder.”
Grefenstette is skeptical of LP claims that co-investments beat underlying funds
“So I'm skeptical of those who have large co-investment programs who claim they're outperforming the underlying fund managers, because it's hard, and if they're doing a better job than their GPs, they should bring their GPs in and give them some instruction.”
O'Leary: Private market outperformance in 2022 was merely volatility laundering
“Anybody with a private book looks like a genius, but really you're just a volatility laundering.”
Barth: Stock-picking alpha is permanently harder and will not mean-revert
“Alpha in stock picking is as hard as it's ever been. I'm not a big believer that that's going to mean revert in a meaningful way.”
Charles: Many private equity firms fail to justify illiquidity net of fees
“First of all, have you generated enough alpha to justify taking illiquidity from the client? A lot of firms, the answer is no. Especially net a fee and carry.”
Charles: The private equity asset class is currently 10% overvalued
“We think the asset class today is overvalued by about 10%.”
Charles: Only a third of mega PE firms have true competitive advantages
“If you have firm level OCAs that are transferable across strategies and across markets, you can be a high conviction alpha generator across products Across industries, size strata, but it is rare. I bet only about a third of those level nine and level 10 firms…”
Miller: Kamala Harris's presidential campaign failed due to lacking a clear offer
“Kamala Harris did three things wrong that I can think of from a messaging perspective. She didn't have a clear offer. Her offer was basically, I'm not Donald Trump.”
Biscardi: Mid-tier funds are struggling to raise capital in the Middle East
“The funds at the top of the game are still, I think, doing really well there, but they've been there for 20 years. KKR, Blackstone, Carlisle. The next tier down, if you're a twenty billion dollar fund, a fifty billion dollar fund, and you don't have the same b…”
Peters: Private Equity Capital Return Struggles Signal Rising Liquidity Risks
“When I see equity markets at all time highs, and I keep just reading the papers and private equity guys don't seem to be able to return capital to their clients. Wow. Imagine what that would look like in a bear market. That's an example of liquidity risks that…”
Bessent: Xi Jinping won't allow market clearing needed for a sustainable economy
“He's a Leninist, so he's not going to allow a clearing function in the market
that would
Allow for a sustainable Chinese economy.”
Sandler: Classic long/short equity hedge funds no longer fit allocator portfolios
“And I realized, and talking to allocators, that the classic long short equity hedge fund had not a really big place in allocators portfolios anymore. That allocators were barbelling their portfolio.”
Briner: Sole fiduciary pension models only work if run by Warren Buffett
“Yes, there's more bureaucracy, but without Warren Buffett in the sole fiduciary chair for a hundred years, it probably makes sense to go away from it.”
Salem: Admitting China to the WTO in 2001 was a massive mistake
“Starting with China's admission to WTO in 2001 of the great policy mistakes I
I think this country has ever made.”
Japan's Middle Market Is the Largest Pool of Cheap, High-Quality Businesses
“Well, I submit to you today that that biggest pool of high quality businesses on low multiples, great entry points, exists in Japan in the middle markets. It's basically a US private equity playbook that exists for weird quirks of how the Japanese financial sy…”