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첫 줄 결론: 이 영상은 빌 애크먼의 2020년 CDS 헤지 사례를 통해 '비대칭 투자'(작은 손실·큰 수익 구조)를 설명하며, 특정 자산의 향후 가격 방향에 대한 예측은 제시하지 않는다. 사례 배경: 2020년 초 애크먼은 코로나가 유럽·미국으로 확산되면 경제 셧다운이 올 것으로 보고, 보유주식 손실을 막기 위해 신용부도스왑(CDS) 지수를 매수했다. 사례 근거: 당시 신용스프레드는 역사적 저점 수준이었고, 2월 중순 이후 스프레드가 확대되며 CDS 포지션 가치가 급등했다. 3월 12일 기준 포지션 가치는 약 28억 달러로 포트폴리오의 약 40%에 달했다. 결과: 투입금 약 2,700만 달러 대비 약 26억 달러 수익을 냈으나, 주식 포트폴리오도 비슷한 규모로 하락해 해당 연도 성과는 사실상 보합이었다. 3월 18일 CNBC 출연 논란: 애크먼이 CDS 베팅으로 시장 공포를 조장했다는 비판이 있었으나, 영상은 그가 이미 포지션을 청산하던 중이었고 인터뷰에서 주식을 매수 중이라고 밝혔다는 점을 근거로 이를 반박한다. 비대칭 투자 개념: 손실은 초기 투자금으로 제한되고 수익은 크게 열린 구조를 말하며, 본질가치보다 싸게 사는 가치투자(버핏·애크먼 방식)를 예로 든다. 일상 예시: 연봉 인상 요구는 해고 위험이 낮은 반면 인상된 소득이 여러 해 누적되므로 비대칭적 기회라고 설명한다. 출연자 전망: 특정 종목·지수에 대한 1~3개월 가격 전망 발언은 없으며, 진행자는 과거 사례 설명과 일반 투자 원칙만 다룬다. 리스크 언급: 과거 사례의 손익 구조와 CDS 거래 메커니즘을 설명하며, 시장 효율성에 대한 의문과 신용스프레드 변화 가능성을 언급한다.
다듬은 글
n today's episode we'll explore how Bill Ackman turned 27 million into 2.6 billion dollars in less than a month this is a perfect example of an asymmetric investment where there is a huge upside but a very small downside so let's start with the story of how it all went down Bill Ackman is an investor and a hedge fund manager he's the founder and chief executive of Pershing Square Capital Management I'll save Bill's life story for another episode but today I want to discuss this famous trade that happened in 2020.
so in early 2020 bill and his team are looking into the economic effects that covet is having they see how China is dealing with the outbreak I mean China is a strict regime where the government says something and everyone has to follow suit and China is still having trouble containing the virus even when they're doing shutdowns of whole cities so Bill figures that if covid spreads to Europe and the U.S there's going to be economic shutdowns everywhere that means that a bunch of stocks in his portfolio are going to lose a lot of value he has two choices the first choice is to sell all his Investments and go to cash that's not great since that would trigger a lot of capital gains taxes so instead of that his other choice is to use a hedge as an insurance policy he chooses to ensure the portfolio with credit default swaps if you listen to last week's episode about the Incredible Dr Michael Berry you know that credit default swaps or cds's as they're called in short are essentially insurance that you can buy on a security so in Bill's case he buys cds's on some credit default swap indices so he buys a CDs on a CDS index pretty confusing right let's break it down a little bit I'm gonna get a little technical here but just bear with me I promise that it's all going to make sense Bill sees that the CDs indices are trading at very tight credit spreads now the spread is just the difference in yields between a corporate bond and a risk-free bond like a US Government Bond the yield is just the return on a bond so essentially the credit spread is the difference in return that you would get if you were to invest in a corporate bond instead of investing in a very secure and safe US Government Bond so tight credit spreads means that the return on corporate bonds and risk-free bonds is about the same well what does that mean spreads being tight means that investors don't think corporate bonds are much riskier than a Government Bond so in January 2020 Bill looks at the market and sees these tight spreads which means investors are essentially saying that everything is safe and companies are making money and the business landscape is safe and secure of course Bill also hears the news out of China and around the world the virus is spreading quickly so he buys some cds's on CDs indices essentially he's buying insurance for a stock portfolio his investment thesis is that in order to stop the covet spread Global shutdowns will be necessary essentially the whole world is going to follow the Chinese model for dealing with a virus he thinks that as the shutdowns happen businesses will suffer which means that businesses will face a higher risk of being bankrupt and that means credit spreads will widen because remember small spreads mean businesses seem safe widespreads mean businesses seem risky so Bill thinks the market will have a moment of realization where a corporate bond will need to yield a much higher return than a governor Government Bond for an investor to consider buying it Bill's thinking is that spreads are going to get a lot wider so he goes out and buys a large amount of these cds's in February 2020 in March investors start freaking out about the pandemic and they are now thinking that lots of businesses will be hurting soon this causes the credit spreads to widen a lot and that makes the value of bills CDs contracts to go through the roof by March 12th the CDs position and Bill's portfolio goes up to 2.8 billion and that's when bills started selling at this point the value of the cds's was around 40 percent of his whole portfolio that's crazy his insurance paid off so much that it was now worth half his a portfolio I could just picture Bill checking his portfolio statement smiling at the CDs gains and feeling terrible about the stock losses but at least he had the insurance on the portfolio smart move Bill had so many of these CDs contracts that it takes 11 days to sell all of them now on March 18th bill goes on CNBC for his famous appearance Scott wapner's interviewing Bill and Bill's noticeably shaken up he's talking about his father's poor health and that the government needs to step up to stop the pandemic it was quite the TV appearance you can find it on YouTube it's an interesting watch at the beginning of the interview the s p index was down 6.5 percent at Market close the s p was down over 10 percent so a lot of people were pointing fingers at Bill saying that he caused the massive sell-off Bill catches so much Flack when the media learns that he had this huge CDs bet all along but you've got to remember that he was already exiting the position for a while by the time he went on CNBC also in the interview he says outright that he's actually buying stocks so I'm not too sure about this popular media narrative at the time the media was saying that bill was doing this interview and trying to scare everybody just so that he can make a CDS bet pay off but I don't think that's very true anyway in the end Bill CDs bet pays off about 2.6 billion dollars but his stock portfolio goes down by about the same amount so he's essentially flat for the year so it's so funny to say that the markets are perfectly efficient because in February there was already quite a few people thinking that covet would be serious and you had the example of how China dealt with it but spreads were still really narrow so the opportunity to profit from a conservative investment was still there and spreads didn't start changing until the middle of February putting down 27 million and getting 2.6 billion dollars from that investment was a genius move huge props to Bill Ackman he did a great job preserving his client's capital this is a great example of an asymmetric investment asymmetric Investments have a huge upside and a small downside Bill's losses were limited because of the way CDs trades are set up let's go back to the story this is the worst case scenario for him he buys the cds's and spreads Titan and that would cause him to lose more than the 27 million investment that he put up but at the same time that he made the trade spreads were already at historic all-time lows and he saw the first cases of covid appear all over the world so there was evidence that the virus was spreading quickly so the economic Outlook was looking more and more Grim by the week so the likelihood that spreads would either stay where they were or widen was pretty good now it's easy to see this looking back but lots of investors were able to hedge their portfolios because they saw the risk approaching so big upside to his trade and he handicapped the downside in essence when you look at the stock market as a whole it's one big asymmetric investment if you buy a stock or an index your losses are limited to your initial investment but your gains are technically unlimited great investors seek out these opportunities where their investment loss is limited but the gain has a huge upside there's different ways of doing this and one way is to buy businesses for less than their intrinsic value value investors like Warren Buffett and Bill Ackman like to do this let's look at an example let's say you have a coffee shop in your neighborhood that's selling for two hundred thousand dollars if you look at all the cash that the coffee shop is going to generate in the future and if you discount that cash to today's dollars you can get the intrinsic value of the coffee shop the intrinsic value is essentially the true value of a business so if your intrinsic value is three hundred thousand and you can buy the coffee shop for two hundred thousand this is an amazing opportunity to own the coffee shop for two-thirds of its true value that's one way to make an asymmetric return if you're getting a business for less than its true value you're increasing the chances that you'll get a good return for two reasons the first reason is you can benefit from the business price moving up to the true intrinsic value so that's being able to buy the coffee shop for two hundred thousand and selling it for at least three hundred thousand down the road the second reason is that you can benefit from any additional growth that the business goes through as well so if you buy the coffee shop and you increase revenues by being a great operator maybe your revenues grow by ten percent let's say so now you can sell it for three hundred thirty thousand so your total return on the investment would be a hundred and thirty thousand so lots of upside and your downside is capped because it's limited to the the initial investment so buying businesses for less than their true value is one way to make asymmetric Investments these asymmetric opportunities don't just exist in investing by the way there's lots of asymmetric opportunities in everyday life a good example is asking for a raise the downside is capped unless you're working in a terrible place you're not likely to get fired if you ask for a raise now the upside is huge you can increase your income and the great thing is that your income is not just increased now when you get the raise but this increase will stay with you for many years to come so this one simple request can Compound on itself many many times
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