Marc Rubinstein

Former hedge fund manager; writes top 10 finance Substack and contributor to Bloomberg @opinion.

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

Outside my hotel in Miami

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

@Baddiel The knights in front of me put in a shift too!

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

@kirwantaylor Yes!

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

What a team

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

There’ll be no rowing in New York

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

If @j_fishback wins the gubernatorial he should nationalise the line.

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

Fortress may have accumulated $5.5bn of debt to get it up and running, but the Brightline rail service is great! On my way to Miami 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

Great idea. Look forward to attending.

[Gavin Baker @GavinSBaker]

Retail, Substack, Reddit and most of all @X accounts are increasingly the most important forces in the stock market and yet there is no way for them to connect directly with the management teams of the companies they are writing about and investing in. And they have almost no visibility into the late-stage private companies that are ever more important.

The @TomorrowXSummit aims to change this. Hosted by @antoniogracias and Valor Equity Partners, @iconnections_io and @rbiscardi and @atreidesmgmt, we are going to have our own version of the superb Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs TMT conference with an epic line-up of both public and private companies. Instead of having sell-side analysts interview management teams, we are going to have X accounts like @citrini and buysiders do the fireside chats. We expect thousands of  attendees at the Moody Center in Austin, November 17-18 and please note that security will be extremely tight given some of the CEOs that are going to speak.

Attendance will be free for X accounts that contribute positively to the discourse and affordable for retail accounts. Happy that this means friends like @DanielSLoeb1 , @altcap ,  @plaffont , @patrick_oshag and the @theallinpod crew will be able to afford the price of admittance should their schedules permit. And perhaps we can even get them on a panel or have them interview some management teams. I am sad to say there will be a different price for institutional investors who are not on X unless they are willing to reveal their anonymous handle, but I think this is going to be awesome for all. And everything will eventually be posted here on X for all to see. Open source for the win.

Link to the website to sign up in the next post:

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

@BullandBaird That was Dallas!

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

First time visit to Buc-ee's on the recommendation of @rorysutherland. You don't get crisps aisles like that back home.

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

@MrMojoRisinX Thanks @MrMojoRisinX

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

@paulg Try Sourdough Revolution in Lechlade

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

Good seeing @TheStalwart and @tracyalloway live in London

[David Wolfson @DXW_KC]

May I gently suggest, @GreenJennyJones, without doubting your good intentions, that this sort of response is part of the problem.
If you meet a specific wrong with a general virtue, you have not answered the wrong; you have stepped around it.

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

@TheStalwart Looking forward

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

@mrianleslie https://t.co/vtRPzKXmbi

[Max Karpis @maxkarpis]

Revolut’s pivot: Will going full bank kill its tech-level growth and valuation?

I read almost everything I can find about Revolut, but then I saw that Net Interest’s newsletter had dropped a new piece titled Revolut Unbound. I dropped my entire reading queue and started with it.

Net Interest is one of the top finance Substack newsletters, written by @MarcRuby, a former hedge fund manager, seasoned bank analyst, and Bloomberg Opinion contributor.

Marc and I have been following Revolut since almost the beginning, and we both have made small investments in the company. His Revolut Unbound piece is well written; it is best to read the whole thing yourself.

My top takes:

Marc suggests that low per-customer deposit amounts at Revolut could also be due to many customers joining rapidly and initially keeping low balances, which pulls down the overall average.

Another point Marc is making: can Revolut sustain its exceptional growth and high valuation as it fully transitions from a balance-sheet-light fintech company into a real, licensed global bank — or will the constraints of banking limit or alter its upside?

He writes: “One obstacle the group does face as it transitions more fully into a bank is capital. … One big difference though is valuation. … If Revolut can sustain both [rapid growth and 36% ROE], then Storonsky could be very rich.”

That is a great point. Initially, Revolut tried to be balance sheet-light, as I recall, CEO Nik Storonsky said in an interview that this way the company could grow faster and command a higher valuation as a tech company rather than as a bank.

Later, Nik admitted that avoiding heavier regulation was a mistake, and they are now embracing banking licences and biger balance sheets. One day, I will write my opinion piece on why I think it was a mistake.

The core idea of Marc piece: Revolut has come a long way from its early days of wanting to "replace banks" with a light, non-bank model — and securing full banking licences is a unlock that gives it new capabilities (deposits, higher net interest spreads, broader lending), but it also introduces real frictions and trade-offs that didn't exist in its more asset-light fintech phase.

Link to Net Interest newsletter: https://t.co/l7ehFBKQnA

[Marc Rubinstein @MarcRuby]

@JaneCazneau If you follow me back I can DM. Thanks (and super work by the way).