From one piece Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech | Lex Fridman Podcast #413 22 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
An independently owned platform is a necessary counterweight to the government and the mainstream media.Their words
So having an independently owned powerful platform is very important for truth, for free speech, for hearing the other side of the story, for counterbalancing the power of the government.
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Their words
The problem is the defamation law in the US is so favorable to the publisher, to the media, and so unfavorable to the victim. And the incentives are all wrong.
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korrents.com
The DEI movement on campus comes out of a Marxist socialist way of looking at the world.Their words
A friend of mine sent me Christopher Rufo's book, America's Cultural Revolution, which is sort of a sociological study of the origins of the DEI movement and critical race theory. I found it actually one of the more important books I've read and also I found it quite concerning. Ultimately, DEI comes out of a kind of Marxist socialist way to look at the world.
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Harvard's governance is broken because its self-perpetuating board can never be rebalanced from outside.Their words
It's really a self-perpetuating board that effectively elects its own members. Once the balance tips, politically, one way or another, it can be kept that way forever. There's no kind of rebalancing system.
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korrents.com
Universities would be better run by business leaders than by academics the faculty approves of.Their words
I would argue having a business leader run these institutions and then having a board that has, itself, diverse viewpoints, and by the way, permanently structured to have diverse viewpoints is a much better way to run a university than picking an academic that the faculty supports.
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Their words
When a company fails, most people blame the CEO. I generally blame the board. Because the board's job is to make sure the right person's running the company, and if they're failing, help the person.
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Their words
And oftentimes it's more important to them to have the public perception that they're good directors so they get the next best deal. If they have a reputation for taking on management too aggressively, word will get out in the small community of founders and they'll miss the next Google.
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korrents.com
A large, respected owner on the board is what buys a CEO the time to make decisions that only pay off years later.Their words
That large owner on the board can help buy the time necessary for management to behave in a longer term way. And that's, I think, good for all the shareholders.
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Their words
And what activism has done, and I think we've helped lead this movement, is it restored the balance of power between the owners of the business and the management of the company. And that's been a very good thing for the performance of the US stock market actually.
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korrents.com
Incentives drive all human behaviour, which makes a management team's incentives central to valuing a company.Their words
So as I like to say, incentives drive all human behavior and that certainly applies in the business world. So understanding the people and what drives them, and what the actual financial and other incentives of a business, are very important part of the analysis for investing in a company.
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Their words
So we at Pershing Square short a very few stocks. And the reason for that is short selling is just inherently treacherous.
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korrents.com
Individual investors analysed Tesla better than the professional investors and analysts did.Their words
Actually individual investors did a much better job analyzing Tesla than the so-called professional investors or analysts, the vast majority of them.
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korrents.com
Almost no mutual fund earns the fees it charges, so most investors are better off buying an index fund.Their words
There are very few that earn their keep in terms of the fees they charge. They tend to be too diversified and too short-term. And you're often much better off just buying an index fund.
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About a dozen holdings captures nearly all the benefit of diversification; going to fifty adds almost nothing.Their words
I even recommend for individual investors to invest in a dozen companies, you don't get that much more benefit of diversification going from a dozen to 25 or even 50.
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Their words
So as long as you don't borrow against securities, you own really high quality businesses and it's not money that you need in the short term, then you can actually be thoughtful about it.
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korrents.com
Investing well requires reversing the human instinct to grow excited as prices rise and fearful as they fall.Their words
People tend to get excited about investments when stocks are going up and they get depressed when they're going down. And I think that's just inherently human. You have to reverse that. You have to get excited when things get cheaper and you got to get concerned when things get more expensive.
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And that's why we have tended to stay away from companies that are technology companies because technology companies generally... The world is such a dynamic place that someone's always working on a better version.
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The most difficult analysis to do as an investor is that, is kind of figuring out how wide is the moat, how much at risk is the business to disruption? And we're in, I would say, the greatest period of disruptability in history.
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Price matters a lot. You can buy the best business in the world and if you overpay, you're not going to earn particularly attractive returns.
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You want to buy a company at a price that if you're wrong about what you think it's worth and it turns out to be worth 30% less, you paid a deep enough discount to your estimate that you're still okay. A big part of investing is not losing money.
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korrents.com
Most investments are really speculations, because only a handful of businesses can be predicted with any confidence.Their words
And very few businesses that you can have a really high degree of certainty about. And as a result, many investments are speculations because it's really very difficult to predict the future.
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korrents.com
The value of anything is the present value of the cash you can take out of it over its life.Their words
The value of anything, I would say, other than love, let's say, is the present value of the cash you can take out of it over its life.