Dan Loeb - Lessons from 30 Years of Investing

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. If you enjoy these conversations and want to go deeper, check out Colossus, our quarterly publication with in-depth profiles of the people shaping business and investing. You can find Colossus along with all of our podcasts at colossus.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:00)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of PositiveSum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of PositiveSum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of PositiveSum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit p-s-u-m dot v-c.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:28)
My guest today is Dan Loeb, the founder and CEO of Third Point. Dan started Third Point in 1995 with a few million dollars, and today the firm manages 24 billion across equities, corporate and structured credit, venture, and insurance. He is best known for his activist work at companies like Sotheby's, Sony's, and Yahoo, and for the public letters he has written to boards over the years. What I find most interesting about Dan is how much his approach has evolved across those 30 years. He came up as a credit and event-driven investor at Warburg Pincus and Jefferies, built Third Point, then layered in quality investing, thematic technology investing, and now a very large credit business that sits alongside the hedge fund. We cover how he thinks about the AI stack and the companies inside it he believes matter most, the difference between good and bad governance, the Sony and Sotheby stories, and the power of writing. Please enjoy my conversation with Dan Loeb.
Dan, we've only been trying to do this for six years. Welcome.
I've been excited to finally chat with you about All Things Markets. It's such a crazy time. And I was walking in here, I'm like, what am I actually the most curious about, as it relates to how Dan runs his life? And one of the questions is the simplest, which is, in this time where there's more information than you could ever read, literally what does your day look like to stay up to speed on all the investments that you've made, the investments that you could make? How do you stay on top of the fire hose?

**Dan Loeb** (3:46)
I wish I could say I have a clod code that has organized all the information in one place and I go through it all, but I check the news and see what's relevant for the economy and what's relevant for our positions. I try not to get too obsessed with the minute-to-minute stuff because that will drive you crazy. I try to be a little more tactical than strategic. People will ask me about macro, what's important. I think when people think about macro, they think about all the typical stuff that the government reports, growth, unemployment, inflation, rates, currencies, where's gold, where's crypto. I think that all that stuff is trumped right now by two things. Where's oil?