YouSaid · the spoken record

Trung Phan

lines on the record: 36
first: 2021-10-17
most recent: 2021-10-17
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

“Formerly of the Verge. Business saying, if you have no Facebook has a lot of baggage, right? Facebook has a lot of baggage. That's what all the crypto products are kind of like never really gone off the ground. And with Twitter is like, because they're kind of functionally the same they were 10 years ago, there seems to be a lot more space to experiment. And in my eye, Twitter is a much better network network. I think, yeah, it's like the joke that only your old uncles and aunts use Facebook. I know that's not necessarily true, but something about Twitter makes me feel like they can capture this opportunity much more. And the square element is just if all the pieces are kind of there, you know what I mean?”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To answer your question, there's a startup that actually helps route funds between wallets specifically for charity. Yeah, you can literally, it's all there. It's like the money you bought to send a few with is going directly to the wallet belongs to this charity. I mean, there's also, I mean, to your point, what is the layer that you're going to verify that that is the charity's wallet, right? But clearly there are people very able to do that. These things are being implemented. But yeah, I think that's a valid concern. Square has actually done some interesting things that suggest that they're kind of moving this direction with creators. They have a creator bank. They bought a title and they're kind of finding these. I think they're working on a niche kind of lending mover. You can fund an artist. They'll know just from their title streaming, even though title is not the biggest streaming service. They'll underwrite an artist. They'll be like, okay, we'll underwrite your next album because we know how hard you can hit, right? I think that's in the works. And then you combine that with Twitter. I know the history of product development is not great. Somebody brought up a great point. I can't remember who it might have been Casey Newton, the journalist.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not wanting to be charitable because they don't really know where the money is going. So, you kind of move that out of the way. You also remove the part like, you know, I want to do something charitable, but I don't want to look like that guy that's doing it just because people know. So those two elements, right? Those friction, that is to me, a paradigm change of how you can use an NFT to do charity. That actually blew my mind in the sense that like a lot of these things that you're seeing, like a digital training card, it's like, I get it. I get the value in that. You know, you create digital scarcity, but does it actually create new behavior? In my mind, this charity thing is so clearly a new behavior that's enabled by the blockchain and NFTs. And that is what to answer your question. When I wake up, I'm seeing all the crazy things that are happening in the Web3 space. It's like, that's definitely what gets me excited.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You were to buy an NFT and that money is routed directly to a charity, right? And now, and also that record of you doing that just goes directly to your blockchain or to your Ethereum account. You don't have to do the action, the intentional action of telling people that you've done good. It all happens automatically, right? And I think that lowers the barrier a lot to charity because a lot of people like if you people put their names on buildings, right? And that's a very kind of a game. Maybe somebody thinks a bit tacky way to show that you're a charitable person. But if you're doing charity and it's all automatically done and everybody understands it's all automatically being tracked and recorded, it kind of takes away that friction of like, hey, I don't want people to think that I'm just doing this for the name. It's like, you know, I'm going to do it. And now we're going to start living the world where everything's just recorded. He realized this mechanism as he was doing it because he used a crypto publishing platform called Mirror where you could embed NFT.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I know a lot of people have probably seen the crazy JPEGs, Crypto Punks, or Board Ape, right? It's just the Twitter profiles now. What's interesting about that is Jack brought up a good point, one of older podcasts in that he said, if you were to put the equivalent of a bill of your bank account saying, hey, I'm worth $5 million in your profile picture, you'd be like, yo, what's wrong with you, right? If you put a rare crypto punk in your profile picture that a lot of the internet people know is worth 10, 20 million dollars, totally above board, right? Totally accepted. So he took that same kind of mentality or he found that psychology also worked for charity and a charitable cause he did. When the Afghanistan pullout happened, he just thought, hey, listen, I have a bit of a platform. He done courses and as a visual designer. And he was just like, okay, how do I use my platform? And kind of the NFT mechanism to raise money. So going back to the example I said, it's like, it's very gauche and frowned upon to put a $5 million bill within your profile picture. But what if?”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everybody, and also gives people the opportunity to benefit financially because right now, like I have 200,000 followers on Twitter, but I don't make any money from it. And any ideas that I have for trying to make money, not that I'm even thinking about it, but like would be off platform. I'd want to push people off platform, whether it's to a newsletter or to a course, right? But if you were to create a way for fans, I mean, there's so many of these tools, only fans, Patreon, but the crypto side of it is just that you can start from square one and build communities and have everybody align almost immediately, right? There's a lot of these crypto communities on Discord where your membership is like an NFT. So I find like these ideas very engaging. I haven't gone nearly far down the rabbit hole enough. But an example that I mentioned in kind of our email exchange was Jack Butcher, one of my podcast hosts and friends for non-investment advice. He has paid a lot in the NFT space. He's one of the top 10 creators on Foundation, which is an increase in back kind of an NFT market. And he did something interesting, which speaks to why I find this space so fast.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's just so much intellectual energy around figuring out a decentralized crypto-based economy can help creators because that's kind of where I see myself headed. And I haven't even begin able to grasp the top levels of it, right? It's like Chris Dixon from Andreessen Horowitz writes incredible threads about Web3, Packy McCormick from Not Boring writes incredible stuff on Web3. I find it even difficult to unpack some of their ideas, right? But it's just that the love of ownership and how you construct new organizations is mind-blowing. And mind you, there's going to be a lot of failed experiments along the way. But I think that aligning creators' interests with their fans and giving fans financial equity participation in a creator. Creator coins are a very popular thing. BitClout, which has had kind of a muddled history when it launched about six to seven months ago, was basically letting people invest in individual, like think about Twitter, but you can invest in individual profiles. Find these ideas interesting because it really just aligns.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Delta variant is just ripping through the country. So a year ago, Vietnam was totally in control of COVID. Closed their borders to China, closed flights in and out. And I think there was something like less than 100 cases for most of 2020. Delta varying comes in, countries unbacked. Similar problem in Australia, actually. And now they're having a crisis legitimacy, the Vietnamese Communist Party. So the reason why I bring all this up is to answer your question about how will kind of try to resolve allow this to resolve itself is I don't see them letting this to implode, which means the Japan options, what's going to happen. in my eyes if that's their two options japan is the other you go the japan route which is you're growing at 1 percent for the next decade which will have you know honestly disastrous effects too right the economy gets crushed like that and you reorient 30 of the economy away people are going to lose jobs local economies aren't going to be able to pay for services on top of the fact that they're not even far enough developed to pay for those services”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Debt produced in GDP if it's like four dollars of debt produces one dollar GDP that's unproductive it's like no matter what happens it's going to have to resolve itself in some capacity and I think the Japan example in the 90s the lost decade for Japan which basically turned into the lost decades is something that is often brought up and just again from my unexpert brain is like the one I see the most the communist party in China has just such control over the country i just i can't imagine them letting this type of like a total meltdown happen right even if it's healthier for the country in the long run they can't do it because their legitimacy they don't it's not based on democracy they're not voted to be in their imposition like their legitimacy is providing economic growth so if they're to allow this implosion of financial implosion this is very similar to the covet crisis it was a crisis of legitimacy because they can't contain and keep the population healthy then why are they in power the same thing's actually happened in vietnam”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. I agree with you. There's some numbers here that wrote down just to speak to the scale of how absurd it was, right? 25 to 30% of China's GDP somehow tied to the real estate sector. A quarter of home buying is on speculation. And real estate just as an industry needs so much debt, right? Just the nature of a development. And this adds on top of the fact that China as a country. Michael Pettis was basically saying that even if it was just evergrand, even if it was just a real estate market being over-indebted, you could probably muddle your way through. But it's the entire economy, right? State-owned enterprises, local governments, households. I think the number is 270% at the GDP, which is unheard of a country at this stage in development. I think they doubled that number called for the mid 150% to 270 in the last decade. So just it's kind of out of control debt growth, right? And Michael's written about this extensively, but essentially when you grow and that debt growth is unproductive, again, going back to the how many dollars does a dollar.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Real estate's always been interesting and kind of communist and developing countries because, for example, in Vietnam, the asset manager I worked for at the time is running $1.5 billion. This would be 2008-2009.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I wanted to bring that because this deal literally just happened this week. And I think it signals that if a conflict were to happen with Taiwan, because I know people have been waffling and saying the criticisms, like I think America has just given up, right? Like after what happened in Afghanistan, the allies are like, okay, can we trust them anymore? This deal kind of signals, actually, you know what? You can trust us. We're kind of really putting our foot down in the Pacific region. And they also have previous defense agreements with Australia, Japan, and India called the Quad. But this one is very serious because the dollar amount and because of how it was enacted and rolled out.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This week is kind of like really substantive in the sense that the US, especially after what happened, the dismal withdrawal from Afghanistan, people were like, oh, they're going to withdraw from the world. This deal actually, it looks like the US and Australia are very clearly kind of drawing a red line in the sense that they're going to make sure that US continues to have a presence, a very strong presence with its allies in the Pacific and in and around China. The thing about the nuclear subs, and there's actually a lot of controversy because the Australia originally had a deal with the French, but those were diesel subs and they kind of without telling the French were taking this other deal. So if you Google Emmanuel Macron right now, it's just going to be pissed. And a nuclear subs are interesting because they much more difficult to detect and they can go much longer. The hindering factor on nuclear sub is the food for the group. That's it, right? I think you go forever. It didn't have to feed the crew. So America and the UK are basically going to be giving, these aren't nuclear subs that have missiles. They're just like nuclear subs in the sense that they can stay in the water for a very long time do recon.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Versus China's defense, which they're going to be in their own backyard. So it's very asymmetrical, actually, because it's a lot easier for China to defend the region than it'll be for America to attack. But I think that will be the disruption. It's like you take off the semiconductors and then also the uncertainty of having one and two. Number one and number two going at each other's neck. I think that's not comparable to anything that's really happened for 100 plus years. This week, there was a very big defense agreement signed between Australia, US, and the UK. It's actually the cover of the economist. It's an agreement basically is that some combination of the UK and the US will be supplying eight nuclear subs to Australia. And this is actually kind of shockwaves in the region because Obama said in about a decade ago that they want to leave the Middle East, America and focus to pivot to Asia, right? You remember the famous pivot to Asia. But during that decade since, China has claimed more land, claimed more islands, been very aggressive with its neighbors, and kind of built out its position in the lead up potentially to a Taiwan invasion. But this deal that has”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think if you look at kind of the price chart for stocks after the invasion of Iraq, right, in the 20 year Afghanistan war, even the Gulf War, right? It's like there's a first Gulf War when it was many people were like, okay, this is clearly about oil. Even after that disruption, I think there's a small recession afterwards, but like up into the right, the 90s was just booming 90s. But I think it's pretty clear that this Taiwan situation is very different in the sense that everything requires semiconductors. And it also you're putting China up against America, right? This isn't America going up against Iraq and Kuwait. This is the two big boys now and China is no small fry. But I think the article you mentioned I did write, it was based on Robert Kaplan's book about the South China Sea brings up a lot of good points, actually. He talks about how naval warfare is very different than land warfare in the sense that things go slower, right? It's because it's the nature. It's the water. He calls water has a stopping power. He can't move as fast and the type of war that would be enacted here is like it'd be America's offense.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In their own backyard. And I think they understand they have a small window to do it because demographics are not going to be in their favor moving forward. So I think that is kind of the overarching threat. Then if you layer that underneath is the fact that for the global economy because there's so much semiconductor manufacturing equipment there and the quote unquote semiconductors are the new oil, that's the threat that Stan's seeing and why that's so disruptive.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whatever you think about Donald Trump, obviously the whole election and his four years in offices was very rocky, right? And China, as Ju Jinping, are looking at. And then Teddy Roosevelt kind of followed. He didn't start the Spanish American War, but his policies afterwards, when America basically kicked Spain out of Latin America and the Caribbean, was also like, listen, this is our backyard. Please don't come in. If you do, it's going to be some problems, right? And so China is kind of looking at the South China Sea, Taiwan, that whole region like, wait, this is like, this is our backyard. Like 150 years ago, America put their foot down and kept the waters to themselves, controlled the seaways. It's like, we're just going to do the same, right? So their logic, I mean, totally makes sense from a geographical perspective. I think it's a little bit more difficult for them in the sense that America really is just an island, right? It has Canada to the north and a very small, Mexico to the south. No real threats. China is bordered by 14 countries. And it's fought with India. It's fought with Russia, Vietnam. So these are all contentious relationships. So just to answer your initial questions, the threat, right? China wants to secure their position.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sources, but found it very interesting always was that Mao knows that the demographics for China are very bad, right? It's estimated by the end of the century, it'll be half the size it is now. So call it 700 to 800 million. That has a lot to do with just richer countries have less children. Also, the one child policy is having terrible effects on their economy and future growth. And so Xi Jinping knows that demographics are not in their favor. And he also, the Chinese Communist Party, had witnessed basically from financial crisis to the election Donald Trump that the West was a lot more shaky than the perception of the superpower. Let's just focus on America, right? It's like this financial crisis. They're supposed to be the gold standard for capitalism. And then China is watching this whole financial crisis. Like, wait, the system, we maybe we can carve our own path, which is what they've obviously gone and done. So the financial crisis happens and then election Donald Trump just exposed so much political weakness it looked like to them in the country, right? It's like, how could this country be so divided?”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Olympics. They don't want to deal with an international boycott, but afterwards, his feelings is just like anything can happen. And again, my personal perception of it, very as informed as you can be as a guy living in Canada that reads the internet. And the other part I frame about this is like even the China experts don't even know, right? Like people that spent all day dealing with China have been dealing with decades, they'll readily admit they don't really know what's going on because it's the Chinese Communist Party. It's a very inscrutable structure. Obviously Xi Jinping has ultimately control the talk. I think something I read which is very interesting is Xi is much more ideological than his two leaders before him who Jintao and Yang Jin. He's much more ideological. His father was one of Mao Zedong's close lieutenants kind of went up and down with Mao like anybody does a lot of the close leaders did. But so he's called a princeling, which is somebody that is a child of so many close to Mao or within his inner circle, that first generation of communist leaders. And what I read, I can't remember what”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think at the top level to answer that question is obviously the semiconductor manufacturers are primarily in Taiwan, right? Like if you're in rank ordering, TMSC is at the top, Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company. And China has laid claim to Taiwan, right? Like for ages, the fears around Taiwan are similar to what's happening in Hong Kong, right? When the handover happened in 1997, when Hong Kong was given from the British back to China, was mandated by a treaty that was done centuries ago, or 100, whatever. During the late 1800s, they're supposed to be freedoms put in place, right? Like the rule of law and a certain democratic allowances. And China has just mostly stripped those away in the decades since. And a lot of people now are concerned that something similar will happen in Taiwan. This is not news to anyone. China has made very clear statements about Taiwan as a province of China, right? And so Stan's position was that he doesn't think that China will invade Taiwan before the 2020.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he brings back the point being that let's say he himself was a credit trader. If you're waiting around for these once in a decade trades to make these high conviction all-in bets, you might talk yourself into making some pretty bad bets, right? You're like, oh, I haven't done an all-in-bet like three years. It's like, maybe it's time. So I found that lesson actually very interesting.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think he's ever taken a down year, but yeah, he lost on that trade. I guess he had made enough beforehand to like the L. He actually found that going through different asset classes, so he did, he does equities, fixed income, and obviously FX. He said that a benefit that he saw from that was it never forced you to make a trade in the sense that if you're only a credit trader, right, you might only get a once-in-a-generation trade for five years, right? It goes through the credit cycle. But he's like, you know, I'm playing all these different things, which is almost even kind of counter to his first thing, which is like be so concentrated in one thing, but I guess different brain, right? Jackie Miller's on that level. The whole point being, I guess he wanted to keep on being able to find these once in a lifetime opportunities. And to do that, you have to be able to trade in many different asset classes. Because again, going back to credit as an example, you might only get it once in a decade trade once in a decade. However, if you're playing in four or five different asset classes and you know them well, you can build these levels of conviction. You'll get these opportunities more often.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your emotions will never go anywhere. It doesn't matter how successful you are, right? This is one of the most famed trades ever made was by Stanley Druckenmill and George Soros. Ten years later, he's still fighting these emotions and takes one of his worst losses ever. Even after he had made a huge win in 99 and him making that win in 99 was actually another lesson I learned from him. It's the Mark Andreessen quote is a strong opinions Lucy held something to that effect. In 99, Stanley was very adamant and he was very confident that the market was overvalued. He shorted the fund. I think he was short $200 million in various text talks or maybe even just a NASDAQ. But the market was still moving against him the same way it moved against him in 2000 in the sense that he his portfolio managers kept going up. In 99, even though he in his bones knew the market was wrong, he said, I don't want to fight the tape anymore. And he flipped it. He went long. So it's funny because tied in the whole dot-com thing are two of his lessons, right?”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Crazy is so he breaks the Bank of England in 1992. And then the dot-com bubble comes around, right? And he is short in 99. He's like, this is insane. These daliations are absurd. And he tells me this on the podcast. But what's crazy is that he was already at that point one of the most established investors in the game, right? At that point, late 40s. And he, in 99, he actually was able to turn a profit. This would be another lesson, but I'll finish this one first. It's like, after he turns a profit in 99, fingers up 35%. In the year 2000, he had taken his money out of the market and he had watched two of his junior portfolio managers, lower level portfolio managers. The market was still ripping and they were making a killing. And he said that he personally could not watch them make a killing. And he went back in the markets and put a $3 billion position on. He says he called the top by a couple weeks and he lost basically $3 billion. And his lesson from that was just that.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he did it in his 80s, which is to me, which is just insane. And I also bring this up because watching the crazy stuff that's happening, you know, NFTs, Dogecoins, all the cryptos, it's just having the understanding that Buffett may be the greatest tech investment ever in the public markets in terms of absolute dollar returns in his 80s, even though his entire career was not tech. That gives me a little bit of comfort in being like, you're going to miss a lot of things, right? But like if you can get one right and to your point, you can get one right like you did with MX or Standard with breaking the Bank of England and various other investors have done. You got to get one. I think that mindset's also very important because especially now with how fast markets are moving and how many asset classes are out there is if you get psychologically impinged every time you miss out on something, it's over, right? It's freaking over.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Actually, because I don't want to lose the thread on Puffet, because I know he's such a mainstay and probably the reason why this podcast even exists. I'd love to have your thoughts on this kind of thing. I just thought about it recently. I'm sure other people have written about it. You know, Buffet was famously criticized for not being a tech investor, right? He never invested in Microsoft, even though he was very good friends with Bill Gates in the 90s. And with the positions he would have put on, I mean, that trade probably worth $50, $100 billion, right? And then also invest in IBM, which is total bust. But I think when they did the position in Apple in 2016, and I know it's one of his lieutenants that kind of brought the position to him, but they put it, I guess, 30 to 40 billion around 2016. I think including dividends, the all-in return on that is looking at 150 billion now. So as a public market tech investor, I mean, I'm going to ask you, no one's ever had a position that large. That must be a public market on the tables. That's got to be number one, right? 150 billion. It is.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was also very asymmetrical, right? I forgot to add that. The other part of it why it was such in their eyes a no-brainer trade was because of the ban. They knew that the currency could only go only so much, right? And in their mind, it was a very asymmetrical trade because their downside was very covered based on the agreement of the mechanism. Invest to the point where you can go to sleep at night, right? Because if you're not, I mean, you're just ruining your life.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The ERM was created and why the opportunity came above. But for anybody that's not, I'll just do a quick TLDR, which may or may not be 100% accurate. But essentially England had joined this exchange rate mechanism to agree to keep the exchange rates with various European currencies within a band. And that was ostensibly supposed to help trade. So, you know, there's not wild foreign currency fluctuations. The German economy was after the fall of the Berlin Wall when the East and West Germany combined it created very, very significant inflationary pressures. typically a central bank to deal with inflationary pressures, raise interest rates. As these pressures are building and based on Germany's history with inflation, hyperinflation in the 1920s has led to the rise of Nazism, it's actually in the Constitution that they just have to control this. But conversely, the inflationary pressures are happening.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On it. And he said, okay, you know, the hustle and Trung interviewed Stanley and they got this great answer. But, you know, I just want to peel apart the onion a bit because I think it's easy for someone to say, you know, obviously in hindsight, find a single bet you can go on in with high conviction. But he laid it out as like, why did Stanley have such high conviction? Basically put these five mid-pyramid to explain why Stanley has such high conviction. Stanley during my interview with him was able to speak on some of the reasons why, but because of the nature of the interview and the questions, he didn't go super in-depth into it. But what Frederick laid out was essentially like, so at the very bottom layer was obviously incredible research by the quantum fund team. He had been looking at the exchange rate mechanism for between the pound and the deutschmark at the time. They've been studying it. And something they realized that there was this mismatch between the economic policy and obviously the political wherewithal, right? It's like I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with why.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Asked him what you makes a great investor. He just obviously had said this before. I really just loved how he framed it. He just said, what is taught about diversification doesn't necessarily agree with? He wants in his career, he wanted to find that he could go all in on. And famously, the example that he brought up was, of course, breaking of the pound when him and George Soros shorted the pound. They shorted up to 10 billion and then making billion on the trade. And the way he framed it was that he had gone into George's office and said, hey, we have this really good opportunity. I think he short it. We put a hundred percent of the fund in it and then the exact word he used was that George looked at him with great disdain. It's like, why aren't we putting 200% of the fund? Like, why are we getting even more? Why aren't we just learning this to the moon, right? Put as much as possible. And that's what ended up happening. And I don't know if you're familiar with Frederick Necker. He's a kind of a thin twit personality. So Necker value, great substack. And Noah Frederick from Twitter, and he took the interview actually and wrote a really long post.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Audience, which is where the hustle, and apparently my Twitter account is a lot of the comments I'm seeing, but yeah, that's how the meeting with Stan happened. And he was super gracious with his time and his answers. And he'd obviously done this before, right? He just knew how to insert his lessons within really entertaining stories.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, one of my colleagues at this fintech firm I work for, he also left and he started another fintech company called Togo AI. One of the founders of the company previously worked at Stan's family office. So Stan is an investor in the company. And he had been like, he knew I worked at the hustle and they're kind of targeting. They also did analytics in the investing space and they're looking to increase their brand name amongst the retail crowd. And they just like, hey, man, we see some really stupid things going on on your Twitter account. Would you be interested in along, obviously, with the hustles audiences under 35s, you know, investors, entrepreneurs? So would you be interested in interviewing Stan Drugg? I mean, what kind of question is that? It's like, yes, of course. Tell me when, where, where do I have to fly to? What kind of equipment am I bringing? So that happened in May and he had become very concerned about the money printing that had gone on with the Fed since the pandemic started. And I think he wanted to take the opportunity to find as many outlets as possible to tell the story. And the match with Toggle AI was, again, the young.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not my own. I would be studying trillions That would be that episode. No, I work for it. The name of the fintech firm is called Kentro. It basically did AI analytics for the financial, it was like an AI meets Bloomberg kind of petrol.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Firm in North America, and basically those kind of parallel things combined with the hustle when I joined 18 months ago, my fintech firm was acquired by S&P Global in 2018, and I decided to leave. And the hustle was basically my ability to combine knowledge I had in finance and tech and investing with kind of humor. And now it's all in this dusty, you know, Frankenstein known as my mostly my Twitter account.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so there's like a more irreverent kind of jokey kind of tone, but basically the hustle was a marriage essentially of two of my previous careers 10 years ago. I was living in Vietnam, but I sold a comedy film to Fox at the time. I was pretty young. I was mid-20s and I really wanted to get into film writing and comedy specifically. And anybody unfamiliar with the film business is when you get your script option, they get basically 18 months to hold it. During that time, they can create it, develop it, or do nothing with it. It's up to them. But basically getting your options sold is like you're still on the 10 yard line of your own end zone. There's like 90 more yards to go. So it never got made, but I kind of kept the dream alive. Over the years, I've worked on other projects and I've had a pretty actually big production partners. Nothing's come to fruition. But how that marries with the hustle is that during the time when I was making no money trying to become a filmmaker, I was working in financing technology first in the asset management company in Vietnam and then in banking and at a fintech.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, so for any listeners that aren't familiar, the hustle is a business and tech newsletter that goes out five days a week. We have 1.7 million readers, I believe. And I've been there about 15 months or so. And just to answer your question, how I got interest in the hustle, I don't know if you've ever read the hustle tray. I'm guessing you have.”
2021-10-17 · We Study Billionaires · TIP388: Lessons from Druckenmiller w/ Trung Phan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT