What I learned from Dan Sundheim's rare podcast appearance (didn't even feed this through ChatGPT): - Buy before research: Initiate position before fully vet an idea (Stan Druckenmiller style) - Don't hire lateral stock pickers: D1 doesn't hire from other public shops, prefers PE candidates - they have technical skills and no preconception on how to pick stocks, which is a good thing - Analyst hit rate not as high as he likes: Takes a PE hire 3 years to ramp, but hit rate for hires that add value is lower than he likes at D1, hard to find someone with intuition for making money in stocks - Very few natural stock pickers: Very few hires exhibit stock talent very early, some take time to ramp on sector knowledge and then thankfully do add value, some just "don't have it" - You have to love the job: This is not a "close my laptop for the day and forget about it" career path. You are always on. - Analysts have a mock portfolio: D1 instills portfolio management training into juniors. How their mock portfolio performs at the end of the year impacts their pay. This is likely a heritage instilled in Dan from how Viking Global does, where he was once the CIO. - Position sizing: have to balance between risk reward (ie. dispersion of future outcome). Businesses currently with good momentum should get more allocation (something Paul Enright has mentioned as well) - Asymmetry of emotions in public investing: when portfolio is working, he is not euphoric; but the portfolio is not, very stressful because losing money for clients. He was visibly painful talking about the GameStop saga, seems to be genuinely his worst time in career, something he also said in interview with David Rubinstein - How retail traders changed short selling: have to size positions smaller so can ride it out when it goes up 10x; Short alpha better than before because there are more absolute number of overvalued stocks - Types of shorts: he doesn't do frauds because too few in large caps. D1 focuses on secular shorts. He is not a fan of cyclical shorts that are currently overearnings (think COVID pull forwards of consumer names like Mattress) - Risk of M&A for shorting: in his exp, secularly challenged companies almost never get bought (who wants to buy a company slower growing than yours?) but names ceding market share can attract activists which can move the stock up - U.S. vs European market in spotting turnarounds: U.S. investors quick to see change and multiple expands quickly - earnings season: Dan wakes up at 3am every day for no reason. During earnings, he will be on the call with the covering junior analysts demanding a quick rundown on what happened on the earnings. If nothing material, might go back to sleep. If material, probably making decision already during the discussion. - making money on multiple expansion: most of the money is made on multiple expansion, which manifests from market's perception of a business' long-term cash flow generation stability - why stop investing in China: he is not a fan of Chinese government influencing how capital is allocated and favoring random industries at different periods. Chinese TMT names, despite possibly superior tech to U.S. counterparts, were cautious of consistently beating earnings because stock will go up and will attract government attention. (My take: Which is why despite all the great business successes, Chinese stock market barely went up with the company value creation) - Advice for aspirant: reading is the way to get ahead in everything and certainly applies to investing. Read a lot of stock pitches and see how the stocks play out, read things on industry and the economy.