Four Filters

Public equity investor.

[Miguel Dabán Baines-MDBbolsa @MDBBolsa]

S&P GLOBAL $SPGI : Bernstein 42nd Annual Strategic Decisions Conference

La dirección dejó mensajes muy potentes:
• 8T$ de deuda vencen hasta 2028, creando un maturity wall históricamente alto para Ratings.
• La emisión Investment Grade sigue muy fuerte incluso excluyendo hyperscalers.
• Además, ya empiezan a reaparecer operaciones grandes de M&A.

Hace 5 años, incluso la propia CEO pensaban que modelos como Snowflake, Databricks o los frontier LLMs podrían desintermediar Market Intelligence.

La compañía viene a decir lo contrario: cuanto más complejo es el ecosistema de datos, más valor tiene una fuente trusted.

De hecho, comentaron el caso de un gran banco que probó un frontier model en sandbox y tuvo que apagarlo rápidamente en producción porque no podían confiar en el output.

En mercados financieros regulados, una respuesta rápida pero incorrecta no sirve. El coste del error es enorme. El cliente necesita confiar en el dato y la responsabilidad reputacional acaba recayendo sobre S&P, no sobre el LLM.

Además:
• La mayoría de su IP ni siquiera es pública.
• Los clientes quieren respuestas “de S&P”.
• Y muchos seguirán usando workflows dentro de Cap IQ y las plataformas propietarias, simplemente con IA integrada encima.

El mercado probablemente sobreestima cuánto riesgo real tiene aquí el modelo seat-based:
• Cap IQ Pro es <6% de ingresos del grupo.
• Y solo ~20% de Market Intelligence sigue dependiendo de licencias por asiento.

La IA probablemente cambie la interfaz. Pero no necesariamente destruye el moat si sigues controlando el dato, el workflow y la confianza del cliente.

Y sinceramente, cuanto más escucho a management hablar del tema, más me parece que S&P puede terminar siendo uno de los grandes “AI enablers” del sector financiero, no una víctima de la IA.

[Paul Lee @iPaulLee]

Institutional LPs and HNW LPs often evaluate venture managers very differently.
The differences go far beyond check size.

🧵 ⬇️

[Greg @GS_CapSF]

A look inside $TSM Arizona fab. TSMC AZ (like almost all fabs) is highly automated and is the pinnacle of manufacturing efficiency and accuracy.

[The Transcript @TheTranscript_]

#BestOf2024 Quotes

Druckenmiller's advice to young people getting into finance:

"if they're going in it for the money, they should go elsewhere. There's too many people in the business like me that just love the game and the passion...they're not going to be able to outwork the people that are passionate in the game. And it's not a fun game. If you're losing, it's horrible

[Four Filters @FourFilters]

@compound248 @skhetpal 21% is return of their long investments, L/S fund CAGR is 13%, according to this article:
https://t.co/hOzw62L9i9

[Nikotes @dcurras1]

From 10 Blue links to Intent Search

$GOOGL new strategy to monetize Search improving by the minute 👀

[Alix Pasquet @alixpasquet]

A few thoughts on my mind as I prepare for the coming week.

- The goal isn't to beat the S&P. The goal is to beat, exploit, or take advantage of the market participants who think they can beat the S&P.

- You gotta love this game to be great at it.

- Analysts have 5 skills they need to hone/develop: recall of past patterns, mental visualization of a business within the feedback loops of its ecosystem, read between the lines, make leaps of judgment, and synthesize. AI tools inhibit or dull all these skills, especially in rookies.

- Investing (or trading) is a team sport if you want to do it well.

- You make the most money on a stock while the moat is emerging, being built, or widening. Not when it is static. The same with an analyst on your team. While her moat is being built is when she makes you the most money.

- There are tools, questions, and processes that can increase your probability of making money while minimizing risk.

- The writing process correlates with the investing process. Or another way to put it: great writing correlates/causes/conditions great investing.

- You can create culture. You can even fix a culture if you catch the cultural problems early enough.

- If you have 12 steps in your investment process, Idea Generation + position sizing are the two steps that are 80% of the value of the 12.

- Ideas where you will be able to use most of your portfolio management tools are better than ideas where you can use only a few.

- Lessons from your hobbies or passions can be applied to your investing; even better if you infuse your personal style, identity, and experiences into your investing. Mrs Market rewards authenticity.

- Competitive advantages in investing or fleeting; you have to constantly find new ones.

- The height of behaviorism is using yourself as a contra indicator.

- While researching, if you see a company you are studying do something innovative, see if you can do the same innovation in your investing, or for your investment business.

- You cannot have great results in investing without leverage or concentration.

- Keep a list of ideas you pass on, review this list at certain time intervals.

- The best filters for great ideas are smart people.

- Liquidity is the most beautiful thing. If you are wrong, she allows you to get out, and you might even have time to go short if you were long or to go long if you were short. If you are right and there is no more bear case, she allows you to buy more.

- Investors in your fund are your partners, not your clients. Your clients are actually the people, ideas, and processes that make money and reduce risk for your fund.

- There is such a thing as creativity in the investment business. Especially in field research.

- The ethos of the hedge fund business has changed. We used to be pirates (just an analogy, kids, not advocating to do anything illegal), and over time, starting in the early aughts, we became the British Navy. Are we in an age where Pirates or the British Navy will thrive? Would argue this is an age of pirates. Remember to protect your ships before they are raided by maraudeurs. Pirates attack at night, while you sleep.

Have a profitable coming week. Happy hunting!

[Four Filters @FourFilters]

@nosunkcosts Could it be lack of quality large cap stocks to attract foreign investors? Glove makers were a great early COVID trade if you timed it right

[crossdefault @crossdefault]

ATTENTION FINTWIT -- Please RT

I created an Emergency Fintwit Spreadsheet on googledocs in comment only mode. You can open this in a private browser and comment on cells in case twitter dies. I will post updates if the community reconstitutes elsewhere.

https://t.co/BXpvQlZTF8

[Four Filters @FourFilters]

P.S. This site stopped loading, funny. https://t.co/qn9ObzWFh4

[Four Filters @FourFilters]

Watching famous VCs continue pumping their winners/new investments on twitter while staying silent about their own firm's investments in FTX

[Four Filters @FourFilters]

If you don't publicly flaunt your investments, that's cool. But if you do, seems like now's the time to say something...

[Patrick OShaughnessy @patrick_oshag]

Interesting take on FTX

[Yellow Lab Life Capital @YellowLabLife]

So basically what I realized was if Zuck was going to have an 11 figure midlife crisis, I wanted to have one as well

But by doing it at my family office instead of at Tesla, I didn't wreck the share price (relatively speaking), ruin all my minion disciples &amp; get a margin call

[Four Filters @FourFilters]

Listening to the same question quarterly, when the answer never changes...capital allocation priorities, long term sustainable ROE, will you reverse provisions?, on and on...

[Four Filters @FourFilters]

This was good...https://t.co/PQpuk73uR6

[Jerry Capital @JerryCap]

"We need @Billbrowder on Invest Like The Best
@patrick_oshag" - h/t Private

[Four Filters @FourFilters]

Deep dive on Coatue: https://t.co/xYnp8iPPQi

[Four Filters @FourFilters]

I understand dress codes and expectations have changed during COVID; tech, crypto and startups are taking over the world, etc...but seeing more people lately presenting on zooms that look like they haven't even showered...does nobody give a f anymore?