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 19 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
Snider: The credit market is extremely stretched and warrants no new dollars
“Look at credit, and you say credit is extremely stretched. Why would we be putting a new dollar into credit?”
Snider: Most market-neutral long/short equity hedge funds fail to be market-neutral
“We have a belief that most market neutral long shorts are not market neutral, so they have been out of that portfolio.”
Snider: Becoming a CIO Shifts Work Away from Sourcing and Diligence
“When I move to being a CIO, or if I have the opportunity to move to being a CIO, that's not going to be my primary job. Managing boards. Managing politics in an organization. Managing a team. Managing Team development. Staff development. Making the hard decisi…”
Snider: Kresge's highest-fee hedge fund actually delivered its highest net returns
“We did an analysis two years ago, I want to say. Where our hedge fund analyst was tasked with pull all the financial documents of every one of our hedge funds and figure out what fees we paid. And we're going to go after the people that we paid the highest fee…”
Donna Snyder: Launching a value shop in the last five years was bad timing
“Launching a value shop in the last five years is bad timing.”
Donna Snyder: Back-office infrastructure is much easier to solve than the manager
“No institution is going to invest if they don't believe in the person and the process and the portfolio. So once we get that right, then we can say, okay, are we going to invest in all the back office that supports this? That's the much easier one to solve tha…”
Snider: Sell-side structuring prioritizes product volume while investing demands filtering for quality
“My job and when I was on the sell side was create a bunch of widgets, and the more widgets I could create and get out the door, the better. And now my job as an investor is evaluating all those widgets and only picking the best. So I really switched from quant…”
Donna Snider: Allocators Cannot Make Good Decisions Without Mapping the Manager Universe
“That was the biggest lesson for me is that one data point is just that one data point, and until you know what the universe looks like, you're not going to make a very good decision.”
Snider: Junior investment talent development follows a steep S-curve after year one
“We have found that the first year young talent is with us, you're feeding them and bringing them along. And then it goes through, like, really this S-curve. Like, it's amazing. Over the short window of time, they go from one level to another level. And then yo…”
Kresge Foundation sets minimum 1% portfolio sizing for manager commitments
“And we always kind of start with one percent. It's got to be a one percent position. For private funds, sometimes that's one percent over a couple funds, but for public funds where you can get out quickly if things aren't going well, You kind of got to start a…”
Snider: Investment teams should make the newest, most uninformed person speak first
“We always start with the newest person in the room and make them give an opinion. It's the most uninformed opinion in the room, But getting them to speak and speak before they hear anybody with more experience is really important.”
Snider: Kresge Holds No Long/Short Equity Managers in Its Portfolio
“We have no long short in the portfolio, so we'll have to pick another one.”
Snider: Kresge Had a Heavy Small-Cap Value Bias and Missed Large-Cap Growth
“We will all admit that in our portfolio we have a huge bias towards small cap value. And that has not been in favor for 10 years. So there is a piece of that that is on us that we missed. We didn't put large cap growth in the portfolio. We didn't.”
Kresge shorted emerging markets for US exposure via total return swaps
“We haven't really loved emerging markets in the last year and shorted emerging markets and replaced it with US. And that was just a total return swap on both sides.”
Kresge harvests the volatility risk premium internally rather than paying hedge funds
“Volatility trading, right? The implied versus realized risk premium. Tons and tons of Ph.D. Dissertations have been written on this, and so we have a give all trade on in the book, and we're not going to hire a manager to do that. We're going to put that on, s…”
Snider in 2019: Venture capital paper gains are elevated and must fall
“What to do about paper gains in venture is a hot button. I wouldn't say that there's differing opinions. I mean, we all see these paper gains, and we know it needs to come down.”
Snider: Freezing venture commitments creates massive vintage-year risk
“If we just sit here and don't contribute anything, don't commit to any new venture funds for the next 10 years, you're going to have massive vintage year risk. So going zero for the next 10 years is also not the right answer.”
Snider: Institutional Investor's Rising CIO List Implied Everyone Was Talking to Recruiters
“That list was admission that pretty much everybody on that list was talking to a recruiter, because I believe that list was mostly put together by the recruiters, and so the recruiter probably didn't nominate you if they hadn't had at least one conversation wi…”
Snider: Fund managers must drop buzzwords and explain return mechanics plainly
“When you're sitting across from a manager and they're trying to explain their very fancy strategy, using all these buzzwords. That mean nothing. It's like, no, let's talk about this. I'm going to give you a dollar. You're going to turn it into more than a doll…”