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 9 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
Davis: Trimming fund holdings because they grow too large is a mistake
“If I had simply bought each stock that I ever bought for the funds in a personal account and held it, then I simply never would have sold simply because something was getting too big. Whereas in the funds, I do that all the time, and it's been a terrible mista…”
Davis: Asset manager incentives favor relative preservation over absolute client goals
“One of the really Deep, dark, dirty secrets of money management. Is that, you know, if you were faced with the choice of, you know, you return 10% a year for the next decade, and the market does 12, or you are zero, and the market's down two. Every money manag…”
Davis offered his teenage kids $700 cash to fly coach over business class
“I hit on this idea about when they were your kid's age of I'll split the difference with you. Like I literally will write you a check. You can choose. Like, we'll get you a seat in business class, or you get 700 dollars.”
Davis: De-risking from Wells Fargo to Nestlé in 2008 led to underperformance
“So, we de-risk the portfolio. Now, I had studied my dad enough to know that going to 30% cash was not the right thing to do, but it may have been, you know, selling some wells and buying Nestle. That ensures that if the crisis gets worse, we're gonna own busin…”
Davis Advisors mistakenly sold 17 million shares of Costco bought at $27
“Costco closed at 41, had been come down from 45. It was a momentum growth
Stock darling. They reported a bad quarter that stock opened at 27. And we amazingly bought seventeen million shares that day. It was one of the great trades my whole career. And you cou…”
Davis Advisors suffered a 90% single-day dilution on AIG during 2008
“Then bam, one day we're down 90, 90% diluted in a single day. And of course you couldn't, couldn't recover. And by the way, when it was all fully said and done, it was probably more like 95%.”
Davis: Investment research is a numbers game where ten calls yield one insight
“You call 10 companies, you learn one thing, you call 20, you learn two, and you know, so it was sort of a numbers game”
Davis: Davis Advisors held no Bear, Lehman, Fannie, Freddie, or Countrywide in 2008
“If you think of the six horsemen of the apocalypse in the financial crisis, you know, Bear, Lehman, Fannie, Freddie Wamuu, Countrywide you know, we didn't own a share of any of them, and yet here I am running a financial fund, running a fund that probably had …”
Davis: Value Managers Gained 9% to 25% During 2000 Market Drop
“In 2000, the market went down nine percent, if I remember right, maybe nine, nine and a half. And it wasn't like, managers like us who had stuck to sort of a discipline, you know, went down two and the market went down nine. It's like we were up nine or 10, yo…”