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 4,533 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 112 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
Gave: Emerging Markets and Listed Equities Are the 10-Year Trade as Capital Flows In
“Today, if you're a young aspiring money manager, you should be launching an equity fund, you should be launching an EM fund, and even if you're doing it with very little money, that's the trade for the next 10 years. That's where the capital is going to go, be…”
Aitken: Private market funds will face redemption pressures and stock declines
“During this transition, however long it is, we'd be more surprised if we didn't start to read more stories about private something being under pressure. More stories about people who didn't read the prospectus and tried to get the money out and they couldn't a…”
Papic: Trump will reach China deal, but US assets won't outperform
“I think if he gets a deal with China, which I think he will, I don't think that's good for US assets relative to the rest of the world.”
Papic: US stock market probably bottomed at 4800
“That's why I think we probably reached the bottom at 4800.”
Gave: Foreign Appetite for US Corporate Debt Rollovers Will Be Limited
“The second half of this year and the first half of next year, the rollovers are gargantuan. At its time, when the appetite of foreigners for US dollar assets It's going to be very, very limited. Selling bonds in a weakening currency is very hard. Spreads are a…”
Marks: The post-2022 higher interest rate regime is structural and long-lasting
“I wrote a memo in December, 22, called The Sea Change, and it talked about the change in the interest rate climate, which I think is structural and long-lasting.”
Reynolds: Institutional LPs will abandon mega venture funds for smaller managers
“You will see The institutional investors that have historically loved venture and participated in those big pools move down market, just like they did in buyout. All the ENFs left the mega funds between 2008 and 2012 for the most part. I think the same thing w…”
Reynolds: Thousands of Zombie VC Funds Will Never Raise Again
“There's thousands of zombie funds. In the market that will never raise another fund because their track record does not justify it, and because people will realize that venture is not a get-rich-quick scheme, that not everyone and their mother deserves to have…”
Unconstrained mean-variance optimization pushes institutional portfolios entirely into private assets
“And anytime you use the mean variance optimization model, unconstrained, it pushes you entirely into privates, because that's the historical return profile.”
A European GP waterfall requires 5.6x gross to deliver 3x net
“We have a European GP. We actually are underwriting right now. We really like the firm, but the way the waterfall is calculated and the fact that the GP is actually charging some fees to the portfolio companies, they need to generate a 5.6 X gross to hit a thr…”
O'Leary: Forced liquidity will drive down private market marks
“I don't know that that's going to be the reality that gets experienced, and at a certain point, you're going to have to create liquidity. And it may mean that you're going to see marks coming down. It may mean that you see folks willing to show their hand on w…”
Barth: Private equity returns will drop over the next 25 years
“Private equity returns will be lower over the next 25 years than they've been over the past 25 years.”
Choe: Management stability shows little correlation with private equity investment success
“Another one would be that we used to think that management stability would be very correlated with investment success, and we looked at changes in C-suite management, and there was really not a ton of correlation there, so I'd say that's been an insight that h…”
Choe: Charlesbank found lower entry multiples correlate with weaker private equity returns
“And in our case, and we really had the data just to look at the hundred or so transactions in our history as a private equity firm, there was really no correlation. If there was one, it was a very weak negative correlation. So lower multiple investments tended…”
Choe: 2021 leverage excesses will cause restructurings over coming years
“We think a lot of the leverage excesses of 21 are likely to result in first liability management exercises, LMEs, that will then involve some amount of restructuring over the next few years or so.”
Charles: Private equity faces a massive maturity wall in 2025 and 2026
“There is a maturity wall coming in 25 and 26 for a ton of firms who've been able to bootstrap it and scrape through the last three or four years.”
Charles: High-performing PE firms will miss fundraising targets in coming years
“There is tremendous unrealized value and unrealized gain Managed by really talented people and the firms that they're a part of are going to come to market in the next 12 to 24 months, and they will not achieve the fundraising target that they need to feed all…”
Pompliano predicts Series A and later venture returns will compress to 15%
“Now, what we've seen over the last decade or so is so much capital coming to the market. Maybe there's been an incremental increase in the number of good companies created every year, but it's not kept pace with the amount of capital. And so my thought process…”
McLean: Natural gas emissions reductions beat solar and wind combined by 2x
“When you account for natural gas emissions, the total emissions reduction that has been allowed by the increase of natural gas Because of shale development is two X that of solar and wind.”
Peters: Blockchain Integration Will Put Digital Wallets on Every Phone
“This is where global financial markets get rewired onto blockchain based rails. And when that happens, it means that every single person in the world, when that's fully complete, will have a digital wallet on their phone.”
Peters: Markets Face a 15-Year Breakdown of Historical Asset Correlations
“COVID, I believe, propelled us into this new regime. And whether most big investors believe that that's true or not, they have to at least acknowledge that it might be true, that nothing's permanent, but we might be in for a 10 or 15 year period where the reli…”
McCusker: Pure institutional, RIA, and retail channels will vanish within 20 years
“I would say, 20 years from now, there's not many purely institutional, or purely RIA, or purely retail players. Everything is blended together, whether it's asset managers, advisors, or the end participants, even.”
Michalik: Health systems, not PE, lead provider consolidation
“If you just take providers over the last three or four years, there's been a rapid consolidation of Primary care, as well as specially providers of health care services, and it's been done by private equity, but it wasn't led by private equity. People forget t…”
Bessent: A Bretton Woods-scale realignment is coming to global trade
“I also felt very strongly that we're in the midst of a great realignment and of a Bretton Woods realignments coming in terms of global policy, global trade.”
Seides Predicts 14 of 15 Yale Prospect Fellows Will Not Graduate
“The TRS data implies that one of Yale's lucky fellows will graduate to its core portfolio every three cohorts. In other words, 14 of 15 won't make it.”
Briner: North Carolina's state pension ranks 50th out of 50 in performance
“We are 50th best performing out of 50, and so there's a lot of desire to help fix that and move it up the curve that is really appealing to certain people.”
Miller: U.S. Shale Will Deplete, Forcing Reliance on Unstable Oil Regimes
“One is I think oil's off to the races. And I do say this to CIOs with a, Hey, think with your inflation hat on this thing is the input to almost every product and humanity. And the reason why is largely the world has lulled itself into a soft slumber on the ba…”
Miller: 80% of Republicans Under 35 Prioritize Climate as Top-Five Policy Issue
“Currently, Republicans under the age of 35, 80% of them say climate should be in our top five list of policy issues.”
Miller: Carbon Will Rival Oil and Gas in Commodity Scope and Scale
“Carbon will be a commodity that rivals oil and gas in scope and scale, and you need to be ready for that.”
Miller: Carbon capture will reach coal and gas plants within a decade
“We are gonna get to coal plants and natural gas plants, a hundred percent certain in the next decade.”
Miller: SEC emissions reporting rules will eventually lead to carbon taxes
“When the government's asking you to measure something, I got news for you. That thing's going to be taxed. That thing is going to be taxed at some point in time, which is a whole different revenue source for the energy transition over time.”
Gleich predicts alternative investments will drive the next ETF growth chapter
“The next chapter of growth for the industry, I think is going to be alternatives. And I think we are in the early innings of that beginning to happen right now.”
Nesbitt: Private debt will maintain a 3% to 5% illiquidity premium
“I can go back to the eighties and tell you that everybody thought the private equity premium would go away. And it's really been pretty consistent at three to five percent. I expect the same on the private debt side.”
Salem: GMO's founding partners were famously not speaking to each other
“You look at GMO when I joined it, everything's firing on all cylinders. The returns are great. They're growing. The sun is shining. You get in there and after a week or two, you realize that founding partners don't even talk to each other.”
Salem: Top LPs realize cash returns far below reported venture capital IRRs
“A lot of LPs of longstanding relationships going 3040 years back to the firms that are still on the short list of what are the best BFC firms in the world have gotten returns that are quite a bit south of The IRRs that reported in those manager records.”
Salem: David Swensen cut contact after Salem refused a job interview
“It came from Swenson, actually. David just called me one day and said, look, I have some advice for you. There's this job that's open, and I'm involved in the search, and I want you to jump into the search, and I want you to take the job. And for various reaso…”
Moodgal: Private fund payouts will rotate into public rather than private managers
“What's going to happen, and I think you've very elegantly said it as well in one of your recent pieces, is as these private managers start to pay out
I think a lot of that money will start going into public managers, not into private managers, like people thin…”
1,000 Japanese Public Companies Will Likely Exit Within 10 Years
“And I would say over the next 10 years, a thousand of the 4000 listed companies are likely to be exited in one way or another.”
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.”
Japanese Banks and Transfer Agents Now Support Unsolicited Takeover Bids
“Konami Capital today can make a bid for a company and expect every part of the unsolicited bid chain from investment bank, share transfer agent, Japanese bank and lender to provide financing services to get it done.”
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.”
Eichhorn: PE-backed insurers use much more private credit and offshore reinsurance
“Clearly there is a very, very different model for the private equity backed insurers. A lot of insurers are using private credit to be sure, but the private equity backed are using it much more and other products, whether it be CLOs and using a lot of offshore…”
Eichhorn: PE-backed insurers trade at much higher funding note spreads
“Many insurers issue what are called funding agreement-backed notes. Those are policy-level notes. They're parapesu with policyholders, so they're a really great market measure of what's the risk of an insurer, and you just see it in that data. The private equi…”
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”
PE exits average a 28% valuation pop over prior carrying value
“What we did was we went back to 2005 to 20 22, and we looked at over a thousand companies, and we asked ourselves, when a private equity company exit, what does it exit at relative to what it was carried at two quarters prior? And the answer is, it pops 28%. S…”