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 15 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
Karr: Scaling into new positions is an error driven by regret aversion
“So when I'm initiating a position, I tend to scale into it. So let's say I want to take it to three percent of capital. I'll buy 50 basis points, you know, another 50 and I'll scale into it. Turns out that's wrong. The bias that I'm demonstrating the reversion…”
Karr: Fund managers are only as long-term as their clients allow
“You might say, I'm a long-term investor, but you're only going to be able to be as long-term as your clients allow you to be, right? If you're in a position that's offsides to kind of the market sentiment at that time, and you have in your mind that, you know,…”
Karr: Anyone can have any mentor by studying public records obsessively
“You can have any mentor in the world that you want. There's so much out there, like, pick somebody that you really respect, and just, like, be a sponge, get obsessive, learn everything you can about them. How did they do it? What did they do? Like you can real…”
Karr: Deep research reveals when consensus bear cases form bull theses
“Some of my favorite investment situations are the bear case is the bull case. So there's this common bear narrative. And if you don't kind of do it on your own work, if I were bringing up this name and I was talking to someone, they would have told me all of t…”
Karr: High personal overhead ruins investors' risk-adjusted decision making
“How you run your personal life. Very much impacts your ability to make good decisions, particularly if they go sideways, right? And so you see people in the industry who then, you know, adopt a certain lifestyle, a certain fixed cost base, and then, like, you …”
Karr: Cigar-butt investing is profitable but difficult to scale
“And so if you're playing cigar butts which can be very profitable. But it's difficult to scale that. And so as his capital grew over time, you know, you have to think about how you show up and how you approach it.”
Adam Karr: Persuasion in Stock Pitches Undermines Objective Risk Assessment
“There's a tendency to want to convince somebody or persuade somebody to buy a stock. And so when you're persuading, and you may not as equally kind of pull out the potential risks or other factors to weigh against that.”
Adam Karr: Breakthrough Investment Insights Come From the Last 5% of Research
“Like I like to say the magic's in the last five percent, you know, all of the standard stuff, you know, you've got to do and looking at the balance sheet and understanding the core strategies and the key drivers of P&L, et cetera. But really like getting to th…”
Karr: The base rate of corporate rollups is bad
“The common trope is rollups never work. And it's true. Like the base rate on rollups is not good. It doesn't mean all rollups don't work. What are the factors and common hallmarks of rollups that are successful? And are those conditions precedent here?”
Karr: Long-Term Investors Must Track Interim Milestones to Adapt
“No, like there are many incremental steps between now and then that you want to track to and hold yourself accountable to. It doesn't mean you're trading every day or every quarter, but you want to be really thoughtful on this is why I bought it. These are the…”
Karr: Investors must practice deferred gratification and probabilistic thinking daily
“I think there's some parts of it that are temperament related, like just practicing deferred gratification. There's elements of it that are You know thinking about the world probabilistically, everything, just continuing to practice that every day or the uncer…”
Karr: A 55% win rate is strong; expect to be wrong often
“And then you, you're investing in like, if you're right, 55% of the time, like you're doing pretty darn well. And so being wrong a lot is an important concept to internalize.”
Adam Karr: Identifying a Company's Core Driver Anchors Long-Term Ownership
“When you've grinded on it enough and you get to that point, if you've really been able to dial into that thing that is the driver, that can be a real ballast to help you through as an owner and a holder of it.”
Karr: Investors must aggressively investigate emerging red flags outside main thesis
“If you're over myopically focused on one thing that you think is the important thing, you need to keep your mind open that there may be other things in the mosaic that are critical, and that when you do see those
And we started to get a little bit of the flags…”
Karr: Frame questions with specific premises so CEOs cannot deflect
“It can be a really valuable way when you sit down with a CEO is to frame a question in a way that they have to respond.
So
Like you might sit down and say, we've been hearing that you're having a lot of turnover in your sales department.
Why is that?
It puts i…”