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 65 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 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
Visser: Interest rates will remain lower forever, pressuring allocators
“My belief has always been that rates would be stuck at low levels. We're still at that space, and I continue to believe that they'll be not only lower for longer, but lower forever, and that's putting more pressure than ever on allocators”
Visser: Reading books is a waste of time compared to web surfing
“I no longer think books are a good use of time in any way, shape or form. They're a waste of time, but they have a content, but you're not going to consume as much content with a book as you will with surfing, 20 different web pages on the same topic where you…”
Visser: There will be no bond market in 30 years
“Well, for governments carrying the interest cost for years, I joked behind closed doors and occasionally on stage where it wasn't being videotaped that there'd be no bonds in 30 years. I still believe that.”
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…”
Visser: Inflation will remain significantly higher than bond yields through 2026
“And the upcoming next five years, it's one thing to have lower for longer yields. It's another thing to have lower for longer yields when some people's benchmarks, meaning inflation or the cost of living are way above those yields. And that's the change that I…”
Visser: CRISPR and mRNA will extend lifespans without traditional pharmaceuticals
“With CRISPR and with the messenger RNA and knowing how to use it now, we will be able to solve a lot of problems going forward, which means we're going to be able to keep people alive longer without having to use pharmaceuticals.”
Visser: Biotech boom will not produce FAANG-style monopolies
“I don't envision this to be like the tech boom with Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and their ability to dominate the software and smartphone world in terms of getting these big things in web too. I think you're going to have these moonshots on the…”
Overall hedge fund returns have barely been positive since August 2007
“If you look at hedge fund returns back to August of oh seven, which was when the quant unwind occurred, if you look at the overall returns of hedge funds, and you just look at any measure there's barely any returns, if any.”
Behavioral alpha is the primary differentiator as fundamental inefficiencies disappear
“Behavioral alpha, the ability of getting out of stuff at the right time and sizing up at the right time, admitting that you made a mistake and folding your hand and moving on to the next one, those are not easy decisions for people to make, and I think histori…”
US-China tech decoupling will drive global markets for the next decade
“China and the US are in a trade war, and probably more importantly, embarking on something which I think has historic implications, or at least for the next 10 years, but it's this relationship from a technology basis with the two technology powers on the plan…”
US equity markets will deliver 8% to 10% annualized returns through 2029
“No, I think the next 10 years in the equity markets, the U.S., and I think globally will be better, but let's just say the U.S., I still think we'll get eight to 10%, and I think it's because rates are still low and money has to go to work somewhere, so I stil…”
Visser: Reaction function is the most valuable metric for portfolio managers
“That means the reaction function is the most valuable function for analyzing a portfolio manager. If we want to have consistent returns, it's their ability to move their portfolio.”
Visser: Following market narratives is a complete waste of time
“I don't follow narratives in markets. I think narratives are a waste of time. I follow the wisdom of markets, which means when certain assets are starting to go a direction that doesn't make sense with the narrative, I'll talk to the PM.”
Visser: IQ is completely commoditized by modern computing power
“IQ is now completely commoditized, both because computers are now in our days and they can consume knowledge faster than we can.”
Visser: US economy faces an elongated inflationary boom, not stagflation
“So I do believe instead of stagflation, this is an inflationary boom, meaning growth will stay on the higher side. The isms will stay up near 60 for an elongated period of time.”
Visser: Global governments will keep interest rates low to manage wealth redistribution
“Now, on the government side, they're going to keep rates lower because they can't hurt the distribution of wealth problem, and this is the main thing, is whether it's Japan setting up a wealth distribution council, whether it's China talking about the common p…”
Visser: Emerging markets will leapfrog via decentralization in two years
“Over the course of the next two years, I fully expect people to realize that decentralization will allow certain emerging markets to leapfrog. Because they will put it to work faster.”
Visser: Blockchain technology will help alleviate the labor shortage
“If I didn't know what the blockchain was, I wouldn't be able to say that it'll help the labor shortage because of the transaction That we're not going to be able to do in the way that we had. I think the blockchain is going to change all that.”
Visser: Morgan Stanley was culturally unprepared for emerging markets in early 2000s
“Emerging markets, Morgan Stanley was not set up for that. They didn't understand it. It was a cultural thing and their business was in New York and Japan and Europe.”
Visser: Extreme success and genuine kindness rarely coexist in hedge funds
“He was incredibly successful in the hedge fund industry, and at the same point, he was one of the nicest people I had ever met, and those two don't go hand in hand normally in the industry. Most people get into it because of the wealth opportunities”
Many hedge fund managers run passive portfolios with minimal active components
“Dynamic managers, hedge fund managers are active managers. Static managers are passive managers. And I think there were a lot of people in the hedge fund industry that were running passive portfolios that had a very small active component.”
Smart turnover is the most important factor for persistent investment returns
“And to do that, the number one factor we saw over time was the ability of having smart turnover.”
Infrequent decision-making cannot justify active management fees in current markets
“If you're investing in making decision changes every six months or every year, that environment I just don't think works anymore if you want to get paid active management fees.”
Michael Milken prefers bonds over stocks because returns ignore other buyers
“I was with Mike Milken recently, and he specifically said the reason he likes bonds as opposed to stocks from an investment standpoint is, I don't need other people to buy them. I just need them to pay me off. So I'm happy being the only person buying them. In…”
Portfolio managers cannot intuitively understand all risks across 70 positions
“Most managers think they understand all the risk in their portfolio, and that's just not possible with 70 positions.”
Portfolio managers make a mistake delegating factor risk to risk teams
“Everyone right now who's managing money should understand factorists. If they dump this off to their risk team, it's a mistake. You have to embrace it, you have to learn it, and you have to understand it.”
Quantitative factor analytics will fail in credit markets due to illiquidity
“I just don't think it's ever going to get there because liquidity's dropped off. So the problem is, what does it matter from a factor basis if things aren't even trading? And we've entered this point in the credit markets and the debt markets in general, where…”
Active equity managers have no excuse to withhold portfolio data
“For an active manager that's in equities, there's no excuse why you can't get the data, because it's very simple to do it. There's tons of ways. It doesn't cost much in this day and age with data to do it.”
Visser: Adaptability Quotient is the dominant metric when interviewing hires
“When I interview people, whether they're a PM, or whether they're someone that's going to help the marketing effort, I'm literally in my head going through an IQ, EQ, AQ measurement, and I'm asking all my questions mainly towards AQ and EQ, but AQ for the most…”
Visser: Only 100 to 200 global institutions can allocate to multi-strats
“Meaning for the institutional side, there's only about a hundred, maybe two 200 potential global investors that can invest enough money in a multi-strategy fund for us to really build relationships with.”
Visser: Asset managers not adopting video and data visualization are missing out
“If you haven't changed your marketing approach at this point to incorporate the power of technology, the power of zoom and the visualization, as opposed to a conference call, you're missing out.”
Visser: Allocators respect marketers more when they cut unproductive meetings short
“You'd be surprised at how much the person on the other end actually respects you more for saying, Hey, I have a lot of time in my day to time has become one of the things for all human beings that has become an issue.”
Visser: Over 50% of US working population has pre-existing conditions
“Over 50% of the working population in the US has preexisting conditions.”
Visser: Bitcoin is crypto's gold while Ethereum is its oil
“I view Bitcoin as the gold of the crypto world. I view Ethereum as oil for the crypto world or the energy.”
Visser: Increased longevity will disrupt pension and insurance actuarial tables
“It has actuarial table implications, which means the insurance industry and the pension industry, both are vulnerable to the situation in terms of if people live a lot longer, the working age population might actually, people might, if they're going to live lo…”
Visser: Smartphones and YouTube foster Gen Z polymaths over specialists
“Well, the iPhone is letting you learn a lot of different things the way polymaths did. If you look up multi-potentiality, the Gen Zers that are like polymaths, they're doing different things in the school system. They are learning through YouTube.”
Visser: Markets Mistakenly Treat Complex Crises Like Evergrande as Binary Outcomes
“The reality is there are so many other horses in the race other than it's going to finish first and it's going to finish last, which is the way most market people get to. There are so many outcomes on the distribution that they don't all end up in the same way…”
Visser: Market success requires analyzing odds rather than picking winners
“Well, my father taught me, which has been great for all markets is not to focus on who's going to win, but look at where the value are on the odds, not the value of the security.”
Visser: Computers have eliminated price and time discrepancies in markets
“Well, computers have arbed out first price discrepancies, but they've also arbed out now time discrepancies. Meaning when you find an idea and you're like, I found it, nobody's in it. Well, no computers are pretty good at using data to find the same idea.”
Visser: Bettors can profit with a 25% win rate by avoiding favorites
“You can win theoretically only 25% of the time in terms of your picking the winners and make a lot of money as long as you're never betting on the favorites.”
Visser: Hedge fund industry faces disruption similar to 1990s mutual funds
“I had spent enough time as a salesperson looking at the hedge funds. And I just thought that the industry was ripe for the same type of disruption that the mutual fund industry went through in the nineties with exchange traded funds and that the hedge fund ind…”
George Weiss's family office generated over 50% annual returns prior to 2005
“George had gone through a long time period where not only had they been highly successful, I think the family office returns were above 50% a year.”
Risk data must be visual because tabular data fails to communicate
“One of the beliefs I have in risk management is that you really need to have A lot of data. It needs to be visual. If it's tabular, it doesn't speak to you. And data visualization is the most important thing to me, heat maps, anything along those lines.”
Portfolio managers must verbalize strategies to generate behavioral alpha
“For human beings to be able to be more flexible and have behavioral alpha, they need to verbalize things. So one of the things that makes them more aware and more comfortable with this risk is just verbalizing it to someone.”
Weiss targets portfolio managers with 60% 10-day win rates and 1.0 Sharpe
“So we're looking for them to basically be able to make money on a rolling ten-day basis over 60% of the time, on a rolling five-day basis over about 55% of the time. We want them to be able to make money most years running market neutral with high turnover wit…”
Weiss investment teams maintain low pairwise correlations of 0.10 to 0.15
“And our pairwise correlation amongst the teams is somewhere around .one to .one five, which means when you look at it, we really don't have teams that are correlated to each other. We don't have overlapping approaches.”
Dodd-Frank regulations severely constrained sell-side balance sheets and proprietary trading
“Dodd-Frank really neutered the sell side in a very big way. There's just not as many prop tests. They can't hold positions in these things overnight the way they used to, so their balance sheets are under constraint.”
Evaluating managers requires probing emotional reactions during market shocks
“That gives me a really good data point of how the behavioral alpha of that person is. How emotional were they during there? How much did they know their space and know what was in them? That's kind of what you want to identify how good someone is. If you don't…”