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 1,245 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 39 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
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 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 Investment Partnership Returned 404% Over Four Years After 2008
“Over the next four years, Nomad returned 404%.”
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.”
Li Lu's fund capital grew 20x in 12 years after Munger partnership
“In the next 12 years, the capital grew more than 20 times.”
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 made hundreds of thousands of dollars during his Columbia course
“I made hundreds of thousands of dollars just taking this class, just listening to the 14 or 15 people. But I did a lot of work.”
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.”
A single Nobel well outproduced all 25,000 US oil wells combined
“One Nobel oil well, a single one, gushed over 11,000 tons of oil a day. That is more than the total oil flowing from all 25,000 wells in the United States at that time.”
Getty produced 13B oil barrels from the Saudi neutral zone
“He gets this concession from the king of Saudi Arabia. And what's crazy is in the neutral zone, they're going to wind up producing. Getty's going to wind up producing. Thirteen billion barrels of oil.”
Getty grew his inherited $15M oil company to over $1 billion
“When he inherits and takes over his dad's company, it's worth fifteen million dollars in 1930. 20 years later, that company is valued well over a billion dollars. It is J. Paul Getty that is responsible for that value creation from 15 to well over a billion do…”
During the Great Depression, public shares traded at 1/20th of asset value
“There were shares selling for as little as a 20th. Of their net underlying asset value. That means anyone who purchased them was in effect buying 20 dollars for every dollar he spent.”
Rolex has remained the top US watch brand since the 1950s
“Rolex has been the number one brand for watches in the United States, historically speaking from the 19 fifties to today.”
Ivar Kreuger's companies comprised 25% of traded US securities in the 1920s
“I don't have in front of me, but I'm pretty sure from like 19, 22 to like 19 30, something like 25% of all the securities traded in America were for Ivar Kruger's companies.”
Steve Jobs originally wanted to name the iMac the 'MacMan'
“Ken Sego, the author. He's the one that came up with the name iMac. And thank God he did, because you know what Steve wanted to call the iMac before it was called iMac? He wanted to call the iMac Mac Man.”
Charlie Munger Considered John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil the Greatest Company
“Charlie Munger believes that Rockefeller built the greatest company of all time.”
Quant Pioneer Ed Thorp Discovered Bernie Madoff's Ponzi Scheme in 1991
“Back in 1991, Ed Thorpe was doing research for a friend of his, and he discovered, he was one of the first people to discover the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.”
Kreuger Used a Fake Foot-Pedal Phone to Stage Calls With Mussolini
“The middle phone was fake. It was a non-working phone that Ivar could cause to ring by stepping on a button under the desk. He used it for two purposes. One, if you're visiting him and he wants to get you out of there, he'll, he'll step on the button. It rings…”
Kreuger Hired Movie Extras to Pose as Ambassadors for Percy Rockefeller
“That evening he threw a lavish party and introduced Rockefeller to numerous ambassadors. And I put ambassadors in quotation marks, ambassadors from various countries. Who actually were movie extras that he had hired for the night.”
Walt Disney used film set designers instead of conventional architects
“Disney's buildings would not be the work of architects. They would be the work of set designers. His studio people would have to do it.”
Walt Disney broke park conventions by subordinating rides to storytelling
“Most amusement parks wanted all the street visibility they could get. Walt's entire park would be hidden from the outside world by landscaping. Walt was talking about customized rides, exhibits, and attractions instead of the standard off-the-shelf Ferris whee…”
Walt Disney banned hiring amusement park veterans to build Disneyland
“He says, I do not want anyone hired who has anything to do with an amusement park. He optimized for talent. He wanted to train his own people.”
Walt Disney refused to allow formal organizational charts
“Disney did not want any formal organizational chart. He actually says multiple times, I don't ever want to see an organizational chart.”
A Disneyland photo concession made Art Linkletter the highest-paid television broadcaster
“40 years later, Linkletter wrote, surprisingly, the net returns from this valuable concession made me the highest paid broadcaster for one show in the history of television.”
Steve Jobs Hired an Interior Designer as NeXT's 9th or 10th Employee
“Steve Jobs, one of the ninth employee, if I remember correctly, ninth or 10th employee at Next was an interior designer for the office.”
George Lucas Made Three Times More Money on Toys Than Films
“Lucas makes three times the amount of toys as he does on the films and the films, they make billions and billions of dollars.”
Spielberg earned over $40M from trading 2.5% of Close Encounters for Star Wars
“And so Spielberg gave Lucas 2.5% of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Lucas gave Spielberg 2.5% of Star Wars. And it says this two 5.5% would earn Spielberg more than forty million dollars over the next four decades.”
George Lucas sold 40 million Star Wars action figures in 1978 alone
“Just in 1978 alone, George Lucas sells forty million Star Wars figures.”
The Empire Strikes Back generated over $100M in profits for George Lucas
“The Empire Strikes Back opened in May of 1980 in a 126 theaters and broke attendance records in a 125 of them. No other studio opened a single movie against it. The movie was gonna have to make fifty-seven million just for Lucas to break even, and to build Sky…”
Django Unchained originated from Floyd Ray Wilson's unproduced screenplay
“The essence of what Floyd was trying to accomplish in that script, an epic western with a black heroic cowboy at its center, was the very heart of what I was trying to accomplish with Django Unchained.”
Tarantino considers Kill Bill to be his most autobiographical film
“Quentin thinks it's just one movie. He thinks of Kill Bill one and two as one movie, but he said it was the most autobiographical movie that he ever did. He just hid it under a bunch of metaphor and stories and everything else.”
Cornelius Vanderbilt bypassed slow lawsuits to personally ruin partners who cheated him
“He immediately dictated a short letter to both Morgan and Garrison. Gentlemen, you have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you, for the law is too slow. I'll ruin you. Yours truly, Cornelius Vanderbilt.”
A Vanderbilt mercenary sabotaged William Walker's supply steamer with gunpowder-filled firewood
“That gunpowder-filled firewood had been planted at the riverbank depot weeks before the disaster. It was planted there by a mercenary in the employment of Cornelius Vanderbilt.”
At age 50, Michael Jordan beat the Charlotte Bobcats starters in practice
“MJ was angry with the Bobcats with his team for being so bad. So he came to their practice, took away all their Jordan gear and beat the starters with the second unit. Keep in mind, MJ was in his fifties and he came and waxed NBA starters with the bench.”
Michael Jordan avoided 4 a.m. workouts because he viewed sleep as training
“MJ knew when to stop. Kobe didn't. You would never find MJ on a court at four AM. He slept at night because he knew sleep was part of his training.”
Duveen supplied 95 of 115 paintings in Andrew Mellon's art collection
“95 of the 115 paintings in the Mellon collection, right, which gets donated to the public, which I'll talk about why he did this, was also a genius move in a little bit, came to Mellon through Duveen.”
The US Is Uniquely the Only Country With Private Mineral Rights
“America is the only country in the world in which the mineral rights underneath the ground, right, in which your, these wildcatters need to buy or to lease, are privately owned. Everywhere else, a state or a crown will hold the title.”
Richard Rainwater Turned the Bass Family's $50 Million Into $5 Billion
“And so the podcast I'm telling you about talks about how Richard, I think turned fifty million of the fastest money into five billion.”
1920s Depletion Forecasts Dramatically Underestimated Future US Oil Production
“In the 19 twenties or 19 teens, when this report is issued, it's like, Hey, we've already, we're estimating that you guys have already tapped 40% of America's petroleum reserves. We're already producing hundreds of thousands of barrels a day, right? They can't…”