Dan Loeb：做空的失落艺术，以及选股为何重新回归

Legendary activist investor Dan Lope. 传奇激进投资者 Dan Loeb。 He of course is the CEO and CIO of Third Point. 他当然是 Third Point 的 CEO 兼 CIO。 The lost art of shortselling has come back and it's absolutely critical. 做空这门失传的艺术已经回归，而且至关重要。 Doesn't matter what you do, you have to be really selective. 不管你做什么，你都必须非常挑剔。 People talk about stock pickers market. 人们谈论股票选择者的市场。 This is a bond and credit pickers market. 这其实是债券和信贷选择者的市场。 When we were small, our main tool was a shame and humor. 当我们规模还小的时候，主要武器就是羞辱和幽默。 Dan Loe turning up the heat on Nestle over the weekend. Dan Loeb 周末向雀巢公司施压。 The shift has really been more towards a dare to be great message. 转变其实更多地转向了一种'敢于成就伟大'的信念。 Activism without proxy contest is like Catholicism without hell. 没有代理权争夺的维权投资就像没有地狱的天主教。 You're very active on the Twitter as well. 你在 Twitter 上也很活跃。 Oh wow. 哇。 You found your voice. 你找到了自己的声音。 Lot a lot of emotion brewing there. 里面积累了很多情绪。 Can we actually start with that? 我们能从这里开始聊吗？ Before Twitter, you were actually quite active, but they were in very different places. 在 Twitter 之前，你其实也很活跃，只是在完全不同的地方。 I mean, you were in Wall Street Bets before Wall Street Bets existed. 我是说，你在 Wall Street Bets 诞生之前就已经在做类似的事了。 Can you just walk us through your evolution as a as a uh public persona? 你能跟我们讲讲你作为公众人物的演变历程吗？ Sure. 当然。 I mean, there was this brand new technology uh that came out called the internet. 我是说，当时出现了一种全新的技术，叫做互联网。 And really shortly that thereafter uh long before Reddit or any of these other things, there were a series of of chat boards. 紧随其后，远早于 Reddit 或其他这些东西出现之前，已经有一系列聊天论坛了。 There was, you know, Yahoo, there was something called Silicon Investor, um a few other ones. 有 Yahoo，有一个叫做 Silicon Investor 的网站，还有几个别的。 And people would congregate in kibbitz. 大家会聚在一起交流。 It was done mostly anonymously and um it was an interesting place to exchange ideas. 大多数都是匿名的，这是一个有趣的交流想法的地方。 There was it was it was really the wild west. 那真的是蛮荒西部。 People could pretty much say or do anything, but there was a lot of but there was a lot of substance there too. 人们几乎可以说任何话、做任何事，但那里也有很多真正有价值的内容。 It's not actually that much different than from today. 其实和今天也没什么太大不同。 You uh did you engage at all in any trolling per se? 你有没有做过一些所谓的挑衅行为？ Well, some people use the term OG. 嗯，有人用"OG"这个词来形容我。 Sometimes I say I was the OT. 有时我会说我是 OT。 Um 嗯 the original troll. 原始网络喷子。 Yeah. 对。 No, I did. 没错，我确实做过。 I mean, it was it was fun. 我是说，那挺好玩的。 You know, I I didn't know I was one day going to run institutional money and have a big fund and, you know, I was just having fun and uh and blowing off steam and and uh yeah, it was fun. 你知道，我那时并不知道自己有一天会管理机构资金、运营一只大型基金。我只是在玩，发泄情绪，很开心。 I mean, investing is fun and particularly on the short side. 投资很有趣，尤其是做空这一块。 I mean, there's so much humor in it when you detect these companies, especially in the '9s. 里面有很多幽默感，特别是当你发现那些公司的时候，尤其是在90年代。 I mean, that the it was really unsupervised. 那时真的是完全没有监管。 There were some incredibly fraudulent companies out there and it was just fun to uncover them and kind of taunt the management teams and ultimately uh prevail. 外面有一些极其欺诈的公司，揭露它们、嘲讽那些管理层，最终获胜，真的很过瘾。 You have one story above others that kind of stands out in that era. 那个时代有没有一个故事特别让你印象深刻？ I mean, there were there were a bunch. 这样的故事有好几个。 There was uh wow. 有一个，哇。 Um, there was a company called Act Trade that I remember run by a guy who was like a repeat uh fraudster and we uncovered it and and um you know I I know we really got under this person's skin and ultimately it was really just a factoring company trading at five six 有一家叫 Act Trade 的公司，我记得是被一个惯犯欺诈者经营的，我们揭穿了它，你知道，我们真的让那个人如坐针毡。最终那不过是一家账面价值五六倍的保理公司。 I don't remember what it some large multiple of book value and they had created a new technology called TADS 我不记得是多少倍了，某个很大的数字，他们创造了一种叫做 TADS 的新技术。 I don't remember what TAD stood for, but they were basically repackaging factory securities and saying that they had some special technology. 我不记得 TADS 代表什么，但他们基本上是在重新包装工厂证券，声称自己拥有某种特殊技术。 They were financing refrigerators and things like that. 他们在给冰箱之类的东西提供融资。 Tell us um your evolution as an investor when you started Third Point. 跟我们讲讲你作为投资者的成长历程吧，从创立 Third Point 开始。 I mean, you started with very very little capital. 我是说，你起步时资本非常非常少。 Now it's almost 30 billion of AUM. 现在管理规模将近300亿美元。 your multistrat, but you learned at Jeffre, I think, like you learned helping people like David Ter allocate capitals. 你是多策略投资者，但你在 Jefferies 学到了很多，我想是帮助像 David Tepper 这样的人进行资本配置。 Just walk us through how you learned to invest. 能跟我们说说你是怎么学习投资的吗？ Well, I I started um really fascinated by investing and wanting to do it. 嗯，我从一开始就对投资非常着迷，很想去做。 I think when I I remember when I was 10 years old, my dad took me my dad was a notoriously bad investor himself. 我记得我10岁的时候，我父亲带我去，他本人是出了名的糟糕投资者。 So, he didn't give me any good examples. 所以他没有给我提供什么好的榜样。 He was a great lawyer, not a great investor. 他是个出色的律师，但不是个好投资者。 But he took me to meet a broker and I started investing. 但他带我去见了一位经纪人，我开始投资了。 And then in high school in the 11th grade, I got a job at the branch office of Bear Stern, sorry, of uh Payne Weber working for a guy named Allan Crown who let me post his books and make cold calls. 然后到了高中11年级，我在 Bear Stearns，不对，是在 Payne Weber 的分支机构找到了一份工作，为一个叫 Allan Crown 的人工作，他让我帮他记账、打陌生电话。 And I think we broke certain securities laws, but I think the statute of limitations is passed. 我觉得我们可能违反了某些证券法，但我想诉讼时效已经过了。 I would trade um options on accidental petroleum and teladine. 我会交易 Occidental Petroleum 和 Teledyne 的期权。 there was a lot of volatility and um I think I had flurries of making money and lost all of it a couple of different times but it was a good good lesson. 有很多波动，我觉得我赚了一阵子钱，然后又全亏回去，这种情况发生过好几次，但这是很好的教训。 I continued doing it in college and then um my learning started really formerly at Warberg Pinkis where I really learned to value enterprises as my first job private kind of across the spectrum of private equity and venture capital. 我在大学继续做，然后真正系统的学习从 Warburg Pincus 开始，在那里我学会了如何给企业估值，那是我第一份工作，跨越私募股权和风险投资的范畴。 I worked at a risk arb firm which was really invaluable. 我在一家风险套利公司工作过，那段经历非常宝贵。 Uh and then skipping forward I had I had way too many jobs in my 20s. 然后跳过一段时间，我在20多岁换了太多份工作。 Uh but I got really serious at Jeffre. 但我在 Jefferies 真正认真起来了。 I had a amazing opportunity to work on the distress debt desk there. 我有一个绝佳的机会在那里的不良债务部门工作。 I started out as a research analyst and I was just like drinking out of a fire hose. 我从研究分析师做起，感觉就像用消防水管喝水一样。 There was so much activity. 那时候的活动实在太多了。 the securities were so cheap coming out of distressed and um it was you know the 10,000 hours 10,000 reps we would write up uh different things every every day there were big blocks of debt to move and I really got that that was my real learning point and you know I stress this to people that you know everyone's kind of sees mentorship as this sort of hierarchical thing where you you know learn from some wise older person but it's I I I learned a ton from my colleagues, from my own cohort, and I learned a ton from my customers, you know, like Eric Mindic was a um boy wonder at Goldman. 那些证券从困境中浮现出来价格极低，你知道，10000小时、10000次操练，我们每天都要写各种分析报告，有大额债务要处理，这是我真正的学习节点。我常对人说，大家都把导师关系看作一种等级式的关系，从某位睿智的前辈那里学习，但我从同事、从我自己的同龄人那里学到了大量东西，也从客户那里学到了很多，比如 Eric Mindich，他曾是高盛的神童。 He was the youngest partner. 他是最年轻的合伙人。 Youngest partner at Goldman. 高盛最年轻的合伙人。 Yeah. 对。 Ran the ARB desk there and he had this triumvirate or quadrumbate, whatever the four four people. 他管理那里的套利部门，有一个三人组或四人组，不管是三个还是四个人。 Uh I don't want to leave them out, but Amos Dker and um can't some other guys. 我不想漏掉他们，还有 Amos Dikker 和其他几个人。 Anyway, they were great and they really kind of brought me into their thought process thinking about event- driven investing and then, you know, I covered some of the smartest people in the business, including David Ter. 总之，他们都很厉害，带我走进了事件驱动型投资的思维方式。然后我也服务过一些业内最聪明的人，包括 David Tepper。 I got to watch their thought process and I was like a, you know, like a Chinese corporation that was like copying and reverse engineering and taking everything in and creating my database of knowledge and my own operating system. 我得以观察他们的思维过程，就像一家中国企业在学习、逆向工程、吸收一切，建立自己的知识数据库和操作系统。 kind of taking the best out of what all these different people did. 取各家之长，融汇贯通。 And what was that style when you first started Thirdp Point? 那么在你最初创立 Third Point 的时候，那种风格是什么样的？ What did you 是什么 what was that expression? 那种表达方式是什么？ That was well I think that you know we call it event driven investing. 那就是我们所说的事件驱动型投资。 It was really less focused on the quality of business more focused on very complex transactions takeovers spin-offs risk risk or arbitrage bankruptcies privatizations demutralizations. 那时关注业务质量的程度较低，更专注于非常复杂的交易：收购、剥离、风险套利、破产重整、私有化、相互化改制。 And these transactions created unbelievable opportunities for alpha because of the confluence of dislocation, opacity, kind of time, but also this goes and nothing changes. 这些交易创造了难以置信的 alpha 机会，因为有错位、不透明、时间窗口等因素，但也因为市场往往一潭死水，什么都不变。 I always quote this Jesse Livermore line, there's nothing new under the sun. 我经常引用 Jesse Livermore 的那句话：太阳底下没有新鲜事。 A real focus on management incentives. 真正关注管理层的激励机制。 So in all these different kinds of transactions, management was incentivized to sandbag their numbers during a time when there was an excess supply of securities where their options were being set. 在各类交易中，管理层在证券供应过剩、期权授予价格设定期间，有动机压低数字。 And we as co-investors got to come in with these depressed projections and ride along not just the um well we got to ride along a few different things that would happen. 而我们作为共同投资者，可以在这些被压低的预测下进场，然后享受几件事情同时发生带来的收益。 greater transparency and understanding of the business coverage uh companies that that delivered a topline and margins and roe and everything else better than expectations. 更高的透明度、对业务更深入的理解、覆盖那些收入、利润率、股本回报率等各方面都超出预期的公司。 So it was really a golden era for that type of investment 所以那真的是那类投资的黄金时代。 and from where that started to what third point is today just describe that and where you want to where do you go from here? 从那时的起点到今天的 Third Point，请描述一下，你想去哪里，打算怎么走？ Yeah. 对。 So stylistically that event um approach it's it's it's still something we think about 从风格上说，那种事件驱动方法依然是我们的思考框架之一。 it's in our um 它仍然在我们的体系里， it's in our framework but I think what happened really when technology became a bigger uh force but really everything changed is a greater focus on business quality and um innovation and disruption and more thematic on the on hand understanding of consumer trends what's going on in financial services 但我认为真正发生变化的，是技术成为一股更强大的力量，一切都随之改变：更注重业务质量、创新与颠覆，以及对消费者趋势、金融服务走向等主题更宏观的把握。 what's the economic macro backdrop 宏观经济背景是什么 that's that's supporting all this 是什么在支撑这一切 and of course the big topic of this event you know AI is sort of the culmination of that 当然，这次活动的核心话题 AI，就是这一切的顶点。 but all these major technological innovations that have really happened since 还有所有这些自那时以来真正发生的重大技术创新。 you could make money before by not being technology savvy in the markets 以前在市场上不懂技术也能赚钱。 you could be technologically illiterate or just say I don't do it and you could also be even more or less 你可以对技术一窍不通，甚至可以直接说'我不做这块'，你甚至可以在某种程度上