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 11 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
Ackman: Heavy Index Fund Ownership Reduces Market Liquidity and Amplifies Volatility
“Having index funds as major holders of securities in stable market conditions actually reduces the liquidity of companies, and it means that sort of hedge funds and more active investors who are making day-to-day buy and sell decisions actually push securities…”
Ackman: Short Sellers Uncover Corporate Fraud Much More Often Than Regulators
“I give a lot of credit to the folks at Muddy Waters who have unearthed a meaningful number of fraudulent companies, and I've yet to find an example of a regulator finding a fraudulent company. It's either a journalist often being fed by a short seller or a sho…”
Ackman: Airline bankruptcies will not stop planes from flying
“Airplanes are not going to stop flying because airlines go bankrupt. What will happen is, you know, the, Owners of the planes, the lessors of the planes, and or the bondholders will end up, you know, controlling airlines.”
Ackman: Inability to Short Venture-Backed Startups Enables WeWork-Style Value Destruction
“The market you can't short today is basically, or difficult to short today is the venture backed market. And that's why you're going to see, that's why the WeWorks of the world are allowed to happen and billions of dollars of money gets wasted.”
Ackman: Top business school students lack experience dealing with failure
“The single most important thing you need to understand is how to deal with failure, and the vast majority of people who got to, you know, Harvard Business School, or pick your favorite you know, top business or law school has not had to deal with failure, and …”
Ackman: If an investment thesis is not obvious quickly, it is probably bad
“In fact, if you have to spend A large amount of time, and it's not obvious. It's probably not a good investment”
Ackman: Complex Venture Preference Structures Hide Inaccurate Late-Stage Startup Valuations
“And so the incentive on the part of many of these sort of earlier stage funds is to have markups in the portfolio, because it's a way of showing to your investors that you're making business progress. And I think it does encourage, you know, certain kinds of b…”
Ackman: Taxpayer money shouldn't save structurally declining businesses
“It makes sense to take taxpayer money and try to save a otherwise dying business. So think about businesses that are in structural decline. This would, you know, likely put them out of business. But I wouldn't spend any of taxpayer resources on them.”
Ackman: Unlike Short Selling, Long Investment Mistakes Shrink as Portfolio Percentages
“The good news is when you buy things as opposed to short things, your mistakes become smaller.”
Ackman: Twitter gave a multi-day lead over traditional news during COVID
“And beginning sort of, as I got deeper into coronavirus, I started using Twitter actually as a news feed and found it to be very, very helpful and interesting. You know, almost having the experience of reading the news a couple of days before You read the news…”
Ackman: Markets overreact because marginal trading is driven by quarterly focus
“The markets generally overreact to short-term information and noise, because many stocks are traded on the basis of, you know, the marginal buyer and seller is a short-term investor trying to predict whether the stock's going to go up or down on the quarter.”