YouSaid · the spoken record

Jim Grant

lines on the record: 110
first: 2022-08-21
most recent: 2022-08-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, I will say this we have been bright and we have been wrong, but we have always been literate. And I think I should apologize for ever reverting to baseball analogies. I do love the sport. But one of the players of the mess, Keith Hernandez, recently had the honor of his number being retired, not sure if I had this in the English football or cricket, but nobody will ever be whatever Keith's number was. Keith Hernandez number was 17, maybe. In tribute to him, one of the sports writers said that he never threw away an abashed. Never discuss his emotions. And I can say that every single line of grants was the best I could write at the time. Some of them I looked back on, some of them are stilted, I think, some of them are not always went over to mean something, but nothing was ever tossed up in the wall hoping to stick.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I would say the time is something else that is not for sale. You can't buy reputation or can buy the heartbeats. So as life goes on, you become to covet those heartbeats and husband them and expend them in ways that rather more carefully than you were. A young fellow throwing them around since they were confetti. They're not.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh man, kidding! I do this also, it's part time for me. My life's work is grandsite observer. And that's the most important thing I do professionally, but a close second of the books I'm working on. I spend nights, weekends on the 4th of July on Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox. So it is at the age of, let us call it, 76, I find that it becomes rather a lot, however, the simple joy of my avocation is enough to carry me through such pleasure at him reading what these greats have written and seeing the societies at work and trying to decode them. It's a privilege to have the time to do that time just as you say, or just quoting these times.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Practice for the moment. All this appears effortless. So if it appears effortless, that's good. That means that the sweat has been worth it. I assure you there ain't no effortlessness in it.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love language and your language, I must say. I am currently working on a book about Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox, and I am immersed in 18th century oratory. And it charms me no. I think I have probably some shrink with, say, I take refuge in the past, but I love John Adams on my biographical circles for the reason of his rhetoric. I love a language. I hate my first dress, his second dress was scarcely more presentable. I keep going until they appear spontaneous. A certain sense is kind of Tempkin Villages. But every accomplishment, every well-accomplished thing appears effortless, right? A double play in baseball or an aria in the opera song by somebody who devoted his or her lifetime.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I got right in life was the former Patricia. What I got life We got life in right When I got right in life, is the former official cabin so as to time and its uses, looking back on it, as I mentioned in the beginning, I spent hours practicing Mozart, Ricard Strauss, Orn, playing Arpeggios and scales, A2, etc. And that was an isolation in a room, practice room. And then my life has been typing in a room. And I guess I have chosen that because that's who I am and what I wanted to do. But looking back on it, I wish I'd gotten out more. I love what I have done now next time through assuming we all get another shot, right? I want you the kind of guy who not only enjoys having written, but the guy who enjoys writing. That's going to save me an awful lot of aggravation.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. Oh, yes. All sorts of different ways to make money. But I'm saying that to completely separate earning power. And financial stability from money making. I think it leads you into the lowest fat, the hottest manager, the most speculative names. The deepest remorse.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's, Bill, I say that with half respect and half, all respect, but a little bit of exasperation. I think that's too cynical. Yeah, no, investing is not about lights on the Bloomberg screen. Investing is about the allocation of capital as cosmic sensors, macros, investing is about the proper allocation of funds into productive enterprise that society needs to grow and prosper. All right, so when the central banks are directing investments in manipulation of the most important price and capitalist interest rates, that money gets misdirected. And Bill Miller is fine in buying these Bill Miller ever get long electric truck manufacturers. I might have. There were lights that were probably lighting and flickering at them. You got one Bitcoin. It was a flickering light. I think it's more than that. I think that's way too cynical.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The people who, some of the people who made money in Bitcoin, were those who had no conviction all about utility. You hear these evangelists now, some of whom had public companies who say that the world will never be the same. It changes everything. And the people who perhaps make more money and say, yeah, it's a trade.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Unflappable in the face of adversity. Nerve in this case refers to flightiness or jumpiness and you could be all nerve in the sense of having again a kind of a tactile sense that something's wrong and just for no evident reason change your mind that's all nerve and no nerve in the sense of being impervious to the crowd of standing aloof from the crowd and its emotions and its stampede at no nerve.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A successful stock trader. It's the Battle of Cliches, isn't it? One of the great bombau of yesterday, it's turned the 20th century in Wall Street. So-and-so, some great speculator, was all-nerved and no nerve. That's kind of descriptive of a certain kind of personality now. Steve Cullen, for example, the guy who bets, I see that as kind of an all-nerve and no nerve.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they say, but I don't know, I'd like to see him go down and I like to see them for sale at the bottom. I love that. I love to collect values and bargains. So that's my rooting interest”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Acquaintance, and he was kind enough to speak several times. We have a conference once a year now. Jack spoke once and this was about 2000 and I think it was memory serves which it's so infrequently does. It was 2009, 2010 the crash was fresh in memory. And Jack confessed that he felt just the way everybody else did. You know the world was ending. Yeah, yeah, it was ending. Does it?”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a little rough patch, and price has now suffered not 36, but 28. And now it's earning $3.5 and not four. But the ratio, of course, is much cheaper. So do you sell because is it stubborn to hold in the face of what could be a very devastating bear market? Or are you exhibiting the clarity of perception and the analytical conviction of a properly informed long-term investor by holding and buying more as the price comes down? So this is the eternal tension, right? It's the eternal question. That's why some people succeed on Wall Street and some don't. It's not as if anyone can do this. Not even the professionals can sometimes do this. It's so hard. The analysis is hard. But that's nothing compared to controlling oneself and emotions. Jack Bogle and I work, I count him a friend, not just a Walter.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's quite an inspiring story, I think. You know, one word on the word stubborn. It's kind of a clich ⁇ on Wall Street that you are stubborn if wrong, but you exhibit conviction and character if you are proven right. So Seth Claran and Paul Isaac and Mike are examples of value investors who are quite comfortable in the skin of their own analysis that was a CA company. And the company is earning $4 a ship. It's priced at $40. So it's 10 times those earnings. Prices 10 times earnings. And then the Fed clears its throat and says it might tighten the stock price is now 36. Well, it's not as good as 40, but this time still earning $4 a share. And now the Fed says something else from the economy.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's the greatest chapter in his investing history, was the recovery from that attitude towards one in 1930 that was very suspicious of what was then a very meaningful recovery in the stock market. It said spring of 1930, the market came back. A lot of people, ah, it's over. But Brooke was not so sure. He was very defensive. And it was at that time he wrote this memo to himself. It was, again, forgive me, I forgot some, but it was like a personal equipment.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was an old fashioned millionaire. Gold was $20.67 an ounce, and he was worth $30 million, let us call it, of that kind of dollar. It was a fabulously wealthy guy for his age. So he was a political figure. He was a speculator, and then he became respectable and then a banker, but he was doing the same thing all the time. He had a saying that a speculator is someone who looks out into the future or know the future, but you can't, but you can judge likelihoods. All right, so he goes into the crash, owning a lot of securities. And contrary to the myths surrounding his reputation, he was not in cash having expected a crash. He was rather a new era bull. He did not expect who was perfectly willing to admit the things looked toppy or overdone.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some of these details were a little bit foggy. I wrote this about 40 years ago Ruke began as a trainer in public securities. But he made his big money later on in what we would now call private equity. He became a principal, a rather reluctant principle in something called the Texas Gulf Sulfur Company. So he at the top, you might have a better recollection of this than I do. I have a footnote. I remember this footnote at the top in 1929 he was worth, what, $30 million or something?”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“His days were 1870s and 1965. He was born in the post-Civil War South to a former Confederate surgeon and grew up in very, very straightened circumstances and moved to New York when his family was very close. He was well educated at New York City public schools. Went to Wall Street. And by the time he was 30, he was a millionaire. Now that was when a millionaire was something.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, thank you, William. Thank you a lot. That's not now. Please, please tell me that later. So I'm not exactly sure how to answer the question. I think it's like, you know, if you come down with cancer. By the way, you ever spoke? Well, don't have done that.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So S1 ages one must pay closer attention and watch for drawdowns as we kind of clinically call losing money. What to say? I think one ought never to be fully invested. A month of cash for the safe opportunism, for the sake of what you can't see, but can't even imagine, but will come new ways, opportunities come in all sorts of guises. And one of this age-old guises of opportunity is disaster. So how to cope? I think this is where financial history comes in, just knowing that this too shall pass. But knowing also if you watch out, a lot of things do go to zero and stay there. You can't, I'm afraid someone's coming across as most unhelpful people who have really never gotten stuck cannot get unstuck by following the wise words of Bernard M. Baruch to himself in the year 1930. They become humbler as the market goes your way.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. Well, see, you can open the envelope open. Look, you don't have to. So one approach is to pay less attention. Now that is exactly sticking one's head in the fat's head. That is literally sticking one's head in the sand. Now that is an appropriate, I think, stratagem. You're 23, I'm gathering, I'm looking at your picture.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, my family has a frost a fair amount of money with Paul Isaac, who has been having a very rough time. He's been buying the aforementioned financial stocks, some of them in Europe are selling at less than two times earnings. Everyone is afraid that they're afraid of the gas getting turned off. They're afraid of the inflation that is spreading. the European Central Bank seems to be very comfortable with. So, you know, his view, my view was that these things will pass the underlying idea is that it value outs value comes out and is a trial while waiting for that to happen. But we wait.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A seller at zero. Now, China is the worst. I mean, and China is getting its comeuppance there as we speak. There is a spreading nationwide strike against paying one's mortgage interest owing to the failed promises of Sunday real estate developers. China is the most leveraged, most corrupted marketplace, not just corrupted. Well, let me put it this way. If you ever see a currency with one side, there's a picture of a mass killer. You don't want to own that country. This is a country with Mao on the currency. They're telling you something. Just don't do it. It's like, you know, Bob Gibson, what do you expect? You lost all your money in China? Yeah. What are you expecting? God, I can't stand that place”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Happens and the stocks they own will do very, very well after the dust sentiments and the dust will. There will be dust. There will be dust.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's called the Palm Valley Capital Fund. And people who found it were very good investors, but who would not participate in the levitation in the Everything bubble? And they went off on their own and they said, all right, here's what we're going to do. We're going to wait until we see things, stocks that are absolutely cheap, then we'll buy them. But we are not going to keep up with the Joneses. And I found what they did, what I dare say they have our grand story up on their website. I bet they'd be foolish not to. I think the world of the two of them and Eric Cinnamond is one of them and Jamie Wiggins. But I think the world of them, their discipline, their adherence to the doctrines of margin of safety. So they are going to be around whatever.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She was saying they're underfollowed and conservatively capitalized. Think that there are a lot of good things happening in Japan at the company level. I think the guy was running monetary policy. He's obsessive focus on raising the rate of interest is doing enormous damage to the Japanese credit market. However, at the company level, many good things are happening in the simple business of making a profit. And that's not being widely recognized. There are financial institutions worldwide that perhaps especially in Europe that are being tarred with Ukrainian war, Russian-Ukrainian war, and that are selling at really fetching multiples. I don't want to name them because I own a lot of them. I'll tell you about it something new people might take a shine to. There's a tiny mutual fund that is interested only in owning.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All sorts of ways that this is not decentralized, all sorts of ways in which it is vulnerable to remed, to the vicissitudes of the world of credit. And believe me, there ain't nothing more given to vicissitudes than the world borrow your lending.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love money, people claim to Bitcoin, down from $68,000 to $19,000. I said, oh, I still love it. But I think that Bitcoin is vulnerable to that. Also, Bitcoin used to be the thing you say if you wanted to buy, I don't know, a container full of surface-to-air missiles. Go to Bitcoin, you go to the dark web and use Bitcoin, right? It's perfect for it. But now Bitcoin wants to become respectable. You're like you, Wiggin, you're like me. So Bitcoin is now being regulated. Now it's, oh, this leverage, the snake in the garden. Credit has now entered the world of cryptocurrencies. I know this because of the serial bankruptcies of hedge funds and lending platforms. So the thing that the inventor of Bitcoin wants to get away from was central bank centrality and credit and credit risk, right? Nope. Hasn't escaped it.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Musk when he was besotted by Bitcoin, would he have written in a Tesla warranty in Bitcoin? One day it's worth $4,000, next day it's worth $40,000 to the buyer. To him, it's a cost four thousand. No, no, he hasn't done that. Nor has anyone taken a mortgage in Bitcoin, I think. So I think that, and so if you're really a zealous on Bitcoin, what we're saying is the world of technological innovation will never create something better. Something is crazy. Bitcoin trades like a tech stock. It is as vulnerable to disruption as any other tech stock. I mean, who's to say it's not the palm pilot of cryptocurrencies? I used to work with a software program, a word processing program called Malti. Oh, I love multi-mate. Never mind that I actually lost a book chapter once on multiple.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, first of all, let me give props to the people who did see this for the thing, capital T, has become minded, I remind myself of Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman of Goldman Sachs in the day at Wikid Blankfeld was asked about Gold in, say, 2011, when it was like $1,900 announcement. He said, what do I know? He said, I was bearish at $35 an ounce, and similar with this point. So having given proper props to those who sought for what it was then. So what is it? Is it money? No, it's not money. Is it something you can transact with? Well, it's awfully clunky for that. Is it a store of value? Well, I don't know, drawdowns like 80%. I mean, has anyone ever taken out a mortgage in Bitcoin?”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's one. So that's gold. I said, so this, you know my reasoning for it, you know some of the ways to look at playing. There are all sorts of alternatives to John's fond of all sorts of alternatives to owning individual Kubarans. Those are some ways to approach”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To own crew bands. Well, it seems to me that if Tangible protection and not something that itself is part of the problem or could be part of the problem. So what's the physical thing? Okay. So what about, but mining shares? Offer a value proposition there, deeply counted, widely, not so much unliked as ignored. So there's, I own something, for example, called the Sprott Gold Mining Trust, I guess, John Hathaway. This guy used to be called the Tocqueville Gold Fund, but now it's called Sprott S-P-R-O-T-T-T-T-T-T”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who believes that they should? So, what your threshold question is two threshold questions. One is, do you want to own the metal itself or the mining shares? And the second one, if the metal itself, do you want to own the exchange traded fund, which is the metal, but in paper form, or the things that you can possess? So I've chosen to own courands, one house coins, and they are available from”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Monetary disorder, which to date is still latent and not manifest. This could be a web of rationalization that is going to get nobody anything except trouble. That's the way I think.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Goal, an island of safety from the world of credit as a monetary asset without a counterparty. No one owes you anything on gold, it is itself in itself. The trouble is people don't see the value yet, but I think they will now. Gold stocks are even worse than gold. Never have they been, I think have they been cheaper in relation to the price of the metal because people don't believe the central banks can really come a cropper. Now I've seen, so old am I, I have seen central banks become completely marginalized and discredited in 1970s Arjun Arthur Burns and G. William Miller, and indeed before them under William McChesney. Pole Volker himself was discredited as an assistant secretary of the Treasury before he became the deity of modern central banking. So my bet ungoal is that it is indeed an investment.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. I feel like Graded, it's very heavy. It has certain metallurgical properties. Anyway, so I think that the world is whatever he has turned his back on gold. So the question for the House is, that's the past, that is indeed the present, is the future shine any brighter. And my case for gold is that it is the monetary asset that is not in the world of credit. Credit is the promise to pay money. It's the bond market. It's the loan market. So we live in a world of financially honeycombed world of promises, financial promises, debts. And the ratio of these debts to income worldwide is an all-time high, especially so in China. And I think that before long, how long, oh Lord, I don't know, before long, the world will see in”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Became a thing. And I was thinking to myself, If you want to buy a monetary metal, why don't you try one that is actually money? Yeah, Winthy's just.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What at least possesses a weapon Yeah. So that's one reason. And I think also gold is up against. It's very tangibility. One of the oddities of 2021 apart from lamentation of Bitcoin was the millennial obsession. It was a very brief live thing, but posted cubes. I looted.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Christine Lagarde, who has to this date kept the policy interest rate of the European Central Bank, one half of 1% below zero. That's in the face of a raging inflation in the continent of Europe. And if you look at Japan, the other major currency, the dollar can peace against Japan and Japan has chosen to suppress its bond yields at just about zero and let the yen exchange rates go to just about zero seemingly. I mean, the exchange market is eviscerating the dollar yen exchange rate. Okay, so”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Against gold, a non interest paying asset is slight to meager, yet gold has retreated in the face of just the Fed's promise to raise interest rates. So it betrays, the gold market betrays a most unbecoming trust in the institution that we are meant to be hedging against. So that part of it is fabulously annoying to me. It's as if Mr. Market does not read what I take the trouble to write every two weeks. So I can't explain. I can deplore it, but I really can't explain. Maybe it's, you know, I can recite reasons why gold hasn't done well, and I will. For example, dollar is the world's great reserve currency. It is Berkeley's itself in relation to the euro, which has as its money master or mistress.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It can come from me rather like a difficult child to always make excuses. First of all, it is true that gold has disappointed its many fans. Actually, not so, but those fans that has disappointed, it has not twigged onto the fact that the competition it faces from interest rates is a very meagre competition because, after all, with a 9% inflation rate, we're still losing massively on a bond that yields three or four percent. The rate of inflation is taking most of your money. And because the coupon or the rate of interest it pays is so low, there's no protection against the loss of price. Back in the early 80s, Bonn went down 15% in a year, and that's fine because the coupon was 15%. You could absorb the loss.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Newest in the office. And that something might be even in the womb of time, but we can guess a little bit about it. It might be that, I don't know, it might be that stocks are going to become more important. After they reach a point at which they become truly cheap, it might be that cash for all the damage that inflation does to cash might be cash is going to be the thing rather than longer dated bonds. So one would have a 60, 40, or a 70, 30 portfolio, but the 30 or the 40% portion would be in a near cash thing, maybe a one-year treasury bill, for example, or a short dated municipal bond fund, rather than 20 or 30-year securities yielded more. You sacrifice some yield for the protection against capital loss that is parcel of modern data security.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But if indeed the cycle has ended and rates were to go up, we are a different investment world because bonds will not provide the hedge that they have against falling stock prices. Just recollect that for everyone's investment memory, really, when stocks got into a rough catch, you had some protection from falling interest rates and rising bond prices. are falling and interest rates are rising fewer forever not getting the hedge but rather a drag and so the 60-40 or the 70 30 portfolio is not the thing for you now this is still speculative but i think that it's likely to be the case and people ought to be alert to the idea that something”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One way of looking at it is to observe that over the course of 150 years of financial history, bonds have tended to move over the course of decade-long cycles. Interest rates would rise for 30 and fall for 20, 30, 40 years, and so on, starting from the late 19th century to the present. They have fallen for forty years since nineteen eighty one. Now, it might be that that cycle has broken. I have been a little too eager to declare the end of that cycle. And in my newly found humility on that point, I will not now say, at least not out loud, I might think it, that the bond market's still might prefer to going down most of the”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A bond is a promise to pay money. And the best thing that happens to you with a bond is you get your money back with interest. That's the upside. And Ben Graham, writing about bonds, reminded us, reminded his readers that a bond is not going to triple because management chance on us are wonderful invention. As the upside is limited, so are the risks great. So bond selection is one of exclusion rather than of selection. You approach it with the idea of avoiding risk. So what about treasury securities? They're characterized as super safe in the Wall Street Journal. They have anchored most retirement portfolios for most of the past four decades. Well, how do we analyze this?”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know of value investors who have suffered losses this year on the order of 20% or more, although they thought the stocks they owned were so cheap that they were inured to such things. But no, so it's been a brutal year for many people. But in answer to your question, what we try to do is keep scouting for opportunities. We don't see it in the bond market, although if there's a recession, bonds will go up in price and down and interest rates will fall likely. We see opportunity in gold stocks, which are almost universally ignored and scorned. They're as cheap as they've ever been in relation to the metal. But if the Fed is seen not to have the great answer, if the Fed is seen to be an institution, you must protect yourself against rather than to trust in. In that case, this is something I've been expecting for as long as I've been alive, but in that case, going to do very well.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's managerial errors. And now we ought to pay attention because it is now a value and stuff. It's a margin of safety. So there are these opportunities cropping up. The risk is, and I see this a lot in people who manage what's called value portfolios, is that the cheap stocks do go down with the ones that are”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's possible that through luck and maybe the feds learn something. But I think that, so the question then becomes, where do the risks lie and where do the opportunities lie, given that the outcome is indeterminate? Are you being paid well to think one thing that is possible, indeed probable, is are there bargains, in other words? Are there bargains that people are neglecting because they're more of a single-mindedly focused on some? I don't see many just yet. We have a very good equity analyst here who does other things about it. His name is Evan Lorenz. He's the deputy editor of Branson. He does fabulous work in analyzing individual stock. So he had been very bearish on Facebook and the courage we came out. And Evans did this fine work. And he says that Facebook is now a buy. It's cheap on its merits, on its earning power. It has been unduly punished for its foibles.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So here's what, so without obsessing interior dialogue and motivation, what I try to do is to reserve mindshare, mind space for the not impossibilities, not impossible outcome if things work out. The United States economy is something that demonstrates the greatest resiliency over the years. I mean, I think one cares rather too much about American's not singularity, but exceptionalism. So America is exceptional in many ways, certainly its economic history is exceptional. So if there's a Ken-Doo spirit here, there's a spirit of enterprise, not even the Fed can extinguish through its maladroid policy maneuvers, or President Biden extinguished through his elections in the pulpit.”
2022-08-21 · We Study Billionaires · RWH012: Fear the Fed w/ Jim Grant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT