Behind the Balance Sheet

William Green is the author of Richer Wiser Happier, an outlier in investing books as a best-seller. He is a craftsman and a perfectionist and having interviewed 40 of the world’s top investors for the book, has some fascinating perspectives on investing and on life. We split this interview into two parts. Last time we heard Green explain that the great investors are such thoughtful practical philosophers because they are students of life. Green quotes Munger who says that he watches what works and what doesn’t work and learns from it. In this second half, you will learn what Charlie Munger said about Green’s book (Spoiler – he liked it, a lot); how to be a good interviewer, this is instruction from one of the best practitioners of the art; and why William thinks that no matter the endeavour, being just a little weird helps in life. Show Notes

William Green is the author of Richer Wiser Happier, an outlier in investing books as a best-seller. He is a craftsman and a perfectionist and having interviewed 40 of the world’s top investors for the book, has some fascinating perspectives on investing and on life. William spent five years painstakingly crafting the book and distilling his learnings from interviewing the world’s top investors. This was a labour of love for him – he didn’t take a vacation in that time – and he went to extraordinary lengths. The love and careful craftmanship shines through and is what made the book a best-seller. Green always wanted to be a writer and studied English Literature at Oxford. He fell in love with markets, partly as he saw it as “a smart alec short cut way of making a living without doing too much work”. He had his first article published almost by accident and ended up as a journalist. Interviews with great investors followed. ⁠Show Notes⁠

Mario Gabelli is the billionaire founder of GAMCO and still managing money in his 80s. He believes in an in-depth research process, limiting his investments to the sectors he feels he understands. He believes in visiting companies – not just investees but their competitors and their whole value chain; in reading trade journals; and in monitoring the results of the sector. The day after we spoke he was due to visit a company he first visited in 1967! Few investors active today were investing back in the 1970s and this long history is just one reason why Gabelli is a fascinating interviewee. He likes to recruit PhDs, not from Ivy League schools, but Bronx PHDs - Poor, Hungry and Driven. He is a value investor, rooted in fundamentals and is incredibly driven, part of the reason for his success. See the website for full show notes.

Gavyn Davies is an economist and a former partner of Goldman, Sachs. He is the Chairman and co-founder of macro asset manager Fulcrum Asset Management and a co-founder of 3 other multi-billion asset managers. He is a former Government adviser and was Chairman of the BBC, the UK public service broadcaster. Of course we talk about economics, about investing, and about financial services; but we also cover public service broadcasting, streaming and politics. See the ⁠website⁠ for full show notes.

Tian Yang was a fascinating guest and we covered a wide range of subjects. He explains why ChatGPT may be useful in solving accounting problems, but it produces gibberish when asked about investing. We talk about his work on the commodity super cycle, looking at rubber, whaling and fur.  He explains how he applies quantitative techniques to the capital cycle framework championed by Marathon Asset Management and featured by Edward Chancellor. His work encompasses 3 different timeframes – the long term fundamental, the 6-12 month business cycle and the shorter term tactical trades – Tian is unusual in that he understands fundamentals but also what he calls playing the game, the tactical business of quarterly earnings and similar. We discuss the new environment which he terms the age of scarcity -investors need to understand the implications of the end of age of abundance which rested on the availability of cheap labour, cheap commodities and cheap money. All this now changes, which means different equity allocations are necessary. See the website ⁠for full show notes.

Chris Bloomstran is best known for his incredibly detailed analysis of the valuation of Berkshire Hathaway. Not only is he an outstanding value investor, he is a highly accomplished analyst. His Semper Augustus annual letter runs at over 100 pages and in recent years, it has included an evaluation of Berkshire Hathaway – his analysis of the stock is the best I have read. In this interview, we discuss his start in the business, his investment approach, why college investment funds make a great apprenticeship, why he writes such a detailed letter and Chris shares his analysis of the long term outlook for markets. See the website for full show notes.

Dominique Mielle had an illustrious career as a distressed debt hedge fund manager, including building a $5bn CLO business from scratch at Canyon Advisors. She retired from hedge funds, wrote a book, amusingly titled Damsel in Distressed (it was too good not to borrow), about her story to inspire women to follow her lead.  In this interview, she talks about why there are not more women in hedge funds and in investing more broadly; about the complexity of the distressed debt business; and about being a woman in a man’s world. See the website for full show notes.

Vitaliy Katsenelson is an investor and writer. Born in Russia, he now runs an investment adviser in Denver which specialises in picking individual stocks and eschews the usual 60:40 portfolio with equities indexed. In this podcast we talk about investing, about his third book and about his life philosophy. Vitaliy has a wisdom beyond his years and his positive attitude can improve anyone’s life. An illustration of this philosophy is his belief that scarcity is an essential concept that enables him to lead a more fulfilled life. US society is an aspirational society, it’s about abundance. But where there is abundance, we don’t value things. We all have varying levels of wealth, different health but on average a similar amount of time. And he views time as a scarce resource, which makes him value his time with his kids, so that the school run is no longer a chore but a privilege – he will only take his elder daughter to school another 400 times, so he wants to appreciate each time. I thought this was a wonderful demonstration of his mindful approach to life. See the ⁠website⁠ for full show notes.

Barry Ritholtz hosts Bloomberg’s Masters in Business, one of the most popular business podcasts in the world. He rather modestly says he was one of the first. Ritholtz not only has managed to interview investing heroes like Ed Thorpe, Ray Dalio (twice) and Michael Lewis (four times) but also has built a $3bn wealth manager in just ten years.  In this interview, Barry explains why financial TV is irrelevant, why the F.I.R.E. contingent (Financial Independence, Retire Early) have it wrong, why 70:30 should be the new 60:40, why investors should think in decades, how he can call Mike Bloomberg “dude” and not get fired, and what it’s like to have broadcast over 450 shows with some of the greats and some misses.  See the ⁠website⁠ for full show notes.

Carson Block is one of the world’s top short sellers, and one of few still managing a specialist fund. In this interview, Carson explains the business of short selling; the difference between fundamental shorting and his business of shorting and exposing frauds; how he spots these fraudulent companies; where to find frauds; and why it takes Muddy Waters 3 months to launch a short campaign. We discuss the economics of a short fund, why short selling is so much more difficult than long only investing and why Europe is a more difficult area to operate in. Full show notes here: https://behindthebalancesheet.com/podcasts-singles/podcast-episode-15