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 13,450 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
Kleinman: Weak AI ROIs will weigh on markets and hit levered players
“If those ROIs don't come to pass, I don't think the whole system is going bankrupt, but that clearly will have a weighing effect on the markets. Certainly the biggest hyperscalers will be okay, but that cascades down to many, many players, some of whom have go…”
Kleinman: AI CapEx represents at least 2% of GDP growth
“That's representing at least a couple percent of GDP growth right now. That's driving massive investment in infrastructure and chip manufacturing and energy and all of these things.”
Kleinman: Apollo decided against launching semi-liquid private equity products
“We don't think it's a great product. So we have decided not to bring a semi-liquid private equity product. We have a variety of semi-liquid other products, but for private equity, we've made the decision, this isn't the right Product.”
Kleinman: Mutual Funds and ETFs Will Blend Private Assets into Products
“Traditional asset managers, i.e. Mutual funds, ETFs, they're gonna start injecting some amount of private assets blended into their products.”
Monk: Investment Professionals Will Become Co-Pilots to AI
“The human beings in these organizations will become the co-pilot to the AI, rather than the AI being the co-pilot to the human beings, because they're gonna have all the data, and they're gonna have that customization available.”
Monk: UC Investments' Jagdeep Bachher Is Attempting to Buy College Leagues
“Our friend Jag Deep is trying to buy college leagues.”
Capital Group compensates portfolio managers based on returns, not asset volume
“If our investment results are the same and our tenure at Capital Group's the same, our bonus is the same. Meaning we don't incentivize a money grab to manage as many assets as you can.”
Over 80% of Capital Group equity strategies beat their benchmarks post-fees
“If you look at our equity strategies since inception, over 80% of them have beaten the market after fees.”
Seides: Private Equity Exit Recovery Is Two to Four Years Away
“I continue to think this takes several years. Maybe it's two, three, four years away. It's a question of how long does it take for that bid-ask spread to narrow?”
Seides: Sovereign and Private Wealth Capital Exclusively Benefits Mega-Funds
“The private wealth channel is a whole different distribution mechanism. What those two things have in common is they benefit the largest firms. They don't benefit the middle market player. So the middle market, you have contraction, and then you have expansion…”
Seides: Private Credit Structures Prevent a Bank-Like Systemic Calamity
“I do not think there's going to be some calamity. The structure that the asset managers are using is just much better than what the banks used to use. You know, borrow short, lend long. So these are very long dated structures, which is great. You can work thro…”
Seides: Massive Inflows Will Compress Private Credit Returns to Roughly 6%
“Where I think there is a challenge is when all this money comes in, the one thing it does for sure is compress spreads. I don't think the people buying in the wealth channel have the right understanding of what returns they should expect. There was a pocket of…”
Seides: Venture Capital Has Structurally Shifted Toward Remaining Private Forever
“The one interesting aspect of venture, structurally, is to the extent private equity is private for longer, venture feels like it's private forever.”
Seides: Unlocked Private Market Capital Will Flow Back Into Public Equities
“The biggest impact of that over the next couple of years is that when private markets unlock for liquidity, the first wave of that money from the institutional market is going to go back to the public markets. It's not going to get recycled in the private mark…”
Sacerdote: Cloud Computing Has Another 5 to 10 Years of Growth
“We have another five Maybe even 10 years to go on this, and it's still growing.”
Sacerdote: AI infrastructure is only 14% penetrated on the S-curve
“We're only about 14% penetrated on the AIS curve for infrastructure. Within the cloud, it's only three or four percent.”
Sacerdote: Inference-time reasoning will be adopted by all AI models
“And now deep seek is basically solidifying this inference time reasoning is going to be adopted by all the models.”
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: AI Adoption Has Driven $50B to $70B in Extra Sales for Meta
“And we think that's driven fifties to seventy billion of extra sales to Meta by adopting AI.”
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…”
Presenters Reliant on Slide Decks Should Stay Home and Practice
“If you need a deck, you're not telling a story. You shouldn't even be walking in the room if you need a deck. Stay home and practice. Turn it into a performance.”
Wolfe: At least 50% of subscale VC funds will go out of business
“The long tail of funds that are subscale, I have predicted that you would see a 50% involuntary exit or extinction rate, that they would go out of business, and why? Because they're under-reserved, they've over-invested, they have too many portfolio companies,…”
Wolfe: General Atlantic, General Catalyst, and a16z will go public
“And I believe that at least General Atlantic, General Catalyst, Andreessen, maybe Insight, maybe Lightspeed, go public.”
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: Oligopolistic M&A bidding wars generate better returns than IPOs
“Our best outcomes, as an aside, have always been an oligopolistic industry structure where there's three or four players who are going to irrationally compete to own the asset because they want it and they don't want their competitor to get it leads to the bes…”
McGurk: Nuclear risk will rise as arms control erodes and China expands
“There's increasing nuclear risk. We're entering a world of all the guardrails of arms control are eroding. If you project ahead, 1015 years, particularly as the Chinese built up their arsenal.”
Wolfe: 50% of AI Inference Will Run Locally On-Device
“I'm of the belief that 50% of your inference and your queries will be on device. They will not be on device going to the cloud. They will be on device. Locally hosted on models that are either etched into the silicon or using flash memory.”
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…”
Wolfe: Scientific wet lab research will be completely automated by robots
“Today, if you're a scientist, you have to go to a scientific lab, a wet bench, a white lab coat. You're working with pipettes and beakers, centrifuges, shaking tables. All of that is going to be done by robots. Completely automated labs operated in the cloud w…”
McGurk: Israel Eliminated All Iranian Air Defenses in October Counterstrike
“The Israelis responded by taking out all of Iran's air defenses last October, which set the stage to what happened this past June.”
Broyer: Austin, Dallas, and Tampa have not led long-term rent growth
“If you step back and look at the data, you look at over the past 10 years, 20 years, it's not the Austins, the Dallases, the Tampas of the country that are performing the best Because we're solving for rent growth.”
Khoury: 80% of Pod Hedge Fund Returns Arrive Around Quarterly Earnings
“80% of the returns of these pods are generated on quarterly earnings or the day after quarterly earnings, which means they are looking out for one quarter.”
Khoury: AI Office Vacancies Will Eventually Dwarf AI Tenant Demand
“That space that AI tenants are taking will be dwarfed by the magnitude of vacancy that they create over time.”
Khoury: Sunbelt Apartments Due for Rent Surge as Ratios Hit 19%
“Rent to income in the Sunbelt Has been going lower and lower and lower every year. So once you get back to equilibrium, we're of the view that it's not going to be, oh, we're back at equilibrium. We're going to grow a little bit. You're back with equilibrium. …”
Kelly: Middle-Market Private Equity Outperformance Over Mega-Caps Will Accelerate
“So I do think that the outperformance that you've seen over time with middle market private equity funds over their large and mega cap peers Is only going to not just continue, but move even higher.”
Kelly: 401(k) Plans Will Inevitably Integrate Alternative Assets
“Ultimately, we will see more partnerships between traditional asset managers and alternative asset managers that create structures like collective investment trust to be put into target date funds and for one K plans that have a mix of Liquid traditional inves…”
Lyon: Direct lending growth is driven by asset managers chasing fee-related earnings
“Now what you're seeing is those businesses are attached to a lot of very large alternative asset managers, many of whom trade on FRE. A good way to create FRE is to take several billion dollars of loans and charge one percent on them. That's what you're seeing…”
Lyon: Private equity falsely held 2022 valuations flat despite public market plunges
“If you looked at 2022, the S&P was down 20%. The NASDAQ was down 30%. Let's say private equity lives somewhere between those two worlds. Private equity was flat for the year.”
Lyon: Enforcing contractual liquidity rights on overpriced structured equity fails
“The worst thing possible to do is, well, I think this is overpriced. It makes no sense, but I have a one-five. That's a good way to lose money, because you're going to be misaligned from the get-go, and enforcing liquidity rights that you have in documentation…”
Lyon: Only four structural terms actually matter in credit and hybrid documentation
“There are four things that matter. The ability to put debt on top of you, the ability to take assets away, the ability to take money out of the system, the economic terms of your agreement.”
Lyon: Direct lending will not suffer an implosion
“Do I think there's going to be an implosion in direct lending? No.”
Ripley: Emerging PE managers average higher returns than mid and large cap
“I was surprised as I looked at the industry data to see that in many cases, there was much wider dispersion at that earlier phase of a manager's life cycle, that fund one, fund two type era, but it was dispersion in both ways. The average was better than mid c…”
Ripley: Strong pre-fund returns do not predict Fund I success
“We found over time that simply having strong returns pre-fund is not a good prerequisite for a fund one. It's about the intangibles we learn about you that support them.”
Ripley: Tech alumni-focused emerging VC funds have a three-fund shelf life
“The issue and the trick for the folks in our seat is it's got a three-fund shelf life. By the time you finish fund three, everybody you know at Airbnb is left. By fund four, you're talking to strangers.”
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…”
Ripley: 1-to-1 co-invest offers to emerging managers merely seek 50% fee cuts
“We back a lot of these emerging managers. I can tell you they are inundated with offers from folks who are saying, I'll give you a hundred million for your fund one, and I want one to one co-invest. What those folks are really saying is I want half off the rac…”
Startups that quietly lay off 50% of their staff are going to zero
“If a company just fired 50% of its people quietly, it's going to zero.”
Centerbridge spent years evaluating First Brands and Tricolor but passed entirely
“First Brands and Tricolor. We looked at both for years. People said there's never been a picture of Patrick James. We flew to his office. We met him in person. We had the Tricolor management team at our office. We spent a lot of time with both these businesses…”