Chamath

[bizaro86]

Chamath is this generation's Bruce Berkowitz.

 

That's not even remotely the case. Bruce went deep in the trenches with his DD. He was over concentrated and stubborn and that has been his undoing but Chamath barely does any DD, has lots of positions and doesn't have anywhere close to the same conviction as Bruce did. He is the polar opposite

 

Not BargainValueHunter, but there are some similarities.

 

Bruce B outperformed dramatically, got famous  and then underperformed dramatically.

 

Chamath P has outperformed dramatically and got famous. I think the third step is pretty likely to occur, unless he keeps selling out (eg recent sale of SPCE) although if he does that i think it will eventually damage his reputation among his followers.

[Gregmal]

Camath basically got famous, as least in the capacity of being a money manger/finance guy, within the past 12-18 months and did almost all of it harnessing his branding power and hyping his "deals" to the moon. Not only has it already been shown to be unsustainable, but within its context, he's basically just the equivalent of a banking dude who got the hottest IPO's and claims he's the greatest but really is just tied to them popping a lot right out of the gate. Yea, he didnt even get through lockup expiration on many of these. He's the definition of a fad. At least ARK has consistently bought and held small companies, for many years, that turned into multi baggers or real world relevant names.....

[EdWatchesBoxing]

The cloud over Clover Health is enough for me to question anything he markets.

 

This thread is amusing:

I love Assness. Whatever that guy talks about... investing, politics, business. He'll give you an honest, straight up, no bullshit answer. You've got to respect that in a man.

 

Yes, and I am enjoying his tweets/discussion on the value factor :)

 

On Cathie Wood, she gets bashed on FinTwit, but I don’t think it is fair. She had a 10+ year career at AllianceBernstein in thematic investing, which was probably the springboard to ARK. Any ARK etf is speculation, IMO, but I think she has worked very hard. However, I think she’s spent too much time marketing and not enough time on risk management, maybe it’s all by design. I don’t really care because I didn’t put any $ to work there.

 

Chamath on the other hand seems to manipulate too much. I really dislike his tweets about buying up the Hamptons, or whatever it is. It’s all BS.

[BargainValueHunter]

Chamath is this generation's Bruce Berkowitz.

 

That's not even remotely the case. Bruce went deep in the trenches with his DD. He was over concentrated and stubborn and that has been his undoing but Chamath barely does any DD, has lots of positions and doesn't have anywhere close to the same conviction as Bruce did. He is the polar opposite

I was not talking about investment style.

 

I was talking about a palpable lack of humility while being interviewed by financial journalists.

[RadMan24]

Don’t forget* he has an opinion on everything and it’s very important that everyone hears about it.

 

*edit (it’s late)

[tytthus]

Chamath is this generation's Bruce Berkowitz.

 

Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time..

 

You made me look it up:

 

There was a blog post on “what happened to Bruce Berkowitz about a month ago.  Success leads to overconfidence in abilities that maybe weren’t all that in the first place.

 

Bruce Berkowitz: From Morningstar Manager of the Decade to 15 Years of Underperformance

 

https://canuck-analyst.blogspot.com/2021/02/bruce-berkowitz-from-morningstar.html

 

Lots of nice stuff in there. I think Munger has said the best way to learn is from other’s mistakes.

[ak1979]

Invested a decent sum in June-2018 in IPOA.. no clue of which company the SPAC funds would be invested.. After watching quite a bit of Chamath speaking and learning about his principles in investing.. they are not bad. Exploiting the inequitiy not only in markets but in how talent is spread across the spectrum of people. He sounded like Buffett in the early 70's.. set out to do something different and going about it in a logical manner. I'm using the word "like".. A individual's attitude and psychology may be properly determined after watching their actions for a longtime. There is an unknown to the external observer about the individual .  Any who didn't meant to diverge, it was necessary to express what i thought at the time.  Things checked out well and i scaled investment after they decided to merge with Virgin Galactic.. watching Richard Branson step away from his main duties and focus on space exclusively in the decade after 2010 + learning about  Burt Rutan and his brilliance designing planes (There is thing about few individuals cracking aerodynamics more than others just like any other fields ). Later on.. in 2018 learned about the Choas at Chamath's private equity.. how all the partners started moving away to Kleiner Perkins, other reputed VC firms.. still held IPOA with the faith in Chamath.. fast forward in Jan-Feb 2020...SPCE was trading at crazy valuations..i sold between $20-35...  sold out to a inflated valuation....a 3-bagger..not bad. held stock when it was  down to $8-7... in SPCE without hesitating in late 2019.

 

 

There is difference between "perception of"  18th century morals to 19th century morals to 20th century morals to 21st century morals... when you see Buffett and his way of dealing things.. and i'm sure there is style associated with any successful investor..  having appreciated Buffett for years and his principles of sticking through thick and thin... Chamath might have 21st century morals.. which is quite different and irritating to the eye.. watching it in Buffets frame of reference.. things look inferior how a partner or investor might be treated if you invest with Chamath as a small guy...

 

 

I'm more watchful after the rapid SPAC's he launched in 2020.. Chamath may still be successful in the future.. there is some unsettling things if you zoom in watch every action he is taking. is he going to deploy capital well..? over the longer term. Yet to be seen...in comparison to the greats.

[hasilp89]

Not sure what you mean by different a perception of morals?

I don’t think the definition of how to treat a business partner properly has/will/should ever change.

Buffet took downside risk in the BPL days and today looses money pari passu to me. This is not the same for Chamath. Follow the incentives and don’t pretend they don’t impact what Chamath does and how he may treat his partners at any point (didn’t he bail on Virgin?)

 

His incentive is to price SPAC deals so he gets his promote. Be weary of anything else’s he may say. While he may sound like Buffett to you he sure as heck doesn’t act like him IMO. Maybe some downside for his promote or taking it in conjunction with stock gains (more akin to BPLs hurdle or how Franklin does his SPACs).

 

 

“ Well you can say, “Everybody knows that.” Well I think I’ve been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I’ve underestimated it. And never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther.”

-Munger

 

If he’s underestimating it, we sure as hell are.

 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

Chamath is this generation's Bruce Berkowitz.

 

Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time..

 

You made me look it up:

 

There was a blog post on “what happened to Bruce Berkowitz about a month ago.  Success leads to overconfidence in abilities that maybe weren’t all that in the first place.

 

Bruce Berkowitz: From Morningstar Manager of the Decade to 15 Years of Underperformance

 

https://canuck-analyst.blogspot.com/2021/02/bruce-berkowitz-from-morningstar.html

 

Lots of nice stuff in there. I think Munger has said the best way to learn is from other’s mistakes.

 

I dunno Bruce seems like he had multiple good ideas - it seems the problem was that his specialty was in financials as all of his best bets seems to have been in those names (Wells Fargo, BofA, AIG, Fannie/Freddie).

 

Financials haven't been in favor much in a 0% rate environment so after the initial panics of 2008/2009 and again in 2011, there probably wasn't much juice left to squeeze even in an improving economy.

 

For example, BofA hit $16 back in 2011. It wasn't until 2017 that it sustainably rose above that number - that's tough for performance to have a major holding do 0% for 6 years.

 

Fannie/Freddie have gone back and forth between stellar and flat over the last 6 or so years.

 

And St. Joe's didn't do anything for years until 2021 where it doubled which makes up for years of flat performance.

 

Just seems like until 2021, all of his bets were basically flattish. But financials are performing well, St. Joe's is now performing well, and there's a catalyst for Fannie/Freddie to be extraordinary this year. I just think hd had a few rough years staying within his circle of competence because financials as a whole were mediocre.

 

I don't think that makes him a bad investor - his long term track record will likely still be stellar. It just means you have to know that he's not going to perform in all environments.

[Gregmal]

^ There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but thats the problem plenty of investors have. They are either arrogant ro refuse to evolve from their original framework and then spend years underperforming while telling themselves everyone else is crazy and destined to fail...

[winjitsu]

On 3/28/2021 at 1:58 PM, TwoCitiesCapital said:

I dunno Bruce seems like he had multiple good ideas - it seems the problem was that his specialty was in financials as all of his best bets seems to have been in those names (Wells Fargo, BofA, AIG, Fannie/Freddie).

Just seems like until 2021, all of his bets were basically flattish. But financials are performing well, St. Joe's is now performing well, and there's a catalyst for Fannie/Freddie to be extraordinary this year. I just think hd had a few rough years staying within his circle of competence because financials as a whole were mediocre.

Respect for Bruce, but he and Eddie had the "smartest guys in the room" type hubris with Sears. It's this hubris that led them to oversize the position. That rubbed me the wrong way. 

Chamath OTOH, don't get that vibe from him. Definitely more snake-oil salesman / pump-and-dump. 

 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

8 hours ago, winjitsu said:

Respect for Bruce, but he and Eddie had the "smartest guys in the room" type hubris with Sears. It's this hubris that led them to oversize the position. That rubbed me the wrong way. 

Chamath OTOH, don't get that vibe from him. Definitely more snake-oil salesman / pump-and-dump. 

 

For Lampert, sure. He basically went all in. 

 

Bruce has always run concentrated positions in his fund and always been just a handful of names. I don't recall what % of his MF it was, but would you say it ran considerably larger than his bets on BofA, AIG, or Fannie/Freddie? 

 Too many years back now for me to recall the specifics, but I never got the impression Bruce had a significantly larger position in Sears than his other holdings. 

Edited April 1, 2021 by TwoCitiesCapital

[Spekulatius]

Just reminder that Virgin Galactic's "Spaceship" has not reached Space yet. Their revenue last year was $238k and their losses $273M. It remains to be seen, whether SPCE is a commercial success. The stock has done well, but then again GME trades at ~$190/share too as I type this.

[Xerxes]

Exchange between Bloomstran and Chamath on twitter (mostly one-sided)

Christopher Bloomstran on Twitter: "If you can maintain anywhere near the 19% advantage over the index & allocate your way around the inevitable purchases of terrible businesses then another two decades hence you can crown yourself the new Buffett. In the meantime the comparison is a thoroughbred to a jackass. 22/" / Twitter