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 34 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
Moodgal: Only Allocate to Managers Who Have Survived a Fund Blowup
“And for me, post-crisis, I will say to everyone, only invest with someone who's blown up or been at a firm that's blown up. Because unless they've been through a tough time, you won't know how they're going to handle it, how they're going to treat their invest…”
Moodgal: Private fund payouts will rotate into public rather than private managers
“What's going to happen, and I think you've very elegantly said it as well in one of your recent pieces, is as these private managers start to pay out
I think a lot of that money will start going into public managers, not into private managers, like people thin…”
Moodgal: Core Investor Relations Skills Cannot Be Taught
“I don't think you can learn this. You can get better at it, but you've just got to have the people skills. I think you've just got to love people.”
Moodgal: Fund organizational structure is more important than investment strategy
“And I still think more and more that structure is more important than strategy. Structure of your team, structure of your culture, structure of your fund, structure of your organization, structure of your compensation, all those sorts of things are really good…”
Moodgal: Raised $800M Over a Single Weekend for TCI's Visa Bet
“I'm going to Asia, Chris calls me, I land in Hong Kong, calls me on a Thursday night, and says, I need eight hundred million by Monday. Ok, fine. So I go to sleep, I wake up Friday morning, I sit on the phone, and raise eight hundred million bucks, call him, a…”
Moodgal: Traditional Annual 2 and 20 Fund Fee Models Are Over
“So the old two and 20 Charging every year, forget it. That game's over.”
Moodgal: Fund Managers Should Prioritize Asset Owners Over Asset Allocators
“You always want to work with asset owners because you're speaking to people whose money it is, who have final say. The asset allocators, it's not their money. They're investing it for someone else. So they're vulnerable to what that end investor's thinking.”
Moodgal: Startup Funds Fail by Overcomplicating and Taking Too Little Risk
“The biggest issues, I think, the two biggest issues for startups is they overcomplicate everything, and they don't take enough risk, right?”
Moodgal: Advised an Asian hedge fund manager holding a 63% short position
“There was one manager I was helping in Asia, who put his whole business at risk, and he had a 63% short position, which could have completely, luckily it worked for him, but it could have blown his whole business up, and his fund, and killed his investors.”
Moodgal: Fundraisers Must Hold Back and Let Allocators Decide Timing
“You meet people 20 times, and you want to talk about your manager, but you just have to hold back, because they have to determine when the time is right, and it may never be right, and that's just the way it is.”
Moodgal: $40T in Private Wealth Will Institutionalize Over Next Decade
“I think the number is 40 trillion dollars from private wealth is going to be effect to become institutionalized over the next 10 years.”
Moodgal: Capital raising is currently harder than ever in 26-year career
“The first thing I will tell you is I'm not going to swear, but it is bloody hard. It's harder than I've ever, ever known it to be.”
Moodgal: Building investor relationships post-COVID takes 18 months to 7 years
“Any investor that I've managed to build a relationship with and work with post COVID is taking between 18 months and seven years.”
Moodgal Rejects Digital Tools to Focus on Analog In-Person Fundraising
“The one thing I'll tell you is that as people use more and more technology and going more and more digital, I'm going more and more analog. And I'll spend more time on the road. I'll spend more time talking to people. I'll spend more time going to events becau…”
Moodgal: Fundraisers should never directly ask allocators if they will invest
“Number two, there's certain questions you never ask. Are you going to invest with me? Do you like me? How do I compare? Did I do a good job? You don't ask those questions. You follow up more elegantly.”
Moodgal: Business mistakes destroy asset managers, while investment mistakes only hurt them
“You can make an investment mistake, and it will hurt you. You make a business mistake, it will kill you.”
Moodgal: Ego, speed, and leverage are what destroy asset managers
“The three things that kill you are any Lampard's initials, ESL, ego, speed, and leverage. Don't have an ego. Don't rush and think about leverage.”
Moodgal: Fundamental managers buy post-earnings dips while pod platforms short them
“If a stock misses its earnings by .1% and it's down 20%, a fundamental manager will go and buy more of it.
But a pod or a platform will short that stock.”
Moodgal: Rushing Fundraising Conversations Leads to Mistakes and Misplaced Pressure
“Do things slowly, don't be in a rush, because when you're in a rush, you can say the wrong things, things can come out the wrong way, and you can put pressure on people where you shouldn't be putting pressure on people.”
Moodgal: Allocators Prioritize Transparency and Personal Fit Over Pure Numbers
“When people are thinking about investing, they need to think about what they're doing, how it correlates to the rest of the portfolio. Is this really what we think it is? And really look at the quality of the returns, and it's a much bigger thing than that. Do…”
Moodgal: Proactively Disclosing Bad News Beats Letting Rumors Fester
“If someone's leaving, just tell them, because a rumor mill is faster than you can ever be. And the key thing is to take control of the situation. And if you take control of it at the beginning, then you're going to be able to deal with it. And you'll take what…”
Moodgal: TCI Scaled to a $30B Platform with 1,200 Investors at Peak
“We built, five years on, we built a platform of thirty billion dollars with five managers on, and it was incredible. I traveled all over the world, we had 1200 investors at our peak”
Moodgal: Algebris Was the Largest Sector Fund Launch in History
“Versus an Algebras, which launched day one with 1.1 billion of demand. It's the largest sector fund launch in history, and we start with six 75 day one, then took it over time.”
Moodgal: Allocator Due Diligence Expanded From Six Weeks to 18 Months
“If you put it in a time spectrum, I would say what used to take six weeks now takes 18 months.”
Moodgal: Investors Who Take Longer to Diligence Stay Invested Longer
“The longer that someone takes, the longer they're going to be with you.”
Moodgal: Ego, Speed, and Leverage Kill Emerging Fund Managers
“The three things that will kill you are ego, speed, and leverage, right?”
Moodgal: Emotional Thinking Focuses on Execution; Rational Thinking Focuses on Duration
“And when you're emotional, you focus on execution. And when you're rational, you focus on duration.”
Moodgal: Cathy Iberg Invested in His Managers 15 Years After Meeting
“I met her in 1998, and she invested in two managers I was working with in 2013.”
Moodgal's Pitch of Reasons Not to Invest Converted 8 TCI Investors
“When I was at TCI, we had a platform of managers and honestly, Ted, I did two groups of 12. The first group I sat down and spoke to and I fell asleep at what I was talking. No one invested. I went to the second group and I said, I'm going to do something a bit…”
Moodgal: IADEI comprises 800 global institutions screening minority managers quarterly
“And on the back of that was born IADEI, Institutional Allocators for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, which today has 800 institutions across the world that quarterly sifts through minority owned organizations. Minority led organizations in a certain asset cla…”
Moodgal: Parvus manages $10B with only 65 clients
“We are ten billion. We have 65 clients, which is not a lot.”
Moodgal: Parvus manages its portfolio with only nine people
“We're nine people. Everyone sits on the floor. There's no offices. I'm the only one that has an office, but everyone just talks very openly about what we do, how we do it.”