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 1,034 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
Berkshire Missed Google Despite Seeing GEICO's $10 Ad Clicks Work
“We were paying 10 dollars a click for something that had a marginal cost to Google of exactly zero. And we saw that the ads were working for us. We could see at Geico how well Google advertising worked, and we just sat there sucking our thumbs.”
In 95 Years, Li Lu Was Munger's Only Outside Fund Manager
“In 95 years. I have given Munger family money to an outsider to run once, once in 95 years. And that is a Li Lu and he has hit it out of the park.”
Bezos: Amazon's Metrics Improved Rapidly While Its Stock Crashed to $6
“I watched the stock fall from 113 dollars to six, but I was also watching all of our internal business metrics, numbers of customers, profit per unit. Every single thing about the business was getting better and fast, even as the stock was dropping.”
Buffett Bought Disney Stock at 31 Cents and Sold at 48 Cents
“Buffett bought Disney stock after meeting Walt Disney in 1966. He paid 31 cents a share. And sold when the stock went to a 48 cents a share.”
Four Brentwood Gas Wells Fully Funded Jerry Jones's Dallas Cowboys Purchase
“So I went over to Brentwood, about 20 or 30 miles from San Francisco, and I bought 25 lots, like I was going to build 25 houses, except I drilled four gas wells, and those four gas wells in 18 months paid me enough money for me to buy the Dallas Cowboys.”
Jerry Jones Struck Oil on His First 15 Consecutive Drilling Attempts
“The group hit their next well, and the next one, and the next. In all, they hit oil in their first
15 wells that they drilled.”
Jerry Jones Made Over $300 Million Selling Arkoma Production in 1987
“In 1987, Jones and his partner sell it for a hundred and seventy five million dollars, which means if you calculate how much money they took out of the business, plus the sales price or Combo production had walked away with more than three hundred million doll…”
NFL Rules Originally Exempted Luxury Suite Revenues From League-Wide Sharing
“According to the NFL rules revenues from the boxes are not shared with other NFL owners the way ticket revenues are.”
Jerry Jones Fired Head Coach Jimmy Johnson After Winning Two Super Bowls
“He winds up firing his friend and his coach after Jimmy Johnson won the second Superbowl and he winds up hiring another one of his friends. It's getting Barry Switzer who lasts a little bit longer, but he was more comfortable playing like a number two role.”
Hess bypassed US shipping laws while simultaneously collecting domestic refinery subsidies
“So the refinery is able to secure foreign refiner status, which allows it to circumvent federal rules that require the use of higher cost U.S. Flagged vessels. When shipping oil to the East coast, while simultaneously at the same time, also receiving subsidies…”
1970s Wallenberg companies employed 40% of Sweden's industrial workforce
“MW's impact on Swedish industry was so substantial that during the 19 seventies, Wallenberg family businesses employed about 40%, a single family, employed about 40% of Sweden's industrial workforce and represented 40% of the total worth of the stock market in…”
Don Valentine Backed Nvidia While Threatening to Kill Jensen Huang
“And yet the end of the meeting, Sequoia decides to invest. And there's a great quote on Don Valentine in this. He goes, against my better judgment, based on what you just told me, obviously it's a crappy pitch. I'm going to give you my money. But if you lose m…”
Jensen Huang Rejected Board Recommendations to Hire a COO
“He's insistent on a flat structure says he steadfastly refused to change his management philosophy. Even when new board members joined and recommended that he hired chief operating officer to reduce his administrative burden. No, thanks. He replied.”
Huang reprimanded staff who based goals on competitors or past performance
“Jensen would reprimand subordinates who set goals. I referred to what the company had already done before, or what the competitors were doing at that moment. As he saw it, he needed to prevent that kind of eternal rot. That he observed at other companies.”
Nvidia Used Simultaneous Design Teams to Ship Chips Every Six Months
“NVIDIA would split the design team into three groups. The first would design a new chip architecture while the other two worked in parallel to the first to develop faster derivatives Based on the new chip. What is that? Why? Why would you do that? Because this…”
Nvidia Repackaged Flawed High-End Chips to Defend Against Low-End Competitors
“Jensen saw that Nvidia could stop throwing away parts that failed quality tests. They failed quality tests. If you're building a Ferrari, but not if you're building, you know, a Ford fusion, right? So true. These parts were not suitable for the company's Ferra…”
Hetty Green bailed out New York City multiple times
“So on more than one occasion, Hedy as a single individual bailed out the city of New York.”
Hetty Green built a $100 million fortune by only investing trust income
“She's going to become the richest woman in America and maybe the richest woman, self-made woman in a, in the world, not by investing the principle of her family's fortune, but by investing the investment income. She turned, she's going to turn a yearly cash fl…”
Brad Jacobs sold his road rental businesses at a $500M loss
“We ended up selling those road rental companies at about a half a billion dollar loss because it was the best way forward under those circumstances.”
XPO's contrarian $2B stock buyback generated a $4B profit
“A couple of years later, those two billion dollars of shares we brought back, we bought back, ended up being worth six Billion dollars, giving them a profit on that one transaction of four billion dollars.”
United Rentals reached $1B revenue in thirteen months; Hertz took 37 years
“Hertz did this, and they built up a national equipment rental chain to about a billion dollars of annual revenue over the course of 37 years. United Rentals did that in 13 months.”
Zara Takes Under 15 Days From Trend Detection to Store Hangers
“Zara's main advantage is an astonishing ability to detect fashion trends, assimilate them, make them a reality on the hanger at a bargain price inside of a store that's conveniently located all in less than 15 days.”
Senra: Over half of Zara's production comes from proximity manufacturing
“So Zara also produces in those countries, but more than half of Zara's production comes from what they call proximity.”
Inditex Almost Acquired Sephora Before LVMH Bought It
“They almost bought Sephora before LVMH buys it.”
Railroad companies owned more than ten percent of all US land
“Railroaders were the largest private landholders in the country. They owned more than 10% of the land in the United States.”
American railroads generated twice the US federal government's revenue by 1885
“So by 1885, railroads brought in twice the revenue than the federal government did.”
James J. Hill turned a bankrupt railroad highly profitable within one year
“The line showed net profits by the end of the year, well above 500,000 dollars. That is an 1878 dollars.”
Legacy aerospace launch contracts billed the government for delays plus a fee
“When the military awarded a national security launch contract to Lockheed or Boeing, they signed a cost plus agreement where any delays were billed to the government. Plus a fee.”
By 2023, the US held 54% of global commercial space launch revenues
“In 2023, the U S had a 54% share of global commercial launch revenues with space X's Falcon nine responsible for the bulk of these.”
SpaceX offered $6M orbital rocket launches while competitors charged $26M to $28M
“At this time it would cost between 26 and twenty eight million dollars per launch. SpaceX winds up being able to do this for six million dollars.”
Sam Zell: Tribune Company Lost $50M in Cash Flow Last Year
“This company lost fifty million dollars of cashflow last year, and you never would have known if you talked to anyone around here.”
Sam Zell Required Deal Briefings to Stay Strictly on One Page
“Zell insists that briefings be kept to a single page, no matter how complicated the deal or issue, anything more is summarily dismissed.”
Nomad Investment Partnership Made Around $2 Billion for Clients
“Nomad was not a particularly large fund, but over the years, it did make around two billion dollars for its clients, which were predominantly charities and educational endowments.”
Nomad Investment Partnership Returned 404% Over Four Years After 2008
“Over the next four years, Nomad returned 404%.”
Nomad Investment Partnership Generated a 10x Return Over 14 Years
“Over about 14 years, They wind up 10 X-ing the money.”
Sleep and Zakaria Barred Broker Sales Calls for Independent Research
“Nick and Zach told stockbrokers that it was pointless calling them with sales pitches since they relied on their own research to reach independent conclusions.”
Nomad Dissolved in 2014 With $3 Billion in Assets Under Management
“In early 2014, Nick and Zach dissolved the Nomad investment partnership. By then, it had grown to about three billion dollars in assets. I think it made two billion dollars for its investors.”
Buffett: Munger pushed me beyond Benjamin Graham's cheap-stock philosophy
“Buffett said, Benjamin Graham taught me only to buy cheap stocks. Charlie allowed me to change my thinking. That's the real impact Charlie's had on me. I needed a powerful force to walk out of the limitations imposed by Graham's theories. Charlie's ideas were …”
Munger turned a single Barron's insight into $400M via Li Lu
“Reading Barron's magazine for 50 years made him like four hundred million dollars, and he described why, because he's like, I read Barron's magazine for 50 years, the entire 50 years that I read Barron's magazine, I found one actionable insight that I could ac…”
Li Lu: Timberland stock appreciated 7x in two years after concentrated bet
“I put a shitload on them. And over the next two years, the damn thing went up seven times.”
Li Lu was the only outside manager trusted with Munger family money
“In 95 years, I have given Munger family money to an outsider to run once. Once in 95 years, and that is Li Lu.”
Buffett and Munger's biggest investment ideas generated 10,000x returns
“And he says their biggest ideas, meaning Munger and Buffett's, their biggest ideas really gave them 10,000 times their money.”
Disney's growth under Michael Eisner was largely driven by price hikes
“Disney found that it could raise prices a lot for the Disney parks and attendance stayed right up. So a lot of the great record of Eisner and Wells came just from raising prices at Disneyland and Disney World”
Two-thirds of top 50 US companies disappear within 40 years
“Look at the top 50 companies in America every 10 years. By the time 20 or 40 years go by, two thirds of them are gone. By the time it goes to a hundred years, there might be only a couple left.”
BYD raised only $300k pre-IPO before reaching $7B in revenue
“The founder only raised 300,000 in venture capital before the IPO. He raised money in an IPO and then Buffett gave him two hundred million dollars. And so at this point they had 160,000 employees, six to seven billion in revenue and five hundred million in net…”
Li Lu spends zero time studying other investors
“I don't spend my time studying other investors. We spend our time studying industries and studying specific companies.”