Hello Fellow Listeners,

Some of our favorite reads and listens this month covered SPACs, public pensions, value investing, and more.

A Break from Our Normal Programming…

The short squeeze battle is irresistible. I jotted down some lessons and tweeted it here.  To digest the nuance in an entertaining way, read Matt Levine starting with his Monday column. His colleague John Authers had a particularly good piece about the broad impact of this event.

Announcements and Gratitudes

* Premium members.  A warm thank you to a wave of new Premium Members. Our next Premium Community Event is a virtual gathering and open Q&A with Annie Duke on February 25th. Please click here to join the premium membership and support the show.

* Non-US pre-sales of Capital Allocators: How the World’s Elite Money Managers Lead and Invest are now available.  For those inside the US, Amazon is ready and waiting. Release date is March 23rd.

* Webcam and headset recommendations. I’ve played around with lots of headsets and webcams for Zoom calls. I highly recommend the Razer Kiyo webcam, and the Logitech H390 headset is my new favorite.

Reading (Ordered by reading time: tweets first, books last, and blog posts and articles in between) 

Quote:  “The market can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”  – John Maynard Keynes, and particularly acute among in the short squeeze this wee.

1. Benedict Evans on private equity exits.  SPAC IPOs raised $106 billion since the Softbank Vision Fund opened its doors. That’s two massive, novel pools of capital for private exits in the last five years and lots of dry powder for a wave of new public listings to come.

2. Dan Loeb and Philippe Laffont on Twitter. FinTwit is gaining institutional momentum with participation and insights from leading hedge fund managers.

3. Relaxing into stress, Polina Marinova. Polina writes The Profile, a terrific compilation of lessons from people in business, sports, and entertainment. In this piece, she describes how elite performers relax in the most stressful moments to rise above their competition.

4. Saving America’s Public Pensions, Ben Meng. The former CIO of CalPERS suggests a path for public pensions to take advantage of their unique strengths to achieve investment success.

5. Value investing legends speak. I love moments in markets where ‘this time it’s different’ meets the potential for a windfall if it’s not. Jeremy Grantham thinks now is as good as it gets for value. Cliff Asness also believes the premise for diversified value as a factor is at extremes and still holds. Howard Marks is thinking differently about certain businesses that defy the fade to mean reversion.

Listening

Capital Allocators

Special thanks: