- people should go into investing if they love investing. It's important whether it's your own capital or someone else's.
- investing is a pure meritocracy
- energy, hunger, humility, intellectual curiosity are all important characters of successful investor
- Stephen Mandel is a great investor, he has the great skills as an investor and as a manager of people
- current leadership has no thought on what makes America great, he would not last more than 5 minutes in a Baupost interview
- expected return on US large-cap are too low, valuation and competition are making it difficult to make money in today's environment
- as asset managers we are responsible to maintain clients' purchase power
- we need to institutionalized the lessons we learned, the biggest lesson I learned is about people, hence the "no asshole" rule at Baupost
- as asset manager, it is meaningful to be a trusted fiduciary of our clients and steward of capital
- $5-$10B is an ideal size for a fund today, it's big enough to be meaningful, and it is small enough to be nimble; if too small you cannot get into certain asset class such as commercial real estate
Pat Dorsey from Dorsey Asset Management gave a very interesting presentation on economic moats and capital allocation; an older form of his presentation is available online here: https://www.finect.com/file/download/blog/0027c9701db014bd186df047c9701db014bd186df04
He argued forcefully, with a healthy doze of humor, that maturing companies should prioritize capital return over revenue growth due to their lower than cost return on capital. His arguments resonate with quite a few other investors in that return on invested capital is a very important metric to measure management's ability to allocate capital rationally and ROIC is also an important metric to show how competitive a company is.
As a side note, Pat emphasis the value of talking to industry people at trade shows or via LinkedIn. He believes in the value of primary research and he find that people love to talk about what they do.
