저자: BillAckman · 외국인
요약 보기
애크먼은 지정학 리스크를 인정하면서도 미국 장기금리 상승(30년물 등)에 베팅 중이며, 구조적 인플레이션(3% 이상)과 대규모 재정적자·국채 공급 부담을 근거로 든다. 주식은 가격결정력·로열티형 사업(유니버설뮤직, 알파벳, 버거킹 등)을 보유해 인플레이션 환경에서도 견딘다고 주장. 알파벳은 AI 우려로 싸게 사서 두 번째로 큰 보유 종목이라 밝힘. 패니메이·프레디맥 소액 보유.
다듬은 글
Jamie Diamond said that geopolitics remain the market's biggest risk. Do you agree? Um I think geopol I I don't know maybe in the very short term that's true. Uh but I think yeah it's sort of the unknown. It's the ultimate sort of black swan type risk, right? What what do you worry about? You worry about nuclear war.
You worry about you know uh an obligation to defend Taiwan. you worry about, you know, war between the US and we've gone from a period of, you know, a couple decades of, you know, put aside terrorism, which you can't really put aside, but we really haven't had war between major powers, uh, you know, two countries in Europe in, you know, 80 years.
And so, uh, this is not a bright time in our our history, but we had a period of time where I think Berlin Wall came down and we thought about peace. So, it's a different environment to to be investing in for a number of reasons, which we'll get to. Um, how would you describe what your positioning is today?
So, uh, similar to what it's been historically is we own actually really eight amazing companies. Um, I'm sure you know most of them. We have a tiny little investment in Fanny May and Freddy Mack, which uh, I think together represent little maybe a little over 1% of the portfolio, but the rest of the port those are really options on a ultimate kind of government taking them out of conservatorship.
the balance of the portfolio of great businesses we think do well in really any economic, political or or macro environment. Uh and then we opportunistically hedge risks and the two risks we've been concerned about really over the last you know it's a year and a half energy prices uh and kind of the the the longer part of the curve uh the Treasury curve becoming uh rates moving up betting betting on the long end of the curve rates continuing to go up.
You nailed that and you've been making that. Well, nailed it would be we put this on like 18 months ago. We haven't made you you we actually made a almost 3 billion on on two-year rates. We've made a relatively modest profit here. So, nailed it. We would have made more. But are you still we've been I was I sort of was quiet about it for a while and then sort of made my point a couple months ago and rates have moved a lot since.
Is it still on that bet? It is. And how long will it be? Well, until we're right or wrong. in your are you are you still figuring that rates at the long end the 30-year for example or however on the long end are still going to go higher yes I I look I think there's even in the relative short term there are a number of reasons why rates can move a lot among them right we have a government shutdown we're going into what looks like a highly probable government shutdown we're going to have a data shutdown right all these little government agencies that put out data that the Federal Reserve relies on to decide whether to you know adjust interest rates they're going to lose access to that data so we have sort of like kind of dark period We have probably the worst technical environment in our lifetimes for supply of bonds versus buyer bonds.
Right? We have China selling. We have Russia to the extent they owning US securities anymore selling. We have Saudi Arabia selling. Um and uh you know and we have an economy that is still strong and inflation you know 3 and a half 4% uh and persistent but you know my our view is basically you're not being paid enough to enter into a 30-year contract with the US government at a fixed price.
you know, 4.7 or wherever it is now um doesn't make sense in a world where we think structural inflation is north of 3% for the for the very long term. You we went through this very unusual period with extremely low interest rates. Um you know where everything just got cheaper and the you know you know since the financial crisis it you know the effort of the Federal Reserve was to make sure we didn't have deflation.
you know, let's the aspirational goal is to get to 2% inflation and then the pandemic and you know, trillions of fiscal stimulus, you know, the psychological stimulus of being free to to roam after being locked up. You know, all of these factors coming in at once kind of lit inflation and we still have this massive deficit spending.
We still have infrastructure uh spending there and the government's selling literally hundreds of billions of dollars of securities, you know, uh u bills and and and at some point they're going to have to sell more and more of the longer instruments. If you look at the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve, it's it's it's an imprudent balance sheet.
Uh you know, if you think about the United States, right? If you were if this were like a business, you wouldn't have so much short-term. You wouldn't have, you know, a third or more of your debt repricing within the next year, you know? So, it's not been managed. You know, I think actually Steve Nin did a good job as Treasury Secretary.
The one thing he missed is he should have issued a lot of 30-year, 50 year 100year paper at at crazy low interest rates and and that's going to be a burden. hearing a hearing a lot from investors these days. Ken Griffin was on our network within the last week or so. I just had a conversation with Rick Reer of Black Rockck.
Those who are talking about the possibility of much higher real rates for much longer than people think for the very reasons that you're talking about the issuance is so massive and where are the buyers going to come from? And the result of that is going to be higher. Yeah. I'm about much higher real rates.
Uh I think we're I think you know again my view is inflation or kind of the house view is inflation is going to be persistently higher. Oh you are the house but I guess I control the door on the way in and out I guess but um you know our our view is really that uh we're in a different world and you know the world sort of changes gradually uh and you have a generation of people are used to rates you know four sounding like a high interest rate and and it's you know on a historical basis it's extremely low rate of interest.
So, I I would not be shocked to see, you know, 30-year rates well, you know, well into the, you know, through the five barrier. Uh, and you could see 10 the 10 year approach approach five and that could happen in the very short term, like like literally weeks. A huge move in the last uh number of weeks.
And I think a lot of that is investors kind of rethinking. You know, what's interesting about the 30-year Treasury is people reflexively uh buy it whenever they, you know, because they've made money doing it in advance of a of a recession, but it's really not an instrument you should use to speculate on the short-term economy.
It's it's a fixed price contract with the US government for 30 years and reflects really structural forces and I think the structural forces have changed. You must be negative of the equity market. How could you have a positive view of stocks if you think that that's the outcome for bonds yields? Because if you own high quality uh the key is owning businesses that have pricing power, businesses that can do well in a world of and by the way, many businesses can do well in a world of 3% inflation.
The key is it's hard to manage a business in a world where inflation is volatile or or where inflation is 8% or you know the kind of crazy numbers. Um but many many businesses can do very well in a world of 3% inflation. And the kind of companies we own, they're very much like royalties, you know. So, we own Universal Music, which is a royalty on listening to music.
If there's pl music playing out there, Universal is getting a fraction of a penny for every song, uh, you know, that's being streamed. Um, you Google Google's a royalty, if you will, on people advertising, you know, on the web, right, or on YouTube. Uh, restaurant brands is a royalty on people eating at Burger King or any of their various concepts.
Hilton is a I continue you know royalty on people staying in hotels and and and uh eating and drinking and going to events. The beauty of these kinds of businesses is you know actually inflation is ultimately their friend right as long as they can keep their cost as long as their costs don't inflate as quickly as their as their revenues and I think the nature of those so so I feel comfortable owning those kinds of uh businesses even if inflation remains high and and also again historically you know if you think about you you know what is the value of a business it's the present value of the cash you can take out of it over its life discounted back an appropriate interest rate we were not discounting businesses back using 2% as is an appropriate rate of interest.
So we've historically, you know, our discount rate we've used, you know, just rough measure is more like 10%. Uh 9%, you know, numbers which discount the uncertainty inherent of investing in equities. Alphabet is one of your more recent investments. Is that correct? Yeah, we bought it late last year, early this year.
Yeah. Or early this year. How much did that have to do with AI? It had a lot to do with AI because AI was the reason why the stock was cheap, right? ChatGpt was launched, you know, incredible game-changing kind of product and Google really fumbled their offering. And so people said, "Oh my god, Google's way behind on AI and the stock sold off to, you know, 15 times earnings uh for one of the greatest businesses in the world." And, you know, we did a fair bit of work, but you know, Google's been, you know, almost a decade.
Uh they bought Deep Mind, you know, huge, spending billions and billions of dollars on AI. It's a company known for hiring, you know, great engineers and we you could certainly presume they were in a pretty good place on AI, but you know, they're again very different from a startup. They took a much more cautious launch approach and I think and then kind of fumbled an early demonstration made people think they were behind and Microsoft and chat GPT would sort of if you will open AI would eat their lunch uh and and it led to a very mispriced uh stock and then we actually we bought more in the 120s.
It's our second largest investment, Alphabet. Yeah. Some would suggest that and it was said on this stage earlier today by somebody who sold Alphabet when the chat GPT and OpenAI thing came out. We bought we bought from them. So we should thank them. Yes. That the ball was fumbled and recovered by the other team who ran for touchdown and then piled on with other touchdowns and now Alphabet may not be able to recover the leadership role that it had even and they Deep Mind is a perfect example of Alphabet having this in-house and still fumbling the ball.
I would say they've fumbled the PR around the ball. U but I think they've subsequently demonstrated publicly that they are you know integrating AI in all their various products. Uh obviously the most obvious example is search. Um and they are I think their barred is you know sort of certainly neck and neck with chat GBT and uh we think they're you know if you think about the enormous amounts of access to data that they have by virtue of the various you know everything from search to the various products that offer to their customers email and otherwise uh you know data and the ability to legally uh extract and train on on uh on data is is really important competence.
They also have designed their own chips, you know, uh access to um you know the cloud uh access to you know the processing power is critical. So they've got many many competitive advantages and I think it's in some ways you know in an integrated fashion that gives them an enormous advantage. They will be a dominant player in AI for the very very long term.
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