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.
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Reynolds: Very Few Venture Funds Over $1B Have Ever Returned 3x+
“If you actually look at the historical data, there's been very few funds in history that have achieved three X plus that were over a billion dollars”
U.S. public equity market concentration is at a 100-year high
“If you take the top decile relative to the remainder public securities in the U.S., it's at three X. It's the highest ratio Market cap in a hundred years.”
Charles: Top-tier mega-firms raised $250B via captive insurance and wealth channels
“In the last 12 months, The level 10 firms in our framework have raised two hundred and fifty billion dollars from insurance companies they control or through the wealth channel with sales forces that are theirs.”
Charles: Private equity distribution yield is currently historically terrible
“The yield of private equity today is as bad as it's ever been. You're in the bottom quintile of distribution yield right now.”
Charles: Private equity drawdowns doubled to $40B and NAV tripled in five years
“Over the last decade, while distributions have been very consistent at 40 a quarter, Drawdowns have doubled to 40, and NAV has tripled in the last five years, so the yield has just nosedived.”
Charles: Average distribution yield today would beat PE exit records by 25%
“If you just get an average yield on all of the accumulated NAV, this year would be the biggest exit year ever, and it would exceed the best year ever by about 20, 25% in dollar volume of exits.”
Charles: Inorganic transactions account for 20% of recent PE exit activity
“By our estimate, between 15 and 20% of all the exit activity the last two years has come from inorganic transactions.”
McLean: Permian Shift to Horizontal Drilling Yielded 3x Capital Productivity Uplift
“And it also prompted an acceleration of a big industry shift in the Permian Basin from the vertical drilling, which we had been doing since our founding in 2007 to horizontal drilling, which proved to be effectively a three X uplift in the productivity of the …”
McCusker: More Institutional Firms Will Merge With RIA Platforms
“The other thing is this is going to continue to happen. I don't think these are the last two firms that are going to tie up with RIA platforms.”
Michalik: UnitedHealth Agreed to Buy Steward Physician Group for $850M
“United Healthcare ultimately agreed to acquire those assets for eight hundred fifty million dollars, and in May, Stewart filed for bankruptcy.”
Michalik: Gavin Newsom vetoed private equity healthcare oversight bill in California
“Gavin Newsom recently vetoed legislation in the state of California to put Further oversight in the acquisition of healthcare investments in the state of California.”
Miller: Western Oklahoma wholesale power prices are negative 20% of the time
“Power prices in western Oklahoma are -20% of the time today. They will pay you to take the power.”
Miller: US CO2 reductions since 2005 stem largely from fracking
“The United States has reduced its CO two emissions since 2005, largely on the back of fracking and getting that natural gas molecule out.”
Gleich: Active ETFs capture 30% to 40% of 2024 fund flows
“And so now if you look, we'll take this year, three quarters of the way through the year, approximately about 30 to 40% of all flows that are happening now are going into active ETFs. And if you look at the size of the universe, Active ETFs are only about five…”
Samuels: VCs replace 75% of venture-backed founders by the time of IPO
“There's one study that found that about half of founders are replaced by VC firms who've invested in the company by the time they reach the third round of financing, and that's 75% of founders have been replaced by the time a company IPOs.”
Connaughton: Bain Capital generates average returns of 20% to 25%
“So think about low rates of 1920, and 21, where we raised the capital, and then think about Our average returns being 20 to 25%.”
PE IPO exits average a 42% pop versus 25% for M&A
“On exit, M&A on average is 25%, and IPOs are 42%, POPs, which would suggest that public markets pays more for assets on the exits than M&A does, corporates.”
Fink: Private Debt Has Not Operated Through a Real Distress Cycle
“On the other side, the private debt markets haven't really been around during a proper distress cycle. Because they really weren't of any size in 2008, which was the last time you had a real cycle.”
Tannenbaum: India's stock index matched 8x GDP growth since 1999, beating China
“China's GDP growth has been 16 X versus eight X for India, but China's index performance on that 16 X GDP growth has been two and a half X, and India's index performance on that eight X GDP growth has also been eight X.”
Tannenbaum: 75% to 80% of Indian Large-Cap Returns Are EPS-Driven
“The other is that valuations must be expensive, and because India has had a relatively decent run, that too feels like it should be the case, but when you decompose it, yes, returns have been okay, but because earnings growth has been pretty strong for the lar…”
Asness: Expanding multiples drove 85% of US equity outperformance over 30 years
“Shows that U.S. Equities have indeed crushed global equities in the last, call it, 30 years. Don't hold me to the exact numbers, but call it 80, 85% of that victory has been multiples going up. U.S. Started out cheaper and is now considerably more expensive in…”
Behring: 3G Capital Generated 28x Return and 30% IRR on RBI
“We had this big returns in companies like RBI and where I think we made 28 times the original billion plus capital we put in, and we had a 30% IRR in 14 years and all, and things like that”
Dixon: Global NFT sales reached $8.6 billion in 2023
“There were 8.6 billion in NFT sales last year.”
CLO equity returns reached the high 20s during the Global Financial Crisis
“And then if you were in contrast, an investor in CLO equity through the financial crisis on a buy and hold basis, a lot of the equity in those deals return high, 20% returns and the debt in the CLOs defaults rarely as well.”
30-year default rate on BB-rated CLO debt tranches is 20 basis points
“If you look back over 30 years, the default rate on CLO double Bs is around 20 basis points.”
BB-rated CLO debt currently yields over 12% with minimal defaults
“Today, because CLO BBs are floating rate, and because the Fed has hiked so much, we're getting yields in the 12% plus area, and defaults have been really, really minimal.”
Dawn: PE secondary market volume in 2024 will top $130 billion record
“2021, which is a high watermark up to this point is about one 30. And I suspect we will beat that number this year.”
Leffell: Gov. Newsom insisted PG&E replace its entire board after bankruptcy
“And the governor had insinuated his staff into the process and was very engaged in what we were doing and insisted that the entire board change after bankruptcy.”
Sandler: Ivan Boesky did very little trading with Drexel Burnham Lambert
“Ivan Boski was probably the most revered and respected risk arbitrageur on Wall Street. He had accounts with every firm. In fact, he did very little trading with Drexel. He was probably the largest equity buyer of securities of stocks at the time for any firm …”
Sandler: Non-investment-grade original debt issuance was unheard of before Michael Milken
“The idea of a new issue of a high-yield security, our new issue of debt security for a company that Could not get an investment grade was unheard of when Mike came to the market.”
Sandler: Princeton Newport collapsed before trial under RICO before winning on appeal
“The firm was out of business before the first witness was called in the trial, because under RICO, you could create a freezing of assets, and as a financial institution, that's very, very difficult. So, even though Princeton Newport case was reversed on appeal…”
Milken: Dodgers' discounted TV rights exceeded team's entire purchase price
“If you look at one of the greatest purchases in sports, the Los Angeles Dodgers, for example, they were able to securitize The media stream from an investment grade company, in that case, it was Time Warner Cable, today Charter, for the next 30 years that paid…”
Milken: Three US companies are AAA, but S&P rated 15,000 structures AAA
“There's maybe three companies in America that are rated triple A. S and P rated in a period of time, 15,000 structures, triple A, almost all of them real estate. And in some cases you lost 100% of your money in a triple A.”
Mauboussin: Simple Algorithms Beat Expert Forecasters in Complex Markets
“And so what we know, and this has been extraordinarily well documented by folks like Phil Tetlock, psychologist, University of Pennsylvania, and others is that in quotation marks, expert forecasts, they tend not to be very good at it. In fact, typically simple…”
Mauboussin: Top 2% of public companies generated 90% of US wealth creation
“What's remarkable is if you distill that even one step further, the top two percent of that 28,000 created 50 trillion dollars. Of the 55 trillion in total. So just two percent of all these companies are essentially 90% of the total wealth creation.”
Mauboussin: Top Quintile Public Company ROICs Have Widened Lead
“The ROICs for the top quintile of public companies has distanced itself from the next quintile and sustained at a very high level”
Mauboussin: Tech companies are not overrepresented among top compounders
“The other thing he pointed out technology companies, they're not overrepresented actually.”
One executive earned over $100 million under Jacobs's compensation structure
“I've had people make tens of millions of dollars. See the senior executives. I've had one person make over a hundred million dollars.”
Future Fund Turned Over Half of Its $200B Portfolio in Three Years
“We manage about two hundred and sixty five billion Aussie across seven funds. The future fund, which is the higher risk fund, is a bit over 200, and we've changed half of it in the last three years.”
Housel: The Psychology of Money Missed NYT List Over UK Publisher
“It did not make the New York Times bestseller list because since the publisher is a UK publisher, it was blacklisted from it.”
Page: Diverse-owned firms manage just 1.4% of the $82T US institutional market
“Secondly, for me, the real clincher was a Knight Foundation report that showed that only 1.4% Of 82 trillion in institutionally run assets in the United States are run by diverse owned firms. 1.4%.”
Tangen: NBIM runs $1.3T with 650 staff, a third of peer size
“It's roughly a third of the size of what similar institutions would be given the asset size. We are 650 people, 650 people running 1.3 trillion.”
Seides details his famous $1M hedge fund bet against Warren Buffett
“So he picked the Vanguard S&P, 500 index fund. We picked five fund of funds for 10 years for a million dollars for charity. The bet started in January one of 2008.”
Hutchinson: Arctos is the only group cleared across four major leagues
“And oh, by the way, they're the one group that can go invest in four, the five big five leagues here in North America and sit across platforms and leagues and help these teams like the Utah Jazz build their version of this platform in Utah and the Rockies.”
Corre: Biden Administration Has Mostly Failed in Merger Antitrust Challenges
“Generally speaking, the administration has not been successful in those challenges.”
Corre: China is a black box where due diligence leads to arrests
“And obviously, China is increasingly a black box. It's very hard to do due diligence there. In fact, they've arrested people for it.”