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 963 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 102 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
Japan Will Not Retreat From Openness to Corporate Takeovers
“We don't think that Japan is going to run and hide, but watch this. This is where the thesis is playing out and where the friction point is.”
Leveraged loan defaults may soon exceed bond defaults, reversing historical norms
“So we think there's a probability that the default rate in the loan market might exceed that in the bond market. And the recovery rate in the loan market might be lower than that of the bond market, which is different than what it was in the past.”
AI will accelerate market efficiency, making alpha harder to generate
“Alpha is going to get harder and harder and harder. It already has gotten harder. AI is going to actually speed up that as well. And so as investors thinking about beta is going to become more and more important over time and having the best beta you possibly …”
Eichhorn: If rates stay high, private credit will see more pain
“If we continue and rates stay high here, I don't see how there's not more pain in private credit.”
AI Has Ended Hourly Billing Models for Law and Consulting Firms
“Law firms, consulting firms, hourly billing businesses that have armies of people doing things that the machines can do are That's over.”
Hunt: Iran-Israel Conflict Will Likely Escalate Beyond 'Phony War' Stage
“There is a hot war between those two countries. It is in its phony war stage. I don't think it remains in a phony war stage, or I think the risk is that it doesn't”
The AI content glut will force platforms to verify human users
“AI and the glut of AI-generated content is now going to make proof of humanity much, much more important for UGC websites, because it will be really, really important, not just to keep down spam, but because users presumably want to see what humans have to thi…”
Live sports will be the last human entertainment domain safe from AI
“Sports, sports will be the one last place for traditional entertainment where you are guaranteed to feel the humanity. No one will want to watch robots play basketball.”
Amazon Will Ultimately Generate Over $100 Billion Annually in Ad Revenue
“Amazon's not going to be doing billions in advertising revenue. They're going to be doing tens of billions and ultimately over a hundred billion a year in ad revenue.”
Asness: Multi-manager pod shops probably cannot grow by another 5x
“I tend to think those shops probably can't grow by another factor of five. There's just a limit to alpha. There are limits how many great traders that are out there.”
Dixon: Banning Open-Source AI Would Leave Five Companies In Control
“If it's banned, which I think some places seem to be moving towards, that will end up in a very different world. It'll end up in the world where you have five companies that control the technology and just a very different economic structure.”
Dawn predicts secondary market volume will hit $400B-$500B within five years
“So it would not surprise me if the GP side of this market is 200 to two hundred and fifty billion dollars in five years time. So if you add that onto what we think is a natural growth also, In the LP market, getting to four to five hundred billion is reasonabl…”
Arndt: Future Macro Regime Demands Less Reliance on Equities and Bonds
“When we look at the world going forward, we see more inflation, more volatility, probably wars, at least in localized places more frequently, deglobalization, more populist governments that will direct capital, all those things detract from economic growth, al…”
Housel: 50 Years of Indexing Beats 98% of Investors Net of Fees
“And I also know that if I can be an index fund investor for 50 years, I will probably end up in the top two percent of all investors who are doing this, particularly after fees, after taxes, transaction costs, top two percent.”
Tangen: Private equity market faces distress and will not improve soon
“Private equity companies are not having a good time. Fundraising is difficult. Exits are difficult. Financing is not easy. You have a lot of debt coming up to renewals. This market is not great. And I don't think it's going to be great for some time.”
Seides: The US economy cannot sustain private debt loans at 15%
“Fresh money opportunities in private debt are really interesting, because rates have gone up, and there's a dearth of capital, particularly in the middle market. The problem with that is that the economy can't sustain itself on loans at 15%. It just won't work…”
Seides: Future money management compensation won't match the last 20 years
“I don't think the remuneration for that in the future will be anything like it has been over the last 20 years.”
Heitzmann: Thousands of startups needing capital will fail by late 2024
“There's thousands of companies that are going to need capital between now and the end of 24. The investors at almost every stage have generally been hurt by the macroeconomic environment. The purse strings are pretty tight. But the amount of companies that may…”
Martell: The next five years represent the opportunity of our careers
“It's definitely billions of dollars. I believe this is the opportunity of our careers.”
Sebusch predicts many late-stage venture unicorns will become 'zombie corns'
“In the late area, there's a lot of unicorns that are going to be zombie corns, right? And that's part of our job of trying to ascertain and understand what those portfolio looks like.”
Corre: M&A Deal Flow Will Rebound as Regulators Back Off Extreme Positions
“I'm actually pretty optimistic now that the administration seems to be pivoting away from some of these more extreme positions. They basically folded on Activision. They folded on Horizon. I'm pretty optimistic that once the corporates get the message that it'…”
Late-Cycle NAV Loans Bring Uncompensated Risk to LPs
“No matter how you look at it, NAV loans are a late-cycle response to the higher cost of debt and slowing fund flows that will bring uncompensated risk to LPs.”
Kuruvilla: Multi-stakeholder value-creating businesses outperform purely financial-focused companies long-term
“The thesis is that those types of businesses that are creating value for its stakeholders will outperform over the long haul in general, those businesses that are focusing only on one form of capital, i.e. Financial capital.”
Multi-strategy platforms will continue consolidating market share and trading talent
“But if you look at it over five, 10, 15, twenty-year periods, I think the secular trend is going to be sustained. So if you look at the market share in terms of investor dollars, or the market share even more so in terms of the alpha pie in the markets, or the…”
Sargent: Manager selection will drive more future endowment alpha than allocation
“My guess is if you fast forward, there's gonna be more of that from manager selection over time because so many people have just copied this asset allocation model.”
Ballou: Without corporate veil reform, short-term thinking will increase
“So I think if we don't change that piercing the corporate veil issue, which it's not a question of capitalism or non-capitalism, it's really a question of in the weeds, how do we design our business system? I think we're going to have increasingly short-term t…”
New Liquidity Gives Capital Providers Power to Dictate Restructuring Terms
“And the only thing that's going to solve the lack of cashflow servicing a lot of debt is new liquidity. And if you have liquidity and you can drive terms on Outcomes. I think you're going to be pretty impactful. And if you don't have liquidity, I don't think y…”
Klarman: AI and Automated Trading Will Not Make Markets Fully Efficient
“And I actually am pretty optimistic that they will remain Even if computers were replacing people as money managers, and we're doing all the trading, and that's because the nature of what causes the inefficiency, it's human, but I think the computers will mimi…”
Aitken: Fed must be more hawkish than ever to tame inflation
“The pass-through effect this time, if the Fed's going to succeed in bringing inflation down back to target levels, it's going to have to be more persistent and more hawkish, I would argue, than any of us have experienced.”
Aitken: IRA multiplier will drive US capex for years regardless of 2024 election
“And there is no overstating the profound impact of this Inflation Reduction Act. It is just starting to be felt. It seems every marginal dollar of Western capex coming into the United States, because the tax subsidies are so generous, Not to mention all the sk…”
Aitken: Fed will probably hike rates higher than expected in 2023
“So successful has this bailout been so generous That they're probably going to end up taking the Fed funds rate to a level that none of them actually imagined when they started 2023.”
Aitken: Investors will absorb all US Treasury bond issuance through 2025
“Who's going to buy all these bonds that the United States is selling in 2023, 20 24, 2025 with a rising budget deficit before the recession comes?
And my answer is everybody.
Everybody.
You give people the right incentive, the right coupon, they will buy it.”
Aitken: Systematic inflows into liquid stocks will unwind violently
“There's more and more money coming in as volatility comes down into the most liquid stocks. But then at some point, that's all going to turn around. We don't know when. But boy, oh boy, that's going to be a lively couple of days when that happens.”
Aitken: Unprofitable companies unable to refinance face a brutal period ahead
“First and foremost, those are the ones that are going to struggle. It's those profitless companies, no matter what their line of business. And then they've been unable to refinance to this point. Boy, oh boy, it's going to be a brutal period ahead.”
Collins: US banking system won't recover until Fed cuts rates 400 bps
“Nothing's going to change until the Fed cuts rates, 400 basis points.”
Mullen: TPG-Angelo Gordon deal marks the start of a massive M&A wave
“I think you're going to see what Angelo Gordon did with TPG is the beginning of a massive wave of this. There's a lot of mergers that are going to take place.”
Sacca: Lowercarbon's Fund 7.81 will remove 7.81 gigatons of carbon
“We call that one 7.81 because we believe with that fund, we'll be able to pull 7.81 gigatons of carbon out of the atmosphere. And when we do so, we will reduce the parts per million in the atmosphere by one.”
Sacca: GPT-5 will train in 2023 and be 6-8x better than GPT-4
“GPT five will be trained this year, and it'll be six to eight times better than four, maybe, maybe more.”
Bergstrom: Open-ended credit hedge funds are in secular decline
“The open-ended credit hedge fund businesses we believe in, in secular decline, not going away this month or this year. But shrinking significantly in favor of closed-end structures, a big long-term part of that is hurdle rates, as you mentioned.”
Blitz: Recent flood of private illiquid managers will fail to meet expectations
“Many managers have come out recently to meet this demand, and we just don't think the results collectively are going to be what people want, but they might not really care because the people in the seats making those decisions might change by the time the poor…”
Lasry: Federal Reserve focus will shift from inflation to recession
“I will guarantee you the focus of the Fed is not inflation, but is the recession.”
Wong: Doubling drug approvals to 80 will drive massive biotech value creation
“On average, we've been approving forty-ish drugs a year, and if 40 goes to 80, even if you're losing some on pricing, it should be a tremendous amount of value creation.”
Giannini: A Large Number of Venture-Backed Companies Will Fail
“I think certainly on the venture side, there's no doubt that you're going to see a lot of venture companies just hit the wall.”
Giannini: Recent PE Vintages Will Deliver Lower IRRs and Disappointing Returns
“We will have elongated hold periods, which means IRRs are coming down. Now, presumably the public market returns are also coming down from what they were the last five, 10 years. But I think people need to recognize that. I know general partners in particular …”
Giannini: Global Tech Leaders Will Split Into Regional Entities Like Apple
“If you wanted to make money in smartphones, 20 years ago, whenever it was, you invested in Apple, and you had a global industry leader. That's not going to happen anymore. You will have Apple US, Apple China”
Toomey: Private Equity Could Expand Two to Three Times and Stay Healthy
“I think this industry could be two, three times the size than it is today, and still be healthy and functioning and lots of flows of capital.”