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 28 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
Cocke: A $10 billion endowment likely paid $500M in fees in 2021
“I would bet that if you looked at a ten billion dollar endowment in fiscal year, 20, 21, it would shock me if they didn't pay at least Five hundred million dollars in fees in fiscal year, 20, 21. It wouldn't surprise me if it's even higher than that.”
Cocke: Wall Street cap intro pitches prioritize marketability over fund performance
“I started to realize, you know, what's happening is the Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley's of the world are getting these guys in their cap intro department and they're creating their presentations for them, which it occurred to me what that really meant is th…”
Cocke: Small, tightly aligned investment units generate the best returns
“And it turns out that actually what I was very drawn to was a guy, a Bloomberg and a dog. And I actually think that is where the most special returns lie. And it doesn't have to be someone who has no team. But in small units where they are very, very synced up…”
Cocke: Quant strategies struggle to systematize businesses undergoing fundamental transitions
“That if you can find a business that is going through transition, where it's becoming a greater and greater business, but its perception lags, that type of opportunity set, I think, is really hard to systematize from kind of a quant perspective, where the busi…”
Cocke: UVIMCO allocated over 55% of its portfolio to hedge funds in 2002
“I got down there, and they had 55% in hedge funds, and it was going higher. Almost nothing in loan only, and the rest in privates.”
Cocke: Top investors gravitate to structures offering highest pay and freedom
“The best investors in the world are generally running structures where they can get paid the most, where they can have the most creative freedom, and where they can attract and surround themselves with the best talent and the best investors, and that, that mom…”
Cocke: Short-term trading strategies forfeit endowments' perpetual duration advantage
“A lot of funds are fairly short term trying to pick quarters or events or trades or macro, and I often think that forfeits a big part of the competitive advantage that endowments have.”
Cocke: Investure differentiated its diligence by acting as co-pilot to managers
“And the way to differentiate, and for me, frankly, to enjoy it, was to sit co-pilot with our managers from the diligence process on through when we were partners. And that meant if we were going into a meeting with a prospective manager, it might be that we sp…”
Cocke: Kept calendar permanently blocked to protect reading and thinking time
“I have this ridiculous calendar system where basically I made it look like every day was fully blocked off so that no, nobody would ever schedule a meeting without coming and asking, are you actually busy or are you available?”
Cocke: Investure was the first institutional investor in Nomad Investment Partnership
“We were the biggest investor in Nomad, and we were a third of their capital. I think we were their first institutional client. They didn't even have a hundred million dollars.”
Cocke: Extending investment horizons exposes portfolios to low-probability risks
“When you extend the time horizon, like all the low probability risks begin to potentially show up.”
Cocke: Valuing MoneyGram's digital unit at 7x revenue would double its stock
“MoneyGram, the whole company trades for less than one times revenue. And if all you did was put seven times revenue on just the digital business, the stock would be a double from here. That would give no value to everything else.”
Cocke: Great investors operate at the intersection of hubris and humility
“The great investors live at the intersection of hubris and humility. You have to be arrogant enough to believe in yourself and your ideas and your research. And yet you've got to know that you're going to be wrong almost as often as you're right. And that set …”
Cocke: Investor complacency during winning streaks is harder to manage than losses
“For me, the heaviest bags are actually not when you're getting punched in the face. It's when you're succeeding. That's where I start to slip. You start to believe your own press clippings a little too much and might get a little bit lazy about buttoning down …”
Cocke: Digital infrastructure is the Class A real estate of the 21st century
“I think that digital infrastructure, which is in the bite index, is 40 digital infrastructure businesses. So think data centers, fiber, towers, cable. I believe that is the class A real estate of the 21st century. It's incredibly recurring, inflation protected…”
Cocke: LB Partners holds 70% of capital in top five positions
“We probably own 60, 50 positions. Very long tail of small things where they're still doing diligence, or we started buying and it ran away from us, or the purpose it serves is small. And we're too concentrated. Our top five positions are 70% of capital. Our la…”
Cocke: The greatest value of financial Twitter lies in private DMs
“A lot of the magic of Twitter happens behind the scenes on DMs. And I have since become, I would say, very close with maybe 10 new people in my network. I trust their insights. I trust their feedback. I share ideas with them. We meet in real life. And disclose…”
Cocke: Journaling is an investor's equivalent to reviewing game film
“I also think it's an important part of deliberate practice. So if you were a basketball player and you were playing a game at the end of the game, you get video that you can go break down, you know, how'd you do, you know, did you show some tendency to me and …”
Cocke: It is better to risk being screwed over than to act untrustworthy
“You come to the world a little bit vulnerable and willing to trust, and honestly, I think I would rather have somebody screw me over a hundredfold than vice versa, and so she errs to that side, and I think it served her really well”
Cocke: Financial accounting is the exhaust of a business, not the engine
“And you think that accounting is sort of the Rosetta Stone of investing, and in the end, you realize, no, accounting is the exhaust. It's not the gas, and so you can't let it Take over your mindset. You've got to think about what does the business actually do?…”
Cocke: Smith College agreed to back Alice Handy as Investure's first client
“And she had a conversation with Smith College where they basically said, we'll back you. We'll become your first client. Why don't you go create this kind of OCIO, this outsource chief investment officer model”
Cocke: Investure tracked junior analysts years ahead of fund launches
“And so that became a big part of our research effort was we need to understand who the number two, three, and four are at these firms that we love, whether we're invested with them or not. And figure out the next generation is going to come from this person, a…”
Cocke: Corporate transitions progress through three distinct stages of growth offsetting decline
“If you break it into three stages, you've got this initial stage one, where the decline of the legacy business is swamping the growth of the new business. It looks like the whole thing is going to die. You get to this middle stage where the duck Is perfectly s…”
Cocke: LB Partners uses multi-year incentive measurement and clawbacks
“And so when I built LBP, we intentionally built it with a multi-year measurement period. We built it with a hurdle so that if I'm having a down year or a down moment, In year two, and I was up in year one, well, our clients can actually begin to claw back some…”
Cocke: LB Partners fund investors receive equity in the BYTE Index business
“I actually took a piece of the ownership of that index firm and just granted it to my fund investors. So the idea there is if we raise money for our partners who actually own an ETF and license the index from us, I actually just to be clear, don't own the ETF …”
Cocke: Good investment ideas become terrible when treated as dogma
“There's a very fine line between a mantra and a dogma, and you risk taking a good idea and turning it into a terrible idea when you get attached to your initial thought.”