Pods & Recs: No. 186
Today we have Barry Sternlicht on the real estate market, Jeremy Siegel and Jim Paulsen with their market outlook, and Marko Papic on all things geopolitics.
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Investing
Capital Allocators: Barry Sternlicht — Masterclass in Real Estate in a Post-COVID World. Sternlicht is the Chairman, CEO, and Founder of Starwood Capital Group, a $95 billion real estate investment firm that takes an agnostic view towards all things real estate. He starts with his career path and then shares his thoughts on the real estate markets today, specifically the red-hot housing market and why he’s decided to allocate money mostly to only red states in the U.S. He covers his three ‘green lights,’ which are utilizing the low cost of debt, industrials, and data centers. He finishes by explaining why he’s bullish on Brazil and his mentality for handing his investments outside of the fund (including crypto!). [October 4, 2021–64 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker | Website Link
“The problem is success breeds hubris. My goal is to keep my intellectual humility.”
Acquired: Michael Mauboussin Master Class — Moats, Skill, Luck, Decision Making and a Whole Lot More. Mauboussin discusses topics he’s covered in other podcasts but is always worth a listen. He discusses current market valuations and how the rise of intangible assets on company’s financial statements tie into that, the importance of base rates, the difficulty of untangling luck and skill from one another, and the persistence of returns within venture capital. [October 5, 2021–85 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker | Website Link
The Business Brew: Meb Faber — Quant Savant. Cambria Investments’ Meb Faber joins Bill Brewster to share his investment philosophy. He talks about current U.S. stock market valuations and what countries are trading at an attractive valuation today. He also explains why he’s a firm believer in trend-following and how he implements strategies around both value and trend-following. He also shares lessons from investing in private companies over the past few years (article here) and what some of his investment beliefs are that others don’t share (thread here). [October 7, 2021–109 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker | Website Link
Orion’s The Weighing Machine: Legend Jeremy Siegel Shares his Market Outlook and his Concerns about Inflation. At 5:35, Jeremy Siegel joins the podcast to share his outlook for the market and economy. He explains why he’s expecting much more inflation than the Fed expects (5–7%), why he expects both value and international stocks to outperform, why he’s nervous about sovereign bonds, and what his return expectations are for the U.S. market for the next 3–5 years. [October 5, 2021–24 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker | Website Link
“The amount of fiscal and monetary stimulus is unprecedented.”
The Meb Faber Show
#356 — Jim Paulsen, The Leuthold Group — The Wildcard Is Inflation and Whether It’s Truly Transitory. Jim Paulsen is the Chief Investment Strategist of The Leuthold Group, an independent investment research firm. Jim explains why the shift from a depressionary bust to a post-war boom last year was unlike anything he’s seen. He then walks through through his framework for analyzing whether inflation is truly transitory and what he expects to happen as the Fed continues to taper. At the end, Jim shares where he thinks you should and shouldn’t be invested if we experience a market pullback. [October 4, 2021–48 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker | Website Link
“When you look historically, when confidence is low, future stock returns are high.”
#357 — Marko Papic, Clocktower Group — If You Don’t Make Calls, Why Are You In This Industry? Marko Papic is the Chief Strategist at the Clocktower Group, an alternative investment asset management firm, where he leads the firm’s Strategy Team, providing bespoke research on geopolitics, macroeconomics, and markets. He’s also the author of Geopolitical Alpha and starts the episode by sharing his framework for understanding how geopolitical events will affect the markets. Then we talk current events and how he views them. Then Marko talks about the implications of Evergrande and why he does not believe China will try to takeover Taiwan and the implications of rising food and commodity prices. He finishes the episode with his thoughts about inflation, interest rates, and the U.S. stock market. [October 6, 2021–1 hour] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker | Website Link
“Beijing is constrained by their economy, by their growth model, and they’re going to have to tone down their aggression over the next 2–3 years.”
The Best Investment Writing Volume 5: Peter Chiappinelli, GMO — The Passive Aggressive Agg, Revisited. Listen to Andrew Patterson read his piece, The Passive Aggressive Agg, Revisited. [October 8, 2021–17 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker | Website Link
The Rest
The Tim Ferriss Show: #535: General Stanley McChrystal — Mastering Risk: A User’s Guide. General Stanley McChrystal is one of America’s highest regarded Generals and has been referred to as “one of America’s greatest warriors” by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. This episode revolves around his newest book, Risk: A User’s Guide, and he applies his framework to current events today. Most notably, he looks at the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and provides a unique perspective given he command of all international forces in Afghanistan in 2009. His ability to apply his framework to things like Coco Chanel’s success to the U.S. response to COVID makes me an entertaining episode with takeaways to apply to your own life. [September 30, 2021–90 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker | Website Link
“Threat x Vulnerability = Risk”
“The idea that we want to mitigate risk to zero before we act is really common and really costly.”
How Leaders Lead with David Novak: Tom Brady, Tampa Bay Buccaneers Quarterback | Leading with Performance. NFL legend Tom Brady shares his approach to becoming the leader of the Bucs when he joined the team and the little ways he connected and built rapport with others guys on the team. Brady says his goal was to provide consistency to the QB position and not say “This is how the Patriots did it.” Towards the end of the episode, the conversation turns to how Brady is approaching now being defending Super Bowl champions and trying to repeat. The most interesting takeaway to me was him saying that the most important thing in professional sports is continuity, which seems to be less and less common these days. [September 23, 2021–57 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker | Website Link
“Criticizing without a solution is just essentially complaining.”
BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
Chamath Palihapitiya (Founder & CEO, Social Capital):
- Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
- Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism by Bhu Srinivasan
- Fermat’s Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World’s Greatest Mathematical Problem by Simon Singh
- Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis
Anthony Casalena (Founder & CEO @ Squarespace):
