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 13,421 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
Fiduciary Duty Must Trump Political Divestment Mandates For Pension Managers
“Listen, we really need to separate the fiduciary duty and the political policy as it relates to health and dangerous products like cigarettes, because I can't really hold a manager accountable for beating the S&P 500 and then tell him he can't own one of the f…”
Hostplus allocates 0% to fixed income, opting for unlisted assets instead
“53% of our strategic asset allocation is public equities, listed equities. It's a combination of domestic equities and international equities developed markets and international equities emerging markets. 53% in total. The other 47% is unlisted infrastructure,…”
Hostplus demands intrusive personal financial details from prospective fund managers
“How much money do you earn? How many kids do you have? What schools do they go to? What are the school fees like? At what stage are you at? What car do you drive? Is it mortgaged? There's a whole set of, you have a right not to answer those questions, but you'…”
O'Shaughnessy: High quality metrics do not generate excess returns; low quality destroys them
“In the quantitative sense, high ROEs or gross profitability or whatever your measure of quality is really isn't indicative of strong future excess returns. What's really useful about quality is that very bad quality, so really over levered balance sheets, comp…”
O'Shaughnessy: Publicly sharing quant findings produces stronger signals via feedback
“In quant research, this is really interesting, which is that you actually get a stronger signal. We found when you share your general findings, not necessarily the code or the particulars, but the general findings with a broad audience, then all of a sudden yo…”
Within 30 years, bonds will not exist and everything will be free
“I say to people regularly, I don't think there'll be bonds and everything will be free in 30 years. I say it not as a fact or as a guess, but it's something I do believe is coming because of my belief in the impact that nano and three D printing and artificial…”
Friedman: Tax incentives will force all US startups into Opportunity Zones
“It's going to encourage every single business that's going to start up United States. It's going to force it for tax reasons, for economic reasons, to be in an opportunity zone.”
Friedman: The Community Reinvestment Act has largely been a failure
“The truth is, it's been a failure to a great extent, because there's so much paperwork, it's so artificial at times, that you make non-economic investments, and the money disappears, and that gets people upset, gets everyone upset.”
Friedman advises shorting Silicon Valley and selling Palo Alto real estate
“In fact, I would short Silicon Valley right now. If you have real estate in Palo Alto, you should be selling it, because if you're in Silicon Valley, you're, Except for a small place in Silicon Valley, which is an opportunity zone, those businesses are all goi…”
Russo: Refusing Defense AI projects threatens Google's science-driven leadership
“Well, the moment you say that you're not going to have an AI business that has an involvement with some aspect of the Defense Department, particularly if it's defense-oriented, and you say that we just won't touch it because of our values, the moment you stop …”
Russo: Alphabet CEO Larry Page no longer shows up to work
“At a time when, by the way, Larry Page no longer shows up. To work.”
Moodgal: Only Allocate to Managers Who Have Survived a Fund Blowup
“And for me, post-crisis, I will say to everyone, only invest with someone who's blown up or been at a firm that's blown up. Because unless they've been through a tough time, you won't know how they're going to handle it, how they're going to treat their invest…”
Divestment Fails to Bring About Social Change
“We have proven time and again for the last 20 years that divestment does not bring about any social change, and people have to realize boycotts are generally ineffective unless you can get everybody Involved in them.”
Beshore: Traditional PE outbids others via heavy leverage and slashing staff
“And they, by the way, they can pay more because they're loading it up with a tremendous amount of non-recourse debt. They're going to slash and burn the team. They're going to treat people for a short period of time while they own it terribly, right? Well, of …”
Beshore: Competitors inflate bids by 30-40% with no intent to close
“Oftentimes we'll lose deals because other groups will come in and throw out a valuation that's 30, 40% higher than ours. They have no intention of ever closing. And on top of that, if you're a fundless sponsor, you don't even raise the capital yet. You haven't…”
Duke: Managers should fire a salesperson who closes 100 percent of sales
“And then all of a sudden you have a salesperson who's closing a hundred percent of their sales. And by the way, if you can't change that, you should fire them.”
Marshawn Lynch would have lost a yard on the infamous final play
“We had so many big guys that if Marshawn Lynch would have tried to run the ball, he would have lost a yard. That's a fact.”
Future Fund Avoids Large-Cap Buyouts Entirely in Private Equity Portfolio
“Our portfolio has no large buyout at all, because we think that, well, that makes the capacity so much harder, by the way, but we think that large buyout is really just levered equities, typically. And if there's skill added on top, and there might be, then mo…”
Wolfe: SoftBank-funded unicorn capital is 'dead' and trapped under their control
“Many of these businesses either have commercial deals that are tied to them, or economic terms that are tied to them where the VCs or the entrepreneurs that might be celebrating, they just became a unicorn and are valued over a billion dollars and SoftBank jus…”
Wolfe calls IBM Watson 'utter BS' and dangerous in its marketing
“And then the last thing that I rail against also, which I think is utter BS is IBM Watson. And I think it's actually dangerous what they're promoting.”
Hewsenian predicted in 2018 Gavin Newsom's policies would trigger Silicon Valley exodus
“The other thing that has us very excited is that we think that Silicon Valley is only going to last for so long. If for no other reason, California is becoming very business unfriendly. If Gavin Newsom wins the gubernatorial race, And he does to California wha…”
Friedman: Active managers will profit massively when indexation hits 95%
“I'm waiting for the day when the key is to have staying power to last, is when, you know, the machines or the indexes are 95% of the market. Then you'll make money hand over”
Scaramucci: Separating migrant children at the U.S. border is barbaric
“Doesn't reflect well on the American society, whether they're breaking the law, not breaking the law, don't separate people from their kids. Ok, that's a barbaric thing, and we're better than that as a society. Ok, so there's nobody can debate me on that, I ca…”
Germany's Decision to Punish Greece Triggered the Eurozone Systemic Crisis
“The key assumption Underpinning economic and monetary union. In fact, to this day, there's no default risk in peripheral credit of all kinds, whether it be sovereign or bank or whatever. And Ted, the Germans thought, here's an opportunity to teach everyone a l…”
Secular Stagnation Is a Policy Choice, Not an Inevitable Reality
“Secular stagnation is a euphemism for policy failure, meaning that secular stagnation is a choice.”
Volatility is genuine risk because it induces investors to abandon their plans
“The smartest of the smart guys say that volatility is not risk. And I strongly, strongly disagree. Because if you're, what you're really trying to do is achieve your goals in life, and the more volatile an investment is, Makes it more likely that you're going …”
Pfeffer argues venture capital on average underperforms buyouts or loses money.
“So I figure that, I think that probably the asset class is somewhere between, on average, money losing to simply underperforming relative to, say, buyouts or whatever, as an asset class.”
Pfeffer compares crypto diversification to playing slots on the way to poker.
“And I, the analogy I use is that, to me, diversifying inside crypto is like, A champion, a world champion poker player trying to smooth out her earnings by playing slots on the way to the table. You know, you're actually increasing risk and decreasing expected…”
Pfeffer predicts utility protocols will disrupt industries but tokens won't capture value.
“I think they're going to be successful. I think they're going to get a lot of users. I think they're going to be very disruptive. I think they're going to destroy, they'll create a lot of user surplus and destroy a lot of equity value. I just don't think the n…”
Pfeffer predicts most native utility crypto tokens will eventually go to zero.
“They wouldn't just stop using it, but they might switch to a fee model where basically you're paying miners to maintain the network, but maybe you're paying them in digital fiat or a store value protocol that might be Bitcoin or something else. So I think that…”
Andy Redleaf: Warren Buffett is an above-average investor, but an elite borrower
“And I've always thought that Warren Buffett is not a great investor. He's a, he's an above average good investor. He's good on the asset side. He's the world record holder. He's the absolute best borrower in the world. And had sort of a unique model, and that'…”
Hamed: Bitcoin has the worst tech in index but unbeatable network effects
“Bitcoin's probably the worst technology of the ones in the index. It's probably slower, more expensive, but it's got stain power, and people trust it, and it's hit some level of network effect that would be very, very difficult to overcome.”
Hamed: Venture valuation is broken by pricing all equity at senior rates
“The term valuation is broken, right? We basically take, let's take the price of the most senior security and ascribe that to the price of every other security, regardless of the structure and call the cumulative number, the value. Which is like totally bullshi…”
Monk: Hedge funds divert top scientists into socially useless activities
“It appalls me that we are dragging some of the best and brightest minds in society, chemists, physicists, mathematicians, Away from, you know, what I would describe as more traditionally value-adding activities and into the pursuit of basis points through a bl…”
Dunn: Wake Forest trustees voted to hire Bernie Madoff in blind test
“So I gave them this big Wilshire book of 400 pages. It had this strategy, and I said, this is the kind of book that you typically get from a consultant. And it was a manager that was on the board of NASDAQ, and he was doing this and that. Eight billion dollars…”
DeLong: Hundreds of PE Partners Leave Feeling Hollow Despite Earning Millions
“There are some private equity firms, and I've known hundreds of partners, and all of them leave feeling hollow with truckloads of money.”
DeLong: Asset Management Is 50 Years Away From Authentic Feedback Culture
“I think that the asset management world is 50 years from that.”
Blitz: Popular short equity volatility strategies are a very risky proposition
“You know, I'd say one, I'd call it maybe an orange flag or red flag on the equity volatility side is you're seeing a lot of people today go, go explicitly short equity volatility and it's being packaged as a quote unquote alternative strategy. We think that th…”
Douvos Would Short Stanford University Due to Overhyped Entrepreneur Perceptions
“By the way, if I could short Stanford, I would. It's a fantastic place, but talk about perception, you know, kind of all those entrepreneurs coming out of there that are so have very full perceptions themselves.”
Large Venture Capital Funds Benefit Their Partners More Than Their Investors
“So, like I said, those funds will continue to do well, but some of the venture funds that we've seen grow quite large end up doing much better for their partners than they do for their investors.”
Golden: In investing, theory can outweigh conflicting empirical data
“Being able to have an appreciation of theory over data in the right bounds is key. You know, there are times when you want to say, if the data don't support the theory, the data are wrong, right?”
Seides: Would make the 10-year Buffett bet again based on favorable odds
“I would make the bet again, over and over and over again, enough times so that the odds played out.”
Hochfelder: Mega-funds of $20B+ inevitably force managers to abandon selectivity
“When you've seen the rise of these individual closed-end funds that are 20 plus billion dollars to be deployed over a four-year period. You can be the world's most extraordinary investor, but if you have that much scale, you are going to be forced to deploy.”
Hochfelder: Public alternative managers prioritize AUM growth over investment selectivity
“You've seen more and more mega cap managers that are publicly traded, alts asset managers. Their share price is ultimately going to be a function of their AUM growth. People follow incentives. They are doing the right thing by their shareholders to grow. We ha…”
Moyo: Board interviews should test for black swan resilience, not past returns.
“Anybody who is going to be in front of me as a board member is qualified. I don't need them to necessarily relate to me how they built a team or generated returns. The fact that they're there tells me that they've done that. What I'm interested in is how do th…”
Moyo: No country in history achieved economic success without cheap energy.
“That's where I bring in my more fundamental view that no country ever in history has achieved economic success without having cheap energy.”
Moyo: First super cycle in 40 years driven by AI, energy transition.
“It seems to me this is the first time from an economic lens we've had a super cycle in 40 years. We had women coming into the workforce and brought new consumers in the 19 forties and fifties. Then we had the fall of the wall in 1989. It brought in the globali…”