The 'trust/communication equivalency':
"If I trust you completely, you don’t even have to talk to me. I know you are acting in my best interest at all times. If I don't trust you at all, I won’t hear anything that you say."
"High fidelity honest communication is the key to building trust."
"Courage is the foundation of all virtues. Your integrity and trustworthiness can be measured only when something happens: in order to develop a high trust relationship, you have to go through some shit."
Finding happiness through contribution and abundance.
"If you can align your life with where you have the talent to make a large, meaningful, and real contribution to the world, your circle, or your family, then you can be very happy."
"Abundance is the anti-hater/anti-jealous mindset. If you believe there is plenty in the world for everyone and you are happy to see people who contribute succeed, then you become part of "team contribution.""
"If, on the other hand, you have a scarcity mindset, it's really hard to be happy no matter what you get or how rich you are or how good looking you are, because there's always somebody richer or better looking or whatever."
"VC done right understands the entrepreneurial ethos and, therefore, the hip hop ethos."
Mars colony, AI, simulation theory as social dominance memes, "gold chains and rims for nerds"
"I am at the leading edge of the culture and can do things that you consider absurd that will garner me attention and enable me to dictate trends in thinking about fashion."
"There are two dominant narratives in human literature: Good vs. Evil and Humans Against the Gods
The Gods are "the system." The systems that we've all created — the school system, the prison system, the free market system, the system of democracy."
"A descendent of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch governor of New York. He had grown up with Robertson’s son. Soon after Robertson closed his fund in 2000, he handed Coleman more than $25mm to manage. Coleman was 25 at the time"
“Chase got whacked in the head with a two-by-four in 2009,” Yusko says.
"His worst years were 2008, when he lost 26 percent, and 2009. Coleman was short financial stocks and mortgage companies because his research told him they were money losers."
"Then the government banned short selling in many stocks and bailed out the banks. Tiger Global ended the year up just 1 percent."
“There were folks in 2009 who said Chase is done, he’s gotten too big and he’s lost his nerve,” Yusko says.
Excellent @duncangrahamnyc piece on the nuance and importance of understanding people.
"When I started East Rock 15 years ago, my mission was to find and invest with the most talented investors in the world."
"When I try to figure out what game I’m playing, I see that for the last 25 years I have been playing a game of strategy applied to people, a game where over and over I try to answer the question “what’s going on here, with this human?”"
"What most people think of as the hard parts of hiring—asking just the right question that catches the candidate off guard, defining the role correctly, assessing the person’s skills—are less important than a more basic task: how do you see someone, including yourself, clearly?"
TINA:
"Since interest rates remained low and the rising yen discouraged investors from taking their money abroad, the Japanese people were left with no alternative but to continue investing in the domestic stock market.”
"Tokyo Electric Power increased in 1986 by a greater market value than all of Hong Kong’s equity value combined. Nippon Airways traded at 1,200x earnings and was a “land play.” Normal business activities were considered irrelevant."
1966: "Buffett explains investment goals" after taking an interest in Berkshire Hathaway
"We have no formal program of acquisitions. We like to put our money into things with good value and good management."
Paul Tudor Jones: "One of my no. 1 rules as an investor is as soon as my manager, if I find out that a manager is going through divorce, I redeem immediately. Because the emotional distraction that comes from divorce is so overwhelming..."
...The idea that you could think straight for 60 seconds and be able to make a rational decision is impossible, particularly when their kids are involved. You can automatically subtract 10 to 20% from any manager if he is going through divorce.”
Soros had a self-described burn-out and “kind of identity crisis” after his first divorce which was right before Jim Rogers left as his partner.
Ackman got divorced around the time he held the bag on $VRX?