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 10 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
Greenblatt: Being too timid on rare good ideas is investors' biggest mistake
“Position sizing is the most important thing. Being too timid on the few good ideas that come your way is like the biggest mistake people make.”
Greenblatt: Past capital allocation predicts future performance better than executive stories
“And the best rule of thumb that I learned was if this management team was good at allocating capital, before I walked in the door, the assumption that they would continue to be good was a really good assumption. And if they were really bad at it, no matter wha…”
Greenblatt: Incomprehensible Financial Statements Usually Signal Intentional Obfuscation
“And I just figure if I can't figure it out, they don't want me to figure it out. And I got to go to the next one. I mean, I'll spend a lot of time doing it, but if I can't figure it out, then I just assume that's intentional. And I don't view that as a good th…”
Greenblatt: Wide 52-week price swings disprove efficient market hypothesis
“And so they would show every single stock really, the high for the year was a hundred, the low for the year was 42. And every year that happened for every stock. And it didn't make sense to me that the value of the business was right at all those times. And in…”
Greenblatt: Investors only truly learn by losing their own money
“You really don't learn unless you're really investing your own money and feeling how it feels to be wrong and lose a lot of money.”
Greenblatt: Puzzle-oriented investors outperform money-driven investors long term
“Some people are in it for the money and some people like solving puzzles and figuring things out and figuring what's going to happen next. And you can kind of tell the passion of those people that they're just in it for the combination of challenge and interes…”
Greenblatt: Skip unpredictable businesses with fierce competition and fast tech change
“What do you do with a business where the competition's really fierce, technology's always changing, you know, you're always coming up with new products, you know, how do you predict what, you know, when you figure out a value of a business, you're trying to fi…”
Greenblatt: Interview performance correlates poorly with job performance compared to references
“It's like they say when you interview people, some people are good at being interviewed and some people are not. Has little correlation with how they will perform if you hire them. Really, the best advice I got is talk to the people that they've worked with in…”
Greenblatt: Selling at cost and profiting from memberships creates an unbeatable flywheel
“So it's a flywheel where if you sell people products at cost, it's very hard for people who are trying to make a profit to beat you. But if you can make all your money on the memberships, just selling more and more memberships for the ability to buy it costs, …”
Greenblatt: Scalable education requires training average teachers, not hunting top talent
“The model cannot be just hiring the top one percent of teachers because you run out of those. The model has to be giving the supports necessary and the training necessary to an average teacher to become a great teacher.”