저자: JurajKrupa · 외국인
요약 보기
카를 이칸과 래리 핑크의 2015년 CNBC 대담을 소개하며 능동 vs 수동 투자, ETF 투명성 논쟁을 다룬다. 핑크는 ETF의 가격 투명성을 옹호하고, 이칸은 고수익 채권 포함 패키지 ETF의 위험과 기업 부채 확대를 경계한다. 발표자는 지정학·AI 투자 불확실성 속 시장 과열을 우려하며, 개별 기업 중심 투자 관점을 권한다. 구체적 가격 전망 수치는 제시되지 않았다.
다듬은 글
Hey, I'm glad to see you in another video, and this time I'd like us to take a non-traditional look at the Olin podcast, because in the last Olin podcast, the podcast guests discuss some disputes and competitive advantages, whether it's Open AI or Antropica or other AI models. If you want, you can watch this podcast .
You will also have a link in the description, you can check it out. But I've been very interested in it over the last week and I think it 's still relevant today . I was intrigued by a conversation between one of the legendary investors, activist investors. This means an investor who is trying to buy a company that is either in some trouble or at a very undervalued valuation and is trying to increase the value, either through some change in management or certain divestments of part of the company or some other change, and then make a profit from it.
So one of the main representatives of these activist investors, Carl Ian, had an interview with Larry Fink, who has been the head of Black Rock for many, many years, and this interview is from 2015. He was on CNBC, which is one of the largest economic television channels in America, and they discussed the role or I would call it the difference between active and passive investing.
They also touched on the advantages of ETFs, and they also touched on the overall view of the world. It's from 2015, but I think that many of those opinions and many of those, I would say, many times went to the point of conflict, because of course Larry Fing as a representative of Black Rock, which is one of the largest asset managers and Black Rock has shares today in every major tradable company that is part of an index or has a certain market capitalization and so they hold almost everything and decide on the direction of almost every company, because in every company, in every company that is publicly traded, Black Rock usually has a share of 5 to 10%.
And on the other hand, there is an investor who managed somewhere around $20-30 billion in his prime time. He made investments more like we do, in that he had a narrowly concentrated portfolio and chose companies that were either undervalued or were in various problems. Well, often those companies were well managed, they were excellent, the market just didn't know how to appreciate it, so historically they were also bought by Apple, Netflix, and many other companies.
And I think it's such a great contrast between these two worlds, and I'd like to say more about it and I'd like to play a few segments from this video. I'll give you the whole video here and you'll also have it down in the description, so feel free to watch it if you want. It's almost 40 minutes [of music] and I think it 's very good.
They also talk about the general mood in the markets, in 2015, when eh Carl talks about thinking that eh is getting into this initial conflict with Larry Fink, that he thinks that Hil Bonds, which are bonds or corporate debt that have higher yields, that is, they are mostly risky, eh are trading at very low premiums.
This means that he doesn't see what companies, what funds should buy these bonds. And we see that the situation is similar today, that many companies issue bonds, eh, issue bonds that are often risky. These are companies that often do not make a profit. Well, they are traded on the stock exchange, but they don't make a profit, they don't have such a certain future.
And these bonds are just trading at relatively small, small yields, small returns. And that's exactly what he criticizes for thinking that this could be a problem. And I think that the parallel is with today's world, that this can also be a problem, that it's as if the CEOs, uh, the heads of those big companies are using the debt market to generate new money.
They've often used it to buy back their own shares, but Karla Akan just doesn't think it's a very good solution and it's a lot like teasing Larry Fing. And he also says that many times the ETFs that everyone is buying these days are popular. Of course, we have some stock ETFs, we have bond debt ETFs, other other different eh these these packages eh assets.
So he's saying exactly that those debt ETFs, which of course Black Rock distributes in bulk , sells in bulk, can be very risky and can turn out very badly if you don't know what you're buying. Hey? That means, it's that, I think it's a good view and a bit of a contrasting view to the narrative that we see everywhere here, that the safest way in the stock markets is to buy ETFOs and of course whether it's Black Rock, Vanguard or the biggest brokers, but I think that Karl, as an investor who individually selects companies or tries to find that upside, eh explains that it may not always be the best choice for retail.
On the other hand, muas Lifing counters that ETFO, to perhaps make it clearer for our followers, ETF is an exchange traded fund. That means it's some kind of package, whether it's stocks or bonds or various assets that are, that Black Rock, Vanguard and other people put together. And Larry Fing precisely opposed him by saying that ETFs are very transparent, because since they are a pool of assets, a pool of stocks or a pool of bonds, every single component in that ETF must be valued on that given day, or at that given second, when that ETF is traded.
This means that it is very transparent and you see the real price at that given hour, on that given day. And he compared it exactly to some mutual funds, where most mutual funds settle their trades only in an auction, usually after the markets close. This often means that there is less transparency about the price at which you can buy or sell something.
And this is the defense of Black Rock, which of course makes billions of dollars every year by putting these ETFs together and selling them into its clients' portfolios. But you say that it's just a thing or a product that the market wants. It's a product that is transparent, that is well-established, and that wealth managers, pension funds, and large institutions simply love and buy.
I think Carl said it very well that it's fine to put some bonds in the package, which, as he often says, are high yield, meaning they have a high return and the higher the return, the riskier they should be, right? And by wrapping them in a package, it's often more complicated for the average investor or even for the more sophisticated investors to evaluate which of the bonds in that package may go bankrupt and thus the entire ETF or the entire basket may have a problem.
It's likened to some parallel to what happened in 2008, even though it was mainly about the real estate markets, but also as if the largest institutions were packaging those mortgages into packages and selling various things like options and CDS and so on, all kinds of instruments, insurance and so on, and it was connected to a lot of debt, with a lot of leverage.
But he says that even in this segment and in the products that Black Rock sells today, there is simply a certain level of risk and often that risk is not communicated to those clients and it is simply taken as if it is actually risk- free, that it is risk-free and it is very much as if it is being taken seriously.
And he was also right about the fact that in 2015, the high yield bond market in the United States was somewhere around $1.5 trillion. Today I'll give you a statistic, today it's about 30-40% more than it was 10 years ago. Most of these instruments are held by banks only a certain part, hey, they simply don't have any, there is no security from the largest institutions in the event of a collapse, hey, in the event that the companies that borrowed the money from investors cannot repay it and these bonds, these high-yield bonds are part of some ETF, then the ETFO may also have a problem and it may have a domino effect, which I think can be real.
I think that the situation is still the same today, that we see that even those large companies that do have profits borrow hundreds of billions to precisely build EA infrastructure, borrow for various new technological inventions and they can come under pressure and there can be problems with those bonds and those debts that they have there.
I think it is very important to mention that after the crisis, the so-called walk rule was introduced, when banks and major institutions simply cannot speculate on those financial instruments anymore and therefore cannot hold those high-yield bonds and other instruments to such a large extent. And that's exactly where the problem arises.
On the one hand, it's good, because when we protect the banks, we protect the entire economic ecosystem, but on the other hand, it's very thin ice, because at the end of the day, when some disaster happens and there's a big sell-off in these markets, there won't be any motivation, there won't be any buyers on the other side, because the banks will only hold a certain part and there won't be a so-called floor, like some lower limit, where the price panic could stop.
I would definitely like to show you a short segment from this video where Karl Ikan tells a story that I think is very relevant to today's euphoria. Hey. We simply have geopolitical problems here, we have a war in Iran, we have Ukraine, we simply have various uncertainties regarding investments in AI, we have various problems of economic stagnation, population in Europe, and simply all the markets are at their highest, everyone is fine, everyone is smiling.
And Karl I very aptly told a story that he tried to tease Larry Fink and the whole of Black Rock about, that in principle the market, the economy, is like a big bus, where different market participants are, having a party, drinking, eating. And Larry Fing, as a supporter of one of the largest corporations in the world, which today manages more than $4 trillion and various others, Vanguard, and at that time it was Janet Yellen, who was the head of the Fed, today it is Kevin Warsh, it's as if they are pushing the bus and everyone is fine, fine, until they reach the end of the road and the bus falls down a cliff and lands on the so-called Black Rock.
That means it was a very funny story that Karl Ikan told. And let's play it so you can see it in the original version. Yellush I don't think that's fair finish my car and then you can yell me and nowush push this thing fair somebody should have said this7 and I'm telling you7 I talk like this but I never really come out and we should say it we this this party thing is going everyone's wants to she wants to put the breaks on it and Larry says now let it go and the people in the party yell no don't touch As you can see, it's funny, but in my opinion it's a good, very good parallel even to today's world, even though this this interview, as I said, was filmed in 2015.
Eh, but I think that the situation today is such that just a lot of times the economy, we saw it even in that covid, everyone was great, nothing was happening and suddenly some black sw some event came, which just mercilessly washed out those markets and just at the end of the day eh companies like Black Rock and Vanguard and Blackstone and and other other corporations.
What else would I like to say about the corporate levels, which is also very interesting and which I think is also relevant to today, is something that we should definitely pay attention to and that is exactly what we should pay attention to, which is part of those ETFs, because often companies that are not completely managed ideally, and Carl Icam also said that, that he or his investors, activist investors of his type, are trying to push the management to work as efficiently as possible , to use their resources as efficiently as possible, to be as efficient as possible, especially for the shareholders who are the owners of the business.
And he was right in saying that many companies are taking on debt, which creates those high-yield bonds that are risky. But they often use this money to make acquisitions that are either overpriced and don't make any sense at all, or they buy their own shares, but they also buy their own shares not on very favorable terms.
That said, this is also something that I think is happening in corporate America today. This happens in many companies, where the CEO simply doesn't take the right steps, they simply take on debt, which they then invest or make acquisitions just for the sake of making an acquisition, and often these are not well-thought-out steps.
And these are other aspects, other individual things that I think need to be taken into account. When you buy individual companies on the stock exchange or buy an ETF, you should definitely look at what companies are in that ETF or what bonds are in that ETF. If you want to buy bond ETFs. What may seem less risky to some is that they buy debt and not buy shares of the company, but buy the debt of some companies that should not have a problem paying off these debts.
So it is certainly very important to monitor these things that investors like Karol Ikan or us or others, who focus mainly on individual companies and individual cases, not like Black Rock, which will sell you almost everything and they will sell you it because they simply have a trick on every product and they are usually the largest providers of these products.
And I think this interview is one of the few critical interviews where you can see the difference between active and passive investing and those two worlds. I mean, Larry Fing and KL almost fought several times in that 40-minute interview, and I thought it was very interesting to watch, that it 's not as monotonous as it might seem.
And, if many people tell us, both here in Slovakia and abroad, that you simply don't understand, then buy ETFs, but you just have to be careful about what ETFs you buy, what's in those ETFs, and maybe sometimes, I personally think it's easier to just buy a company that we have knowledge about or know its product.
We know that the company will simply prosper, unlike buying a bunch of companies that you may not even know about, but because someone recommended it to you or Black Rock or Vanguard sold it to you. I hope this video was very beneficial and I hope we will make more videos like this where I would give my opinion on these products, which are often pushed from all sides.
And I think that if you want to learn more and are interested in a more active approach to investing, a more active approach to selecting individual companies, or if you have some spare money and want to invest it in a few companies, then I think you should definitely follow these investors, such as KLAM, Villakman and other funds, which go into the individual companies in great detail and, in my opinion, have a better overview than the large management companies that sell almost everything.
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