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Yet Another Value Podcast · · 30 分钟

2025年12月杂谈

Andrew Walker

YouTube
TL;DR
  • Andrew Walker 对未来10年的工作判断是,随着计算机消灭大部分简单的基本面 alpha,公开市场会越来越“怪”。 如同篮球在优化后趋向篮下出手和三分、计算机国际象棋变得普通棋手难以辨认,市场策略也在向极端迁移。0DTE交易、杠杆ETF、散户参与和预测市场,更偏好非典型、路径依赖的情形,而不是仅仅筛选结果便宜的股票。

  • 基本面分析仍是“入场券”,但 Walker 预计,注意力与反身性能够改变公司本身的情形中会出现更多超额收益。 他的例子是 Opendoor:散户“暴民大军”推动股价上涨20倍,使公司得以发行股票,并可能重塑公司。他明确表示,这不是在指控其拉高出货;在他看来,未来“最肥的收益”可能越来越集中在非典型情形中。

  • Walker 已开始怀疑,那些能被 Yahoo Finance 筛选器在5秒内复现的估值逻辑还能带来多少回报。 8倍市盈率或低市净率看起来可能很有吸引力,但他越来越怀疑,这种简单逻辑“不但没有 alpha,可能还是负 alpha”。他承认,持有50只低P/E股票的分散组合或许能勉强获得回报,但怀疑这种方法能产生大额 alpha。

  • 回购和隐藏地产在 Walker 投资方法中的权重已经大幅下降,因为两者都可能建立在持续恶化的业务之上。 Bed Bath & Beyond 曾在约40美元回购股票,后来在死亡螺旋中以约0.10美元增发并稀释股本;Macy's、Kohl's、Nordstrom 和 Seritage 等标的尽管有地产逻辑,长期结果依然糟糕。他的判断是:“你把所有这些地产所有权,附着在一个真正企业价值为负的百货业务上。”

  • 3年没有回报,已经成为 Walker 强制自己复盘投资逻辑的实际暂停线。 有线电视行业让他明白,垄断或双寡头的前提,不能在固定无线网络到来、许多市场可能已经变成寡头市场后继续成立:“市场正用事实打你的脸,告诉你这套逻辑是错的。” 股价横盘或下跌并不自动意味着必须卖出,但按他的过往经验,自己通常还是早点离场更好。

  • 风险管理如今意味着,拒绝把一笔已经失效的事件交易,逐步改造成越来越深度的价值投资。 他反复出现的亏损路径是:以10美元参与收购套利,交易失败后跌到9美元,随后在6美元被重新定义为价值投资,在3美元又被称为困境投资。纠偏方式很直接:“答案就是你得卖出。”

  • 出色的长期战绩,可能来自洞察、运气,也可能来自投资者选择忽略一个后来恰好没有发生的风险。 Walker 采访过一些投资者,他们的最大仓位在18个月内上涨6倍;但他会追问,对方究竟是识别并正确排除了风险,还是只是把风险“轻轻带过”。做播客也让他更加警惕跨领域的傲慢:聪明的媒体投资者可能误解要约收购机制,正如聪明的评论人士在 Elon Musk 竞购 Twitter 时误解了强制履行问题。

摘要 · 为研究而整理的核心内容

1. 简单 alpha 正在消失,流向更诡异的市场

  • 在专业从事公开市场投资约10年后,Walker 的工作判断是,市场正在进入“有效市场的最后阶段”,并且变得“越来越怪”。SPACs 和 COVID之后的繁荣只是早期信号;如今,0DTE交易、杠杆ETF、散户参与和预测市场正在把投机、注意力与投资混在一起。

  • 他的篮球类比解释了其中机制:当数学证明最高效的进攻方式是篮下出手、罚球或三分时,中距离就消失了;顶级篮球因此变得和普通人玩的比赛完全不同。他认为,高水平计算机国际象棋也经历了类似转变,开始看起来像“一项完全不同的运动”。

  • 市场也会走上同一条路:计算机已经让直接的基本面分析大体变成入场券。今年部分领涨个股的长期终点仍可能是“归零”,但它们可能先涨10倍;当更高的股价本身创造融资和战略选择时,路径依赖就变得重要。

  • Opendoor 是 Walker 眼中反身性前沿的样本:早期建立追随者基础,围绕股票形成信仰,吸引注意力并推动股价上涨20倍,随后增发股权,甚至可能重塑公司。他明确表示,这不是在把它称作拉高出货。他认为,灵活的投资者会越来越多地在传统基本面价值之外寻找 alpha,因为“最肥的收益”(all the juice)就集中在这些非典型情形里。

2. 便宜倍数、回购和隐藏地产,作为独立逻辑都变得不可靠

  • Walker 第一个重大转变发生在纯估值问题上。他依然会被8倍市盈率和低市净率吸引,但提醒说:“如果你的核心逻辑可以被 Yahoo Finance 筛选器在5秒内复现,市场大概不会为此付钱。”

  • 他也已把回购从强烈的买入信号降级为一个有用的参考变量。John Malone 式的杠杆、自由现金流与激进回购组合,往往属于没有再投资空间的存量业务;随后技术进步攻破了它们的护城河,Netflix 和有线电视网络是他反复提及的主要案例。

  • Bed Bath & Beyond 体现了资本配置的风险:管理层曾在40美元附近回购股票,后来却在死亡螺旋中以0.10美元附近发行新股。Walker 依然认为,在执行得当时回购优于分红,也喜欢跟踪英国市场每日的回购披露;但他不再把股份数量减少视为底层业务安全的证据。

  • 隐藏地产同样带来了幻灭。Seritage 的分拆、供股和地产故事在价值投资者眼中一度极其诱人,Macy's 还拥有 Herald Square;然而,整个百货行业最终都成了持续10年的灾难。业务每年都在吞噬价值,投资者却盯着土地不放——那是有价值的地产,却附着在“一个真正企业价值为负的百货业务”上。

3. 暂停审视与快速退出,比守住原始价格更重要

  • Walker 对技术分析的评分已经从10分制的0分提高到大约1分。他仍认为其中很大一部分是“玄学”或“巫术”,但如今也看到了一些风险管理价值:做空时观察200日均线,或在决定是否把现金投入超卖指数时参考相对强弱指标。

  • 更大的变化是,他不再把无限期等待视为美德。3年没有进展并不能证明市场是对的,但足以让人追问:“是我错了,还是市场错了?”他的经验是,2019年以50美元买入、到2022年仍是50美元的仓位,通常最好卖出,等新证据出现后再重新研究。

  • 有线电视行业是惨痛案例。Walker 2016年的逻辑曾奏效5-7年,因为许多市场看起来仍是垄断或双寡头;之后3年却糟糕透顶,本应迫使他承认,固定无线接入已经让许多地区出现寡头竞争的可能。更好的投资者更早看到了威胁,而他仍在强调现金流和资产价值。

  • 重大消息出现后,同样的纪律需要更快执行。他的本能是:10美元时喜欢的股票,跌到8美元反而更应该喜欢;但成熟意味着重新评估,而不是为持仓辩护。那条噩梦般的路径——“这原本是一笔事件交易,现在变成了价值投资”,接着变成深度价值,最后变成困境投资——始于收购催化剂失效后仍不卖出。

4. 全垒打般的战绩,并不能说明其中多少来自能力

  • 做了大约350期播客后,Walker 认为,即便是处在左尾的嘉宾也能教会他一些东西:花1小时追问另一位投资者的分析漏洞,会让他更容易在自己的投资组合中发现类似问题。他不太在意个人魅力,更关心基本面工作是否扎实。他希望——也承认这可能是在为自己的判断背书——嘉宾群体的平均水平远高于普通投资者。

  • 更深层的谜题在于,他采访过的最出色战绩并不总属于最令人印象深刻的思想家。2位同样聪明的风险投资者,可能分别成为传奇和普通投资者,只因为其中1人在2009年投中了 Facebook;在公开市场,一记全垒打同样可以把优秀战绩与不可思议的战绩拉开。

  • 当一位嘉宾的最大仓位在18个月内上涨6倍时,Walker 会提出一个反事实问题:放到另外10个宇宙里,这名投资者是不是有8个已经完蛋了?一个10倍回报,可能意味着投资者识别出了某个风险,并正确判断它不会构成问题;也可能意味着傲慢让他们把风险一带而过,只是风险最终以温和方式化解,才让战绩看起来如此出色。他不知道哪种解释才是正确的。

5. 专业跨领域迁移很差,而投资奖励谦逊

  • Walker 在 Paramount–Netflix 竞购 Warner Bros. 的评论中看到了同样的不确定性;他披露自己持有 Warner Bros. 大量多头仓位。聪明的媒体投资者和评论人士在讨论要约收购机制时,可能听起来“相当可笑”。Elon Musk 竞购 Twitter 时,Walker 同样听到过一些聪明人提出在他看来明显错误的法律判断;他记得一位特拉华州法官曾说 Musk 只要付10亿美元就能退出交易,这让他怀疑这位法官是否理解“强制履行”(specific performance)。

  • 他尚未解决的问题是:这些错误只是个别“鞋扣专家”式的越界发言,还是说明这些人在自己的主业领域也存在短板?他没有给出答案;真正的要点是,当一个人在某个领域的声望被误认为其对另一个领域也拥有专业能力时,仍应保持怀疑。

  • Walker 最后希望,今天的想法在未来的自己看来会很愚蠢。投资的吸引力在于,从业者可能要到40多岁中后段才真正达到巅峰;即使身体状态开始下滑,他仍有另外10年积累判断力:“我今天比10年前强太多了。”他希望10年后这句话依然成立。

完整逐字稿
Andrew Walker

You're about to listen to the Another Value podcast with your host, me, Andrew Walker.

It is December 23, 2025, and today I’m recording my monthly random rambling. I’ve got about 4 topics we’re going to talk about. I have a general thesis on why I think the stock market is getting weirder and weirder over time, and we’ll dive into that.

I’ve been quote-unquote investing professionally in the public markets for 10 years. I’ve got some things that I’ve learned, thought about, and changed my mind on over the past 10 years that we’re going to talk about. Then I’ve got a real ramble that just comes out of nowhere, and I have no clue where I’m taking it: arrogance, expertise, and risk in the public markets. I don’t even know where I’m going. I say this every month in my random ramblings, but this is probably my randomest, ramblingest ramble yet. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you have great holidays.

We're going to get to the random ramblings in one second, but first a word from our sponsors. This podcast is sponsored by AlphaSense. One of the hardest parts of investing is seeing what's shifting before everyone else. For decades, only the largest hedge funds could afford extensive channel research programs to spot inflection points before earnings and stay ahead of consensus. Meanwhile, smaller funds had been forced to cobble together ad hoc channel intelligence or rely on stale reports from sellside shops. But channel checks are no longer a luxury. They're becoming table stakes for the industry. The challenge has always been scale, speed, and consistency. That's where AlphaSense comes in. AlphaSense is redefining channel research. Instead of static point in time research, AlphaSense channel checks delivers a continuously refreshed view of demand, pricing, and competitive dynamics powered by interviews with real operators, suppliers, distributors, and channel partners across the value chain. Thousands of consistent channel conversations every month deliver, comparable signals, helping investors spot inflection points weeks before they show up in earnings or consensus estimate. The best part is that these proprietary channel checks integrate directly into AlphaSense's research platform, which is trusted by 75% of the world's top hedge funds with access to over 500 million premium sources. From company filings and broker research to news, trade journals, and more than 240,000 expert call transcripts, that context turns raw signal into conviction. The first to see wins, the rest follow. Check it out for yourself at alphasense.comyavp. That's alpha-sense.comyavvp. All right. Hello and welcome to the yet another value podcast. I'm your host Andrew Walker. With me today, it's me. It's just me on for my monthly December 2025 ramblings.

For those who don’t know, once a month I try to hop on and just ramble for 25 to 30 minutes about different things on my mind. That’s what I’m going to do today. Before we get to that, let me just disclose that nothing on this podcast is investing advice. That’s always true, but again, today it’s just me going on and rambling for 25 to 30 minutes. Do you really want to listen to somebody who would take 25 or 30 minutes out of their day to scream like a maniac into a microphone? I certainly wouldn’t, so you shouldn’t either.

What do I have on my mind today? Let’s start. First, I had a baby, so I haven’t talked to everyone since I had the baby. It’s going—I don’t know what the word is. The baby is healthy, but, boy, am I tired.

I’ll hear from my friends, “Oh, our baby sleeps for 6 hours a night. It’s just so hard to wake them up to feed them.” That ain’t the case here, folks. I’m tired. But you don’t care about that, so let’s talk about what I want to talk to you about today.

One more thing: I’m recording this on December 23. Obviously, the holidays are coming up, and I want to wish all of you happy holidays. One of the fun things about running a podcast that has dozens of listeners is that 5 or 6 of you have thrown me on your Christmas mailing list. For maybe 3 of the 5 or 6, I email with you every now and then. For maybe 3 of the 5 or 6, I’ve never emailed you before.

I get those cards every year, and it’s kind of the 4th or 5th year in a row. It really tickles me, and I really enjoy following these families I’ve never met. I think Yet Another Value has a great community. I want to express my heartfelt, warm wishes to those of you who’ve added me to your mailing list, or who just listen to this in general.

Okay, what do I want to talk about today? I have been quote-unquote professionally investing in the public markets. Again, heavy on the air quotes, because in my mind I’m still a teenager sometimes, but I ain’t a teenager anymore. If you’re watching the video, you can see the grays are really starting to come in.

I’ve been quote-unquote professionally investing in the public markets for about 10 years. I’ve been professionally investing a little bit longer than that, but this is about my 10-year anniversary. I’m working on an annual letter, a 10-year letter, and all that type of stuff. I’m using this podcast, this ramble, to soft-run some of the things that have been on my mind, some of the things I’m thinking about, and some of the things I’m trying to finalize in the letter.

Let me start with this high-level outlook. I’ve done this for 10 years. Take a breath and look out over the next 10 years. I have a thesis—and again, I’m soft-running this—that markets are getting weirder over time. I’ll write more about this if I think it’s correct. I won’t write more about it ever if I think it’s wrong.

In every sport, as things evolve, strategies move toward the far edges. I’m a big basketball fan; I mention basketball all the time. About 10 years ago, the mathematicians realized, “Hey, the optimal shot is either at the rim, at the free-throw line—which you generally get by getting to the rim—or a 3-pointer. Everything else is a waste.”

Today, when you watch professional basketball, it’s increasingly rare for a shot to come from anywhere other than directly at the rim or beyond the 3-point line. Every other shot is inefficient; those shots are gone. We’ve gone to the extremes of the mathematization of basketball. You do see a counterstrategy developing: maybe we should play in the midrange because defenses don’t even guard that anymore.

We’ve gone to the extremes in chess, too. About 7 years ago, AI really started coming for chess. I believe it was AlphaGo or whatever taking over chess, and high-end chess games between computers started looking completely different. Whether you were playing me or a high-level chess player, those games stopped resembling what humans play. It just looked like a completely different sport.

That happens over time in all sports. As they get more advanced, they stop looking like what normal people play. Again, to go back to basketball, if you and I went and played, we’d jack up 3s and do everything else, but the NBA game is completely different because we can’t dunk. Less than 1% of the people on Earth can dunk. The NBA is played above the rim; normal people play below the rim. As you get more specialized, the strategies change.

Why am I saying that? When it comes to the stock market, I think the stock market is getting weirder and weirder. As we’ve entered the final stages of the efficient market, I think the stock market is getting weirder and weirder. This probably started happening about 5 years ago with SPACs, the post-COVID boom, and everything else, but it’s fueled by zero day trading, leveraged ETFs, the rise of retail, prediction markets—everything blending together.

I think the stock market is getting weirder and weirder. We’re going to see the market continue to do weird things, whether it’s big jumps, big drops, or spikes. I’ll tell you that some of the leaders in the year-to-date returns category for individual stocks are companies where it seems pretty obvious to me that the long-term path trends toward zero. But what a run you can have in the short term. They’re up 10 times over the past year.

Sometimes you can get path dependency, but I think the fundamental alpha is gone because of computers and all of this. Increasingly, we’re going to see weirder situations and weirder things happening in the stock market. I think that’s where the stock market is going. It’s akin to what happens in chess, akin to specialization: the normal stuff is gone, and all the returns, all the juice, all the edge is in the weirder stuff.

I think there will be a lot of alpha made by the people who follow Opendoor, create a cult around the stock, and get in early enough to build that cult and drag a lot of attention to it. I’m not saying pump and dump, but Opendoor recreates itself, right? It gets this mob army, the stock goes up 20 times, it can issue equity, and it can bring in a new co.

I think we’re going to see a lot more things like that—things clearly at the far edges of fundamental value. I think investors who can adapt to those weird situations can adapt to what’s coming.

I think that's where we're going to see a lot of edge going forward. Now, I'm not saying there's no room for great fundamental analysis. I think it's almost table stakes, and unless you're really, really great at fundamental analysis—really on the edge of that—I don't know if there's going to be a lot of alpha just from pure fundamental analysis. I don't think there has been over the past 5 years, but I think it increasingly goes away because that side of the market is efficient and that's table stakes.

Maybe I'm a prisoner of the moment. Maybe I'm a prisoner of the past 10 years, which have been really great for growth companies. It just strikes me that if your core thesis is something that—and I use this line all the time—can be recreated by a Yahoo Finance screener in 5 seconds, you're probably not going to get paid for that. Maybe somebody can come and tell me I'm wrong: “If I run a diversified basket of 50 low-price-to-earnings companies, then I'm going to eke out a little bit of alpha.” Maybe. But for the big alpha, I kind of doubt that you're finding it there.

So, that's one thing I've divorced myself from. Maybe I'm pushing my own book, talking my own book here, because I love weird situations. That's what I've been doing for the past 10 years, and to my chagrin, I haven't done anything else. I increasingly lean into the weird situations. That's what I do. So maybe I'm talking my own book, but that's just kind of how I think about the past 10 years and the next 10 years going forward when I think about markets.

Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I didn't define it properly. Again, this is my rough draft. I'll work on defining it better. Let me go to the next thing.

When I look back over the past 10 years, Charlie Munger—RIP—I think more and more highly of him every day, but I do think about him more often every day, I would say. Charlie Munger once said, “If you go a whole year and you haven't changed your mind on anything, it's a waste of a year.” I've been thinking about the past 10 years and what I've changed my mind on.

Here's the funny thing: If you change your mind on something, unless you're taking notes and saying, “I changed my mind on something,” it's actually hard to remember when you've changed your mind on something. You can change your mind on a stock and say, “I used to think it was a buy, and now I think it's a sell.” That's pretty easy. But when you change your mind on something big, it's actually hard to remember.

When I first went to look, I said, “I haven't changed my mind on anything.” As I really started thinking about a lot of things, I realized, “Oh, no. I've changed my mind a lot.” I feel like there's a lot more, but here are some things that I've changed my mind on that I remember.

My first is pure valuation metrics. It is nice to buy something for 8 times price-to-earnings. It is nice to buy something for price-to-book. I still find myself being pulled toward those metrics, but I increasingly believe that if the core of your thesis is simply, “Hey, this trades cheap on an LTM earnings multiple,” you will find not only no alpha there, but probably negative alpha.

Maybe I'm a prisoner of the moment, but it just strikes me that if your core thesis is something that can be recreated by a Yahoo Finance screener in 5 seconds, you're probably not going to get paid for that. Maybe somebody can come and tell me I'm wrong: “If I run a diversified basket of 50 low-price-to-earnings companies, then I'm going to eke out a little bit of alpha.” Maybe. But for the big alpha, I kind of doubt that you're finding it there.

Another big thing that I've changed is this: If you came to me 10 years ago and asked me to look at my early investments, it was John Malone. It was levered return-on-equity stories, big free cash flow, and lots of repurchases. Those investments generally have not worked out well.

I still love repurchases, but increasingly, maybe it was selection. The companies that were doing big repurchases 10 years ago or 5 years ago tended to be companies that had big legacy moats, lots of free cash flow, and no area to reinvest in. Guess what? Basically all the tech companies came and ate their lunch. The headliner would be Netflix coming and eating all the cable networks' lunch, but you can go across the board through a lot of them.

Maybe it's that, but increasingly, I used to look and say, “These guys have repurchased 15% of their shares over the past year. That is a huge buy signal.” Now, I like it. I think repurchases are a much more capital-efficient return than dividends. I do like that I own the company and that I own a little bit more of it every day if they're buying back shares.

In international markets, I've mentioned this on a few recent podcasts. I love that, in the UK, they file their repurchases every day. Every day I can say, “Hey, I own a little bit more of this company,” and I can track their allocation that way. But I will say repurchases over the past 10 years have become a much smaller part of my investing style.

You can only watch someone like Bed Bath & Beyond, the famous example. They were buying back shares at $40, and then they were diluting shares at $0.10—not literally 10 cents on the dollar in terms of value, but $0.10 per share—and increasing the share count in a death spiral 18 months later, maybe if even that. Department stores are obviously great examples of this.

Actually, off the top of my head, that's another one: real estate in the public markets. When I started, I would look a lot for companies that had hidden real estate. Restaurants have them all the time. Restaurants that have been around for 50 years and have 200 chains are kind of owning and building their own boxes. I used to look for those a lot.

A lot of the restaurants are gone because private equity came and picked them over. But all the department stores—I think 10 years ago, when I launched, I was still really interested in the department stores. Seritage would have been the big one. My God, the Seritage theses were unbelievable when they came out. To a value investor, you had a spin-off with a rights offering, hidden real estate, and all this sort of stuff.

Disasters across the board. All the department stores—Macy's, Kohl's, Nordstrom—and yes, you could get one nice pop from them if you traded them well. I know many people have and did. But in general, you look at the 10-year charts, and they've been a disaster.

This is despite them saying, “Macy's owns fucking Herald Square in New York City,” and none of them can figure out how to monetize it. For the department stores, you have all this real estate ownership attached to a truly negative-EV department store business. The issue is that the department store business consumes value every year. At least in my opinion, I think that's the issue.

I've become really disillusioned with trying to find publicly traded, hidden real estate assets. Repurchases—I already mentioned that.

Technical analysis: 10 years ago, 7 years ago, 5 years ago, 3 years ago, I was a zero out of 10 on technical analysis. I thought it was complete mumbo jumbo, complete voodoo, and all that sort of stuff. Honestly, I still do. I don't do any of it myself, but I would say I'm kind of a one out of 10 now.

I don't do it, but I do think there's something to technical analysis, especially on the short side. I don't do a lot of shorting, but if you're shorting something, you probably want to be aware of the 200-day moving average or something like that, just as a rule of thumb. I do think RSI measures—relative-strength measures—are interesting, particularly on the index side, when you're thinking about whether markets are oversold or undersold and when to deploy cash into a bottom.

I was a zero out of 10; I would just dismiss it. Now I'll say, if you want to talk to me about very basic stuff, especially when it comes to adjusting risk parameters, I'll entertain it. I think that's a big evolution, to go from being completely dismissive to saying, “Hey, maybe.” But that's one.

The last one that I've really evolved on is this: If you had asked me 10 years ago what a value investor does, I would have said they go and find a company that's undervalued, do a ton of work on it, and then hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it, and hold it until the market agrees with them. Whether that's 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, 50 years, whatever, they hold it.

Obviously, if the facts change, they change their mind and sell. But if the stock price isn't working, they don't let that hit them. I've kind of come to the opinion that if you buy something and then hold it—and I think 3 years is the time frame, though it might be 5 years—you hold it for 3 years and the stock doesn't do anything or it goes down, it's not that you must sell and it's not that you must be wrong. But 3 years is a long time, and it's probably time to start looking yourself in the mirror and saying, “Hey, is it me or is it them?”

I'll give you an example. I was and am a longtime cable bull, though I don't own much in the cable sector anymore. I think I started becoming a bull in 2016, so that's about 10 years ago.

For 5 to 7 years, it really worked. And the past 3 years, it's been terrible. The whole time, I was saying, “Look, competition’s a little worse than I thought, but look at the cash flows, look at the asset value, all this sort of stuff.” And I think the right answer was, “Hey, Andrew, your thesis was wrong. The market is hitting you in the face with the fact that the thesis is wrong. The thesis has changed.”

Far better investors than me noticed that the competitive threat was ramping up and that was going to be bad for cable. The thought was that it was either a duopoly or a monopoly, and fixed wireless has changed it to the possibility that it might be an oligopoly in a lot of places now. There’s a price for everything, but I think if I had been honest with myself years ago, I could have said, “Hey, I invested in this on a duopoly thesis, a monopoly thesis, and that has changed. I need to step back, sell, and reassess.” I didn’t do that, so that’s just one that’s really developed for me.

But there are others: stocks I’ve held that I bought at 50 in 2019, and in 2022 they were still trading at 50. In general, if it’s been 3 years and it hasn’t worked, my history has been that you’d probably be better off selling and saying, “Hey, I missed something. I can go invest in other things, and maybe I’ll revisit this a year from now and see how things play out.” Again, I’m not saying that works for everyone, but my history has been that I would have been better off, after 3 years of something not working, saying, “Move on. Do something new.”

Those are the things I’ve evolved on. Let’s see what things I talked about. I said disillusionment with free cash flow and repurchases. I said increasingly trailing metrics not valuable, going from a 0 out of 10 to a 1 out of 10 on technical analysis. And I call it timing out: after 3 years, saying, “Hey, this hasn’t worked. Let’s stop saying it’s the market. Let’s start saying it’s me and move on.”

One other thing I’ve evolved on: a friend tweeted this. I think he listens to the podcast, so he might recognize it, though. He tweeted about a month ago, and I liked it so much he might have forgotten he tweeted it. Who can remember all of their tweets? Who amongst us?

One thing I’ve thought about—and this relates to the timing out I just talked about—is one of the ways you mature as a value investor, I think, is along the risk-management side. Again, this relates to the timing out, but when I started, I thought, “Hey, value investing is you buy something at 8 times earnings, and if it goes to 6 times earnings, you suck your thumb and buy more, or you hold, or whatever it is.”

I think one of the places I’ve matured is that you’re a value investor, the stock goes from 10 to 8, and there’s news. It’s not just that the market went down or whatever, but there’s news. You need to be able to rip the Band-Aid off quicker. I’m terrible at this. My instinct is to defend everything I buy. My instinct is, “I liked it at 10. I want to love it at 8.”

But I think value investing is actually maturing and saying, “Hey, my thesis was wrong. I need to sell and move on.” I can always revisit it or something, but in general, I’ve found that if something goes from 10 to 8, I would be better off selling than holding or buying more or anything. I think that’s the maturation of a value investor, saying, “Hey, just because I bought it at 10 doesn’t mean I need to love it at 8. It’s time to reassess. Is the market telling me something? Is there new information?” All this sort of stuff.

Again, I’m not saying just because it’s down, you sell, but generally, when something moves down about 20%, that’s where you probably saw some material news. My instinct—and I’ve been using a value frame, but I’ll use events—is that I buy something at 10 and it’s rumor triage, right? There’s a rumor that it’s going to get taken out at 13, and I buy it at 10 because I say, “Hey, the downside’s 9, the upside’s 13, and I really think this deal is happening.”

Then the deal doesn’t happen and the stock trades for 9. Five years ago, 3 years ago, even now, I’m sometimes like, “Oh, well, it’s come to my downside, and yes, it’s not going to get taken out now, but they were in play, and there was all this upside and stuff. Let’s hold. Let’s wait.”

No. The answer there is you’ve got to sell. You’ve got to move on. I’m getting better at that. I missed it a few times, but my biggest losses have generally been when I bought something at 10 on an event, it trades to 9 when the event’s dead, and I say, “Hey, this was an event; now it’s a value investment.” Then it trades from 9 to 6, and I say, “Hey, this was a value investment; now it’s a deep-value investment.” Then it trades from 6 to 3, and I say, “It was a deep-value investment; now it’s a distressed investment.”

No, you’ve just got to move on. I think those are the ways I’ve evolved. Those are the things I’ve changed my mind on: the risk management, the timing out, all of that.

The last thing I wanted to talk about: one way I’ve evolved as an investor over the past 10 years is that I’ve started doing the podcast, and I effing love the podcast. I learn from everyone. If there’s a bell curve, I think one of the nice things about my podcast is—I hope my bell curve shifts far to the right. The average guest, I think—I hope—on my podcast, maybe I’m talking my book, is a very above-average investor. They’re a professional investor; they’re very above average. I’ve got great guests, in my opinion.

The above-average guests and the best guests are just far, far out in the right tail. And I hope every episode, because I do a lot of work for preparation, in terms of you learning something fundamentally, is like the bell curve shifted right. But there is a left tail to my podcast. I hope the left tail is truncated because of the work I do on it and the types of investors I have.

But with 350 podcasts, 1 in every 30 episodes is going to have a guest where I get them on and they’re—I don’t care if they’re a dud in terms of charisma on the podcast. I don’t need huge amounts of charisma on the podcast; I bring the charisma, right? I care a lot about whether the fundamental work was there. I’m not going to name any names, but of the past 300 episodes, I can think of a handful where that’s the case.

I learn something from every podcast. Even if it’s someone who’s on that left tail I’m talking about, I learn a lot because when I force myself to talk to them for an hour, and I’m seeing big holes in how they’re thinking, I’ve learned a lot. I think one of the main ways I’ve evolved over the past 5 years is that when I talk to people on the podcast, and I really have to talk to them because it’s an hour, I learn the holes and the errors and where I think they’re missing things, and I can apply that to my own investments.

Coming back to the podcast, I love the podcast. One of the great things is that I’ve got great investors on, but there is a line. Some of the best investors by track record, I’m not sure if they are the best investors I’ve talked to. I wonder if that’s because it’s me seeing holes in their thinking, or if it’s that these guys have done so much that they’ve got the best records.

Often, it’s 1 grand-slam investment that separates the people who have very good track records from those with unbelievable track records. Let’s use venture capital: 2 VCs who are equally smart—if 1 got into the Facebook deal and 1 did not in 2009, the 1 who got into the Facebook deal is a legend, and the 1 who did not might be okay or average. But is there any difference in intelligence? Probably not. I don’t know, but the returns are orders of magnitude different.

In the public markets, it’s interesting because a lot of the return difference can be summed up by 1 great investment. But when you look at the investment, you wonder, “Hey, was this person super smart, or did they get lucky?” Am I talking to this person and there are 10 other universes where, in 8 of those 10 other universes, this person is dunzo? They took this huge, huge risk, and it didn’t work out for them. I don’t know the answer.

The podcast has been really interesting for me because I’ve talked to some of these people who’ve hit absolute grand slams. Sometimes I’ll talk to them in the moment, and then 18 months later, the stock’s up 6x and it was their largest position. I can go and listen to the podcast and say, “Hey, if your largest position is up 6x in 18 months, your near- to medium-term track record, at least, if not your long-term, looks pretty goddamn good.”

And I can look at the podcast and say, “Hey, this person was a great guest, I’m sure, but was this person a legendary investor, or were they a good investor who was a little bit arrogant, who ignored some risks, and because of that was able to hold something up 6x, 8x, or 10x?” I don’t know the answer. I don’t know the answer.

I understand that a lot of that sounds negative, but it’s what I’m thinking about. If you’re going to have something that goes up 10x, often there is a risk. Did it go up 10x because you identified that risk and rightfully dismissed it, or did it go up 10x because you glossed over that risk and didn’t know you were taking it?

I think it's a fascinating idea. But I am rambling. Here's one other area where I think about this. Right now, Paramount and Netflix are trying to buy Warner Bros. There's a bidding war there, and I'm very long Warner Bros., as a full disclosure.

I'm now seeing a lot of media investors and media commentators commenting on the Paramount–Warner Bros.–Netflix bidding war, and I think it's comical. These guys, many of them, are very smart media investors, but when I hear them talk about the Warner Bros. bidding war, I find some of the things they're saying comical—how wrong they are. If you do event investing for a living, you know the beats and rhythms of some of these things, and it's crazy how wrong these smart people are.

You see this and say, “When I see them coming into a domain that I think I know a lot about and they're just completely wrong on the mechanics of a tender offer or anything, how do I think about that when they're so wrong in this field, while I'm in their field? Is this just the shoe-button expert thinking they know everything? Is this something else? Does it show shortcomings in their current field?” I don't know.

I remember this happening a lot with Twitter when Elon was trying to buy it. You'd see very smart people opining on legal things, and you'd be like, “You have no idea what you're talking about.” I'm not a lawyer, but I know how contract law works on a general basis, and you'd hear opinions and think, “You have no idea what you're talking about.” I remember the Delaware judge who said Elon would be able to get out of the Twitter buy for $1 billion, and I was like, “Do you not know what specific performance in a contract is?”

It's just another thought. I don't know; it's interesting. Are they such experts in their field, and is it arrogance that they can come to another field? Is this just something else? Anyway, I'm rambling. I can feel myself rambling. You can probably hear me saying, “Should I be talking about this? Am I making any sense?” I don't know.

This was my monthly random ramble for December 2025: 10 years as a “professional investor.” I'm still learning. I just think about myself 10 years ago and how stupid I was. I'm sure I just mentioned arrogance and not knowing what you're talking about. Think about how dumb I was and how much of a better investor I am now.

My goal—my overarching thesis—is that I'm better today than I was 10 years ago. In 10 years, when I've got a lot more gray in my head, I'll look back at this random ramble and say, “Goddamn, that guy 10 years ago was so dumb. He didn't know what he was talking about. I'm so much better today than I was 10 years ago.”

I just hope—the great thing about investing, as I've said, is that you don't peak until probably your mid-to-late 40s. I've got 10 years from there, and hopefully I'm just hitting my stride. That's the great thing when compared to other pursuits. I get sore when I lift nowadays. I can't row like I used to. But the great thing about investing is that you've got a much longer career, a much longer time frame to build on everything.

I'm looking forward to the next 10 years. I hope you're looking forward to doing the next 10 years with me. I'm going to stop myself from rambling. I wish you happy holidays and a happy New Year. We've got some great podcasts coming up in January, and I'm looking forward to those. I'm looking forward to rambling in January with you, and I will see you in the New Year.

A quick disclaimer: Nothing on this podcast should be considered investment advice. Guests or the host may have positions in any of the stocks mentioned during this podcast. Please do your own work and consult a financial adviser. Thanks.