Bill Ackman literally gave a 44-minute masterclass that explains money better than any business school.
1. Starting early is the single biggest advantage you have. If you save $10,000 at age 22, never add another penny, and earn 10% a year, you have $600,000 by retirement. wait until 32 to start, and the same money only grows to $232,000. The decade you lose at the beginning costs you more than any decade later because compounding does its heaviest lifting at the end.
2. The return rate matters even more than most people grasp. That same $10,000 at 22 earning 10% becomes $600,000. At 15% it becomes over 4 million. At 20%, the rate Warren Buffett has achieved, it becomes 25 million. Einstein called compound interest the most powerful force in the universe. Ackman's lecture is essentially a demonstration of why.
3. Avoiding losses matters as much as chasing returns. if you reach for a 20% return but lose half your money every 12 years from bad decisions or a rough patch, your 25 million collapses to 1.8 million. Buffett's rule one is never lose money. Rule two is never forget rule one. the math of recovery is brutal, so protecting the downside is not caution, it is strategy.
4. Debt is safer, but the upside is capped. Equity is riskier, but the upside is unlimited. In the lemonade stand example, the lender who put up $250 earns a steady 10% and gets paid back first if the business fails. the equity investor who put up $500 earns over 100% if it succeeds but gets wiped out if it fails. The equity holder earns more precisely because they took the risk the lender refused.
5. The risk that matters is permanent loss, not price movement. most people think risk is the stock price bouncing up and down every day. Ackman says ignore that. the real risk is whether you will permanently lose your money. Short-term volatility is noise. the question that matters is whether you get your capital back with a return over the long run.
6. Avoid startups and complicated businesses. You do not need 100% a year to build a fortune. you need 10 to 15% over a long period. so skip the lemonade stands and unknown ventures. Invest in public companies that are established, liquid, and have to clear real hurdles before going public. If you cannot understand how a business makes money, avoid it no matter how good its track record. Ackman cites Enron, a business almost nobody actually understood.
7. Invest in a business you could own forever. if the stock market closed for 10 years, you should not be unhappy holding it. Coca-Cola is his example. easy to understand, sells a syrup and earns a profit on every drink, the population keeps growing, and it is nearly impossible to disrupt with new technology. McDonald's is another. People have to eat, the food is cheap, and they keep growing. find a business you would be comfortable holding through anything.
8. You want products people are loyal to and will pay a premium for. People buy generic flour and sugar without caring about the brand. but they want the Hershey bar, the Cadbury bar, the see's candy specifically. you do not want to sell a commodity that anyone can sell cheaper. You want something unique that customers refuse to substitute even at a 20% discount.
9. Low debt is a safety feature. In the lemonade stand example, $250 of debt was manageable. But if it had been $1,000 and the business hit a rough patch, it could have gone under and wiped out the shareholders. Find companies with little debt or so much profit relative to their interest payments that a bad year cannot sink them.
10. Barriers to entry protect your returns. You want a business that is hard for someone to compete with tomorrow. Coca-Cola's market presence is so strong that you expect to get a Coke at any restaurant. Pepsi has coexisted with it for decades, but neither can put the other out of business. If a competitor can show up next year with a better version and steal the customers, the business is not worth owning long term.
11. The best businesses are immune to outside factors you cannot control. Coca-Cola has survived 120 years through world wars, nuclear weapons, and every kind of crisis, and each year it makes slightly more money. You want companies that do not depend on commodity prices, interest rates, or currency moves. A business that keeps earning regardless of what is happening in the world is the kind you hold forever.
12. Low capital intensity is one of the most underrated qualities. The worst businesses require massive reinvestment to grow. The auto industry has to build enormous factories and buy machine tools before selling a single car, and those tools wear out. GM's stock barely moved over 40 to 50 years for exactly this reason. Coca-Cola, by contrast, sells a formula and collects a royalty. American Express takes a few percent of every dollar spent on its card. a business that earns a royalty on other people's capital is one of the best things you can own.
13. Pay down debt and build a cushion before you invest. If you have high-interest credit card debt, paying it off is a guaranteed return equal to the interest rate. same logic, to a lesser degree, with student loans at 6 or 7%. and you want 6 to 12 months of expenses in the bank so that losing your job tomorrow does not force you to sell. You can only handle market volatility if you do not need the money.
14. Be a buyer when everyone is selling and a seller when everyone is buying. The natural human tendency is the opposite, a lemming-like instinct to sell in a crash and buy in a bubble. people sold into the 1987 crash when they should have been buying. The only way to resist this is to be financially secure enough that the money at risk does not affect your life, so you can withstand the swings without panicking.
15. The stock market is a voting machine in the short term and a weighing machine in the long term. Ben Graham's idea, which Ackman repeats. short-term prices reflect the whims and emotions of investors. long term, prices reflect the actual value of the underlying businesses. If you buy good businesses at reasonable prices and hold them while they grow, you make money over time as long as you are never forced to sell at the wrong moment.
16. A stock is just a bond where you do not know the coupon. Flip a price-to-earnings ratio over, and you get an earnings yield. A stock at 10 times earnings is a 10% earnings yield, which you can compare directly to a 3% treasury. the difference is the bond's coupon is fixed and the stock's coupon, its earnings, moves up and down. Ackman wants an earnings yield higher than a treasury that will also grow over time, so he does not need to be right about explosive growth to earn a good return.
A Reddit user found a glitch in a $7.6 BILLION trading app that gave him unlimited borrowing power. He turned $4,000 into a $1,000,000 stock position. Robinhood had no idea it was happening.
– ControlTheNarrative was a regular user on WallStreetBets
– A Reddit's stock trading forum known for reckless bets and even more reckless confidence.
– Robinhood Gold let users trade on margin, put down $2,000 and get $4,000 of buying power. Standard practice.
– Then he noticed something.
– When he sold a covered call using borrowed margin money, Robinhood's system counted the proceeds as his own cash instead of borrowed funds.
– That meant he could borrow against it again. Then sell again. Then borrow again. Every cycle doubled the number.
– $2,000 became $4,000. Then $8,000. Then $16,000. There was no ceiling.
– He posted a video on Halloween 2019. WallStreetBets called it the infinite money cheat code and it spread everywhere within hours.
– One user turned a $4,000 deposit into a $1,000,000 stock position and posted the screenshot.
– Another turned $2,000 into $50,000 of buying power on camera in minutes.
– Some used it carefully. Others did not.
– One user bought $50,000 in Apple options with money he could never cover. They expired worthless. He owed Robinhood $48,000 he didn't have.
– Robinhood told CNBC they were "aware of isolated situations." There was nothing isolated about it.
– They patched the glitch within days. No criminal charges were ever filed.
A $7.6 BILLION trading app accidentally built a money printer and left it on the internet. Reddit found it on Halloween. It took Robinhood less than a week to notice.
Warren Buffett:
“I read hundreds of annual reports every year. We’ve learned a lot from them. For example…we bought Coca-Cola based on an annual report…not on any conversation with top management.”
Warren Buffett: "You have to understand accounting. It's the language [of business]. It's like being in a foreign country without knowing the language if you're in business and you don't understand accounting."
"You want to get as comfortable with [accounting] as you are with the English language."
Druckenmiller's advice to young people who want to get 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. and they're not going to be able to outwork the people that are passionate."
"and it's not a fun game if you're losing."
the people who survive long enough to compound real returns are the ones who genuinely enjoy the research, the building, the debugging at 2 AM. if you're only here for the P&L, the first extended drawdown will end you.
@HeisFaysal@RaymondChris100@Santi_Classorla@ESPNUK Is it black and white discussion because since 2004 arsenal have won 1 premier league and a handful of fa cups and odd league cup while liverpool have won fa cups league cups 2 premier leagues and 2 champions leagues? But u think if suarez joined arsenal youd have won the league?
Carl Icahn borrowed $400,000 from his uncle to start trading - now he's so feared that billion-dollar companies paid him millions just to leave them alone
he made $2 billion on Netflix, $2 billion on Apple, $700 million on Texaco in a single day - his uncle called him crazy
one of his first TV interviews ever - he revealed exactly how he does it
he dropped out of medical school - his mother said "you needn't come home anymore - you made the great mistake of your life "
one company offered him $10 million to walk away - "you want time to think about it? " - "no I'll take the 10 million "
"I only buy stocks that are down - if the stock goes up you don't see me around - because there's no bargain and I only buy a bargain"
bookmark & watch today ↓
Stanley Druckenmiller walked into George Soros's office ready to make the most aggressive bet of his life
His plan was to sell $5.5 billion of British pounds, buy deutsche marks and put 100% of the fund into that single trade
He laid out the whole thesis, certain Soros would think he had lost his mind
Soros started wincing
Druckenmiller figured he was about to get his idea torn apart
Then Soros said this:
"That is the most ridiculous use of money management I've ever heard. What you describe is an incredible one-way bet. We should have 200% of our net worth in this trade, not 100%. Do you know how often something like this comes around? Like once every 20 years. What is wrong with you?"
The part most people get backwards is right here
Finding the right bet is only half the job
When a true one-way bet finally shows up, the real mistake is betting too small
These setups are rare, so when the odds are massively in your favor you press, you don't tiptoe
That is the whole game on Polymarket
Spot the bet the crowd has priced wrong, then size it like you actually believe it
I broke the full framework down in the article below
If you're worried about your portfolio falling, listen to this.
Here’s legendary investor Peter Lynch on how to handle market corrections.
Save this to stay ahead of the curve.
The most important lesson in investment history got completely lost.
Druckenmiller pitched Soros on shorting the British pound in 1992. $5.5 billion. 100% of the fund. He thought that was bold.
Soros told him it was timid.
"That is the most ridiculous use of money management I've ever heard. We should be 200% of our net worth in this trade, not 100%."
What most people misread: Soros wasn't reckless. He was calculating asymmetry.
The British pound was trapped inside the European Exchange Rate Mechanism at a rate the UK couldn't sustain. Inflation was 10%. Unemployment was surging. Interest rates would have to go to 15% to defend the peg, which would collapse the housing market and politically finish any government that tried it.
The trade had a ceiling and a floor. If it worked, you made a fortune. If it didn't, Britain defending the peg raised rates high enough that you exited at a small loss.
This is what Soros actually teaches and nobody says it plainly: position sizing is a function of conviction, not diversification. When the expected value is radically positive and your downside is bounded, putting in 100% means you didn't actually believe your own analysis.
They put in more. The fund made $1 billion in a single day. September 16, 1992. Black Wednesday.
Druckenmiller has given dozens of interviews since. The lesson he repeats every time: when you're right, most investors still undersize the position. The rarest skill in money isn't finding the trade. It's having the nerve to actually bet it.
“George (Soros), I’m going to sell $5.5 billion worth of British pounds tonight and buy deutsche marks. Here’s why I’m going to do it, that means we’ll have 100% of the fund in this one trade”.
As I’m (Stanley Druckenmiller) talking, he starts wincing like what is wrong with this kid, and I think he’s about to blow my thesis away and he says, “That is the most ridiculous use of money management I’ve ever heard. What you describe is an incredible one-way bet.
We should 200% of our net worth in this trade, not 100%. Do you know how often something like this comes around? Like once every 20 years. What is wrong with you?”