John Paulson Interview

[Parsad]

Interview with John Paulson on gold, crypto, investing.  Cheers!
 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-30/is-bitcoin-a-good-investment-billionaire-paulson-says-crypto-worthless-bubble?utm_source=twitter&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_medium=social&sref=acfjrZ8Z

[Guest]

sometimes luck is a better thing to have than skill.

[JRM]

I was getting excited about his comments about gold until he said he's been long since 2009 or something.

[maxthetrade]

Well, at least I agree with him that crypto will be worthless at some point. A limited supply of nothing captures it pretty well! 

[Gregmal]

I wouldnt let John Paulson manage the rounded up change from my daily Dunkin Donuts orders.

[maxthetrade]

17 minutes ago, Gregmal said:

I wouldnt let John Paulson manage the rounded up change from my daily Dunkin Donuts orders.

 

Perhaps that's the reason why he is a billionaire and you're not  Just kidding, but I find this monday morning quaterbacking a bit annoying.

Edited August 30, 2021 by maxthetrade

[Gregmal]

Paulson doesnt get as much credit as he deserves. Dude is a salesman. His investments since the GFC have been downright awful. Terrible doesnt even cover it. And what does he do? Laughs behind the scenes as he opens new "Paulson ultra advantage" and "Paulson super leverage credit opportunity fund IV" and all that shit. I wouldnt listen to a thing he has to say. He's been saying the same thing about gold since the GFC. 

[spartansaver]

1 hour ago, Gregmal said:

Paulson doesnt get as much credit as he deserves. Dude is a salesman. His investments since the GFC have been downright awful. Terrible doesnt even cover it. And what does he do? Laughs behind the scenes as he opens new "Paulson ultra advantage" and "Paulson super leverage credit opportunity fund IV" and all that shit. I wouldnt listen to a thing he has to say. He's been saying the same thing about gold since the GFC. 

Him and nearly every other investment manager. These people don't get rich by being good investors. They get rich by being salesman attached to a product that is able to scale rapidly with barely any incremental costs. You get one pitch right and sell how smart you are, you can make way more in sales than you'll ever make through compounding good investments. 

[Gregmal]

For sure. But most are at least semi decent investors. There s a few, like Einhorn and Paulson(I'll leave out some of the COBF favs to avoid controversy) who are just downright terrible investors. 

[Parsad]

3 hours ago, Gregmal said:

I wouldnt let John Paulson manage the rounded up change from my daily Dunkin Donuts orders.

 

1 hour ago, Gregmal said:

For sure. But most are at least semi decent investors. There s a few, like Einhorn and Paulson(I'll leave out some of the COBF favs to avoid controversy) who are just downright terrible investors. 

 

This is a true story!

 

I have a friend, who is frugal and a good saver, but who 21 years ago blew her whole RRSP (same as a 401K) on Nortel and other high flying tech stocks...about $100K.  Lost the whole thing in less than 8 months.  I told her about Berkshire Hathaway, but she didn't listen and was a hardcore CNBC fan.

 

Fast forward 14 years, her sister, an entrepreneur, has been managing her money since she lost her RRSP investments.   After all this time, her sister looked after her money, creating a diversified portfolio of quality stocks, and beat the market.  My friend, feeling confident in her abilities again after watching years of CNBC and Jim Cramer, takes back control of her portfolio...about $400K at this point. 

 

She sells everything and puts nearly all of it in AAPL stock...in her RRSP, TFSA (same as an IRA), personal brokerage accounts...80% AAPL and 20% MSFT.  Why?  Because she heard about it on CNBC.

 

Today, she has a net worth of about $4M!  Is she a good investor?  Is she a better investor than Warren Buffett, because she just destroyed his numbers?  Is she a better investor than almost anyone on this message board?  By your standards, the answer would be yes!  Cheers!

[Gregmal]

4 minutes ago, Parsad said:

 

 

This is a true story!

 

I have a friend, who is frugal and a good saver, but who 21 years ago blew her whole RRSP (same as a 401K) on Nortel and other high flying tech stocks...about $100K.  Lost the whole thing in less than 8 months.  I told her about Berkshire Hathaway, but she didn't listen and was a hardcore CNBC fan.

 

Fast forward 14 years, her sister, an entrepreneur, has been managing her money since she lost her RRSP investments.   After all this time, her sister looked after her money, creating a diversified portfolio of quality stocks, and beat the market.  My friend, feeling confident in her abilities again after watching years of CNBC and Jim Cramer, takes back control of her portfolio...about $400K at this point. 

 

She sells everything and puts nearly all of it in AAPL stock...in her RRSP, TFSA (same as an IRA), personal brokerage accounts...80% AAPL and 20% MSFT.  Why?  Because she heard about it on CNBC.

 

Today, she has a net worth of about $4M!  Is she a good investor?  Is she a better investor than Warren Buffett, because she just destroyed his numbers?  Is she a better investor than almost anyone on this message board?  By your standards, the answer would be yes!  Cheers!

I'd say it depends. First, the cool thing about investing, is you only need to get rich once. If you get rich and then blow it, you're an idiot. But outside of that...give me any person in the world and 10 of their top holdings and I can usually tell you right away whether they are competent or not. You can look at any number of things. Logic used in a thesis. Diversity of the portfolio composition. Quality of holdings. Look at Einhorn right now...GRBK...ok ive liked this one for half a decade, then...Chemours, Tech resources, danimer, Gopro, Brighthouse...like WTF are these? Paulson as well. Just loaded with crap. They reek of "I'm the smartest guy in the room"...Whereas look at some of the others, not just Buffett, but Ackman, Tepper, Loeb. Maybe not every pick, but Intel, AAPL, Google, PCG...maybe I dont personally like all those, but I can easily see that, ok these guys are buying quality names. Even here though, the thing is, maybe you dont need names that ring bells, but thats where you go to a track record. And when the track record is total dog shit....hmmm. Everyone is wrong once in a while its just part of the game. But you can over time look at people's stuff and take a combination of the things they invest in, what their returns have been, and how have peers done, and get an idea. And Paulson and Einhorn have straight up sucked for way too long to get a pass. 

 

I'd bring it back to Ackman. Even his "shit" investments. HLF made all the sense in the world. He was right. He just judged the catalyst wrong and sized it too aggressively. VRX too. Great thing until it got too much attention and then Congress shed light on a. bad industry and really since then, no one has made money in Pharma. Philador was big for sure, but that wasn't really what brought it down. The buy drug/raise prices model worked until it didnt. Same thing with Buffett, IBM, ok he tried something, didnt work, moved on. Tesco too. But the companies were solid and the idea just didnt work. Far cry from going off the board and coming up with duds consistently. 

 

 

[Xerxes]

Interestingly, I am more than half way through the book "Greatest Trade" that covers Paulson's shorts in 07-09.

 

Say what you will, many people saw the pending doom as well in real-estate, but either were too early, botched the trade or didn't swing for the fences. He was smart enough to nail the shorts in 08-09 and bet big, but not smart enough to see the rise of mega-techs and underperformed in the subsequent decade. 

 

it goes to shows how differently investors are wired for different occasions.

Sometimes the best of them need to sit tight for years, until they see something that make sense for them, while the peanut gallery roll their eyes and opine.

 

Paulson' comment on gold intrigues me. 

Bloomberg Wealth interview with Paulson (the full interview) should be posted in the next few days.

 

[Xerxes]

2 hours ago, Parsad said:

Today, she has a net worth of about $4M!  Is she a good investor?  Is she a better investor than Warren Buffett, because she just destroyed his numbers?  Is she a better investor than almost anyone on this message board?  By your standards, the answer would be yes!  Cheers!

 

she rocks ! (for now)

[Parsad]

18 hours ago, Xerxes said:

 

she rocks ! (for now)

 

Yes, she does!  I just hope she doesn't blow it all again.  She seems quite content to sell only as much AAPL as she needs for retirement to minimize taxes.  But the other side of her wants to get to $5M as soon as possible. 

 

I told her just holding on to her AAPL and MSFT will get her to $5M faster than she could probably do it, and she would be taking little risk.  But when she gets in these trading moods...I really hope she doesn't blow it!  The irony is she barely spends $30-40K a year...her house is paid off...$4M or $5M...makes no difference based on her expenses. Cheers!

[Rod]

39 minutes ago, Parsad said:

 

Yes, she does!  I just hope she doesn't blow it all again.  She seems quite content to sell only as much AAPL as she needs for retirement to minimize taxes.  But the other side of her wants to get to $5M as soon as possible. 

 

I told her just holding on to her AAPL and MSFT will get her to $5M faster than she could probably do it, and she would be taking little risk.  But when she gets in these trading moods...I really hope she doesn't blow it!  The irony is she barely spends $30-40K a year...her house is paid off...$4M or $5M...makes no difference based on her expenses. Cheers!

Her process was obviously terrible, but she got very lucky and it worked. There's a high risk she learned the wrong lesson and will gamble again on a hot tip and lose most of it.

[Parsad]

5 hours ago, Rod said:

Her process was obviously terrible, but she got very lucky and it worked. There's a high risk she learned the wrong lesson and will gamble again on a hot tip and lose most of it.

 

That's what worries me!  I told her to just take a small piece of her portfolio (preferably a non-taxable account) and trade within it.  We'll see what she decides to do.  Cheers!