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 23 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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
Rice Excludes Fund Managers Who Won't Commit to Carbon Neutrality
“We don't invest in a single fund that hasn't committed to be using carbon offsets and become carbon neutral.”
Sequoia's 'Forever Fund' Belongs on the Apocalypse Wall
“Actually, the Sequoia Forever Fund is up on there too. Things where you're like, I don't understand what's going on. I'm going to put this up here.”
Former Operators Struggle as Portfolio Managers Because They Over-Fixate
“And I think the closer you are to an operator, the less you've been trained to let something go. You're at one company and your job is this one company and make it work. And the reality is You're a portfolio manager. You have at least a hundred choices across …”
Thacker: Value and GARP strategies mathematically underperformed without momentum
“It's just a mathematical reality, which is if you believed in any value or GARP orientation, you have underperformed. You needed to be a momentum investor In your asset allocation, as well as owning those type of managers.”
Thacker: Value is the only viable equity strategy in Europe
“So in Europe, I really believe in value, partly because I don't see a lot of growth in Europe.”
Asset Managers Prefer Gathering AUM to Providing Real Capital Solutions
“And the traditional money management business is not really in the solution capital model, right? Because it's just much easier to be a large publicly traded or large very private but profitable money management business and just keep serially raising the 20% …”
Thacker: Existing fund managers rarely lead investors to the next 5-year opportunity
“The ones that you have today will not be the people who take you to the next opportunity for five years from now. It just won't be the same people. If it is, great, but it probably won't be.”
Hedge Funds Are the Rice Board's 'Least Liked Asset Class'
“Hedge funds are the least liked asset class by the rice board”
Thacker: Universities should avoid risk by using only long-dated, fixed-rate debt
“We use debt financing to finance very long-dated capital projects like dormitories. We should have the most boring portfolio of debt ever. It should be long-dated, and it should be a fixed rate to provide budget certainty. If we're going to take risk, we shoul…”
Fund Managers' Purported 'Trade Secrets' Are Already Known to Competitors
“It is amazing to me how often managers say, oh, I can't tell you that because that is a trade secret or that's our secret. It is not a secret from anyone. All of your competitors know it. Let's say that Apollo told me that. I could call Carlisle and they'd be …”
Thacker: S&P 500 Reliance on Magnificent Seven Is Not Healthy
“And maybe you put up on your wall when you say a hundred percent or 95% of the S&P 500 year to date performance is from the magnificent seven. That's not normal. That's not a healthy sign.”
Rice University Owned Yankee Stadium Until Eminent Domain Forced a Sale
“Although Yankee Stadium, which was owned by Rice, was given to us by an alumni in the sixties, we probably would have kept holding it, and I would have inherited it, if not for eminent domain. So it was recaptured for a giant renovation project, and Rice was f…”
Thacker: Rice avoids biotech investing without internal scientific expertise
“It's one of the reasons we don't do much in biotech because we have not managed to hire that onto our team, and the more time I spend on it, the more convinced I am that without that knowledge, I just don't believe that we can be successful choosing managers i…”
Rice University is revisiting its public equity strategy toward indexing
“We have struggled with that, and we're actually revisiting our public equity portfolio strategy right now because it just continues to be a giant issue, which is most managers do not outperform the indices, and therefore why would you not be better off paying …”
Thacker: Enterprise software valuation multiples have returned to 5x–7x revenue
“We went from five to seven times EV to revenue multiples for enterprise software companies to 20 times, and now we're back to five to seven times.”
Thacker: Rice endowment has avoided multi-manager pod shop hedge funds
“We have, for the good or the bad, really not participated in the pod model, multi-manager model”
Thacker Breaks Down Rice's Endowment: 25% Real Assets, 60% Equities
“You have 25% real assets, and then about 15% really ballast that will always be there, and some of that is in fixed income, cash, a little bit of it is in some truly hedged alternative managers, which is, I think, the minority of the alternatives bucket for mo…”
Rice Mandates Four Office Days Because Zoom Halted Casual Information Sharing
“We are four days a week in the office because at the end of the day, we did not find that we could share the casual information. We shared the nine one and we did not share four one. We shared the emergency. Everyone has to know this information during COVID o…”
Thacker: Rice University still owns 50,000 acres of Louisiana timberland
“We still own the original forest that William R. Rice gave us in Louisiana, 50,000 acres of timber forest, and we own parcels of land that notable Houstonians gave to the university, and that's just how boards do it, I think.”
Thacker: Rice University endowment covers 40% of operating budget
“It's 40% of the budget is covered by the endowment.”
Thacker: Rice covers full tuition for families earning up to $120k
“Rice has expanded financial aid to the point where you don't pay tuition up to about a 120,000 in household income.”