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uh I had started investing uh in in Business School uh with a classmate uh actually I went to Harvard with a plan about I was going to learn about investing so I could someday be an investor and there were no courses on investing at Harvard but there were courses on Finance and Accounting and competitive strategy with Michael Porter and uh that was the backdrop for my education about investing I said look I'll open a brokerage account I've made a little money in my uh real estate commissions and this will be another year of if I lose it all it's another year of Harbor business school if I learned something from it maybe it's a career and I kind of fell in love with investing and it's something you can kind of figure out actually whether you're good at or not pretty you know a couple year period of time so you started persing Square after that period of time or right away I started a firm called Gotham partners with a partner named David burkwitz a classmate of mine business school we started in September of 92 uh and yes we had no experience um and what was interesting is that none of the people who knew me in high school like parents of my friends had no interest because they thought of me as a kid um but we raised money from Mostly people who were themselves good investors and I think they could see in us I guess some potential a hedge fund manager is someone who can confidently tell the CE of a company in which their fund holds a significant stake that I have a better idea for running your company than you do bill lman for example is a well-known activist investor this highlights why it's not so easy for retail investors like you and me to make make a lot of money in stocks beating H fund managers in the stock market is challenging for several reasons including their expertise resources and strategies however the most powerful and effective factor is their activist role let's go back in time to see how Warren buff utilized this approach when he was known for his employing sigaba strategy inspired by his mentor Benjamin Graham this strategy involved buying stocks of undervalued companies often those in distress that with trading below their intrinsic value or even below their liquidation value Buffet would sometimes liquidate these companies if it made Financial sense here are a couple of notable examples sanbor map company sanbor map produced maps for fire insurance companies to assess property Risk by the mid 20th century its primary business had declined due to changes in the insurance industry in the late 1950s Buffett recognized that the sanbor map stock was significantly undervalued the company's investments in Securities alone were worth far more than its market capitalization Buffet purch 35% of the company for his partnership and gained control of the board he then pushed for liquidation of the company Securities portfolio this action unlocked the company's interest value resulting in a substantial return for Buffett and his investors and the other example is demster manufacturing demster Mill was a struggling manufacturing of a farm equipment including wind Mills and Water Systems in the mid 1950s Buffett began purchasing shares of dster Mill when it was deeply undervalued he eventually gained a controlling interest in the company Buffett brought Harry bottle a skilled manager to streamline operations and reduce cost once the company was stabilized Buffett sold its assets generating significant profits for his Partnerships Buffett wasn't just a passive investor he frequently got involved in management and corporate discussions in these early Investments if a business's ongoing operations were un promising Buffett did not hesitate to liquidate assets or sell off parts of the company these early experiences helped him sharpen his skills in valuation and business analysis laying the foundation for his latest success with B haway this illustrates why hedge fund managers often have a upper hand in investing they combined deep expertise with an active role in shaping the business they invest in specialize in picking stocks you weren't a macro investor then were you were a stock picker yes I would say we were kind of an activist stock picker we would buy pretty concentrated portfolio by large stakes and companies that we thought were great businesses or had great assets but were under managed and when you're an activist of course that word has uh different meanings to different people but you would you call the CEO and say we own 5% we'd like to be on the board we'd like to tell you how to run your company did you do that and was that intimidating to do that yeah it's not exactly what we said uh because again we were young and inexperienced um but uh it was more that we'd find a company one of the early Investments was Wendy's the hammerer chain and Wendy's owned 100% of a chain called Tim Hortons in Canada and Tim Horton was a very profitable successful pure franchise of coffee and dut chain principally in Canada and you can fairly clearly see that business was worth about5 billion at least it had about 450 million of operating income it's probably worth meaningfully more than that but you could buy all of Wendy's for five billion so literally the market was describing zero value to the Wendy's franchise and our advice to the CEO is well just spin off Tim Horton and then focus on fixing Wendy's but you can create enormous value in just proper in the two companies it was a bit like Investment Banking where we didn't charge a fee uh and actually back then um because we couldn't get a return phone call uh because we were a tiny little fund Circa um you know 2004 we hired Blackstone uh which had a Investment Bank at the time and we hired them to say put together a fairness opinion if you will of what Wendy's would be worth if they spun off Tim Horton and then we wrote a letter to the board we attached the Blackstone valuation uh which was nearly double where the stock was trading and then 6 weeks later magically they spun off uh Tim Hortons okay so you did that with other companies and being an activist was it uh consistent with your personality to do this because you got to be a tough guy to call up CEOs and sayy look I got I got a better idea about how to run your company than you do it was consistent with my personality I think I've always been some form of an activist yes and today your focus is on the kind of activist investing or you've stopped that so you know when you're no one knows who you are uh and you're trying to affect change in a company you have to sort of be an activist you have to use the media the public platform to in some cases shame a company into doing the right thing um 20 years later having had a meaningful number of successful engagements with companies we don't really have to do that anymore and so a lot of the stuff we've done recently uh has been either buying into a company that already has great leadership and we're happy to share ideas uh in some cases uh you know there needs to be a change in leadership but we're able to get things done without you know sort of what you might call activism more like engaged owners of businesses you've done three extremely successful macro bets one During the period of the time of the uh housing crisis 0708 and that one was extremely successful you did one uh again uh During the covid period of time yes which was I think maybe your best investment ever you made a 94 times your money investment almost 100 times actually 100 times yeah if you yes we bet that the credit spreads would widen as because we' need a we'd have to shut down the global economy and uh that's basically what happened deriver so yeah did people say do you have any more deals like that when you did that one yes and that was a hard to find um you know the the three black Black Swan events in the last 20 years we' were we've been able to be make a big big uh profitable bets on but these kind of Black Swan type things hopefully occur only every seven years let's say interest rates went up and they started going up you made another macro bet that turned out to be pretty successful as well yes so do you have any other macro bets you can mention now or nothing you can mention we have another one on as we speak actually we're betting that the Federal Reserve going to have to cut rates more quickly than people expect that's the the current macro bet that we have on
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