From one piece Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech | Lex Fridman Podcast #413 12 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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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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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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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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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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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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korrents.com
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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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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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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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.