SI412: Portable Alpha: Asking the Questions That Matter ft. Harry Moore

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Welcome to Top Traders Unplugged. In markets, success doesn't come from predicting what happens next. It comes from being prepared for what you can't predict.
In each episode, we go deep with some of the world's most thoughtful minds in investing, economics and beyond to understand how they think, how they prepare and how they decide, and the experiences that shaped how they see the world. No noise, no shortcuts, just real conversations to help you think better and invest with confidence.

**Niels Kaastrup-Larsen** (0:35)
Welcome and welcome back to this week's edition of the Systematic Investors series with Harry Moore and I, Niels Kaastrup-Larsen, where each week we take the pulse of the global markets through the lens of a roles-based investor.
I also want to say a warm welcome if today is the first time you're joining us. And if someone who cares about you and your portfolio recommended that you tune in to the podcast, I would like to say a big thank you for sharing this episode with your friends and your colleagues. It really does help us. Anyways, Harry, it's wonderful to see you and have you back on the show this week. How are you doing? What's going on in your part of the world?

**Harry Moore** (1:09)
Yeah, great to see you, Niels.
All good over here in New York. I think we've hit 100% humidity today, so a bit uncomfortable. A bit of an uncomfortable journey in, but other than that, all good over here. And yeah, thanks for having me back. Really appreciate it.

**Niels Kaastrup-Larsen** (1:28)
Yeah, no, no, absolutely. We have a great lineup, not least thanks to you.
And so I'm excited about it. You know, before we dive into all of that, I love to just get a sense of what's come across your desk that you found interesting. Doesn't have to be anything related to what we do, but is there anything that you have come across that you have enjoyed recently?

**Harry Moore** (1:55)
Yeah, I think, so as I mentioned, I moved to New York kind of two and a half years ago, and obviously you look around, you see the bridges, the highway, like, oh, where this kind of all come from. So the book that is supposed to explain that best is the biography on Robert Moses, as it's called The Power Broker. So I ordered this book, it's like 1300 pages. I started kind of lugging that around on the subway.
It's a bit of a brick to be honest. So I've kind of given up. I don't know, it's a failure on my part, but I've given up and I've gone for the Kindle. So I've been reading about it, but it's just very interesting just to see like, why is the West Side a huge road when we could have had some coastline here? But you get just get a feel for it. A bit of a biography of New York in a way, a feel for how the city's been built. So been making my way through that, haven't quite finished it yet, did give in to the paperback and had to go to Kidville on that, sadly.

**Niels Kaastrup-Larsen** (2:50)
Yeah, super interesting, super interesting.
Now, for my part, by the way, speaking of bricks, I don't know if you remember, but back in the very early days of mobile phones, actually, my brother-in-law still keeps his first ever mobile phone. And literally, it was like a brick with an antenna on. I mean, it looks so weird now, but that's how people were carrying them around back then.

**Harry Moore** (3:19)
Amazing. So my first was a 3210 I don't know if you remember the 3210, but it had a snake in it. I think it did actually have a tiny little antenna, but it was one of the first ones that you could easily carry around in your pocket. It's not quite as far back as those huge brick phones. No, no.
This book would have put me in good stead for lugging around one of those old phones, I think, Niels.

**Niels Kaastrup-Larsen** (3:45)
Yeah. Now, so on my radar, nothing really surprising, I guess, but it's just some of the headlines that I've followed. Nothing really that is, well, somewhat linked to what we do, of course. But the first one is this story about this hedge fund, young guy Leopold Aschenbrenner and the situational awareness. And of course, you read the headlines and the news stories and you shouldn't, probably shouldn't believe everything that it says. But in any event, I mean, some of the things that you do read, the level of experience, the level of assets that he suddenly commanded, the level of leverage he was using that people were, you know, probably should have been aware of, so to speak. There's just so many red flags, in my opinion, when you see that. And yet for many firms with, you know, decades of experience and having demonstrated their ability to manage risk and so on and so forth, you see how difficult it is to raise money and hear someone with very little experience, very little track record, you know, ends up having $45 billion or so on the management before losing two-thirds of that, it seems, in a matter of weeks. So I mean, it's close up probably from location wise to where you are.