Smash Notes

Back to $100M hedge fund manager: Do not make the mistake of dying rich, with Bill Perkins.

What Are the Three Edges of Great Investors?

Shaan Puri says the investors he has heard, including Howard Marks and Ray Dalio, tend to win in one of three ways. Superior temperament is the pattern of staying greedy when others are fearful and handling swings. An informational edge is understanding a market, or where it is going, better than other people. Straight arbitrage is buying one side and selling the other when the prices do not add up, until the gap closes.

Bill Perkins says his natural gas desk was the first two, not arbitrage. People who study every driver of supply and demand still fail if they cannot stay stoic through losses, because fear shuts down clear thinking, and trading does not hand out five wins for every loss. The product itself is high volatility. He calls it a fund to get rich, not to stay rich. Getting rich means concentration risk. An investor can lose 100 percent, and the fund can also return 300 percent. The choice is the expected outcome and what the money is for.

Transcript

$100M hedge fund manager: Do not make the mistake of dying rich ·

My First Million

More from this episode

  1. How Did Bill Perkins Make His Money?Bill Perkins says the first pool of capital came from trading natural gas derivatives, not from buying barrels and reselling them.
  2. Should You Take More Risk When You Are Young?Bill Perkins says he should have taken more risk when he was young.
  3. Why Do Traders Have to Stay in the Game?Bill Perkins says the swings ran from down 50 percent to up 250 percent, on about $100 million and about $200 million.
  4. When Should You Stop Growing Your Net Worth?Bill Perkins says he is 57 and is not trying to throw a party at 85.
  5. Why Is Wasting Your Life Worse Than Wasting Money?Bill Perkins says he wrote about this because he was very afraid of wasting his life, more afraid of that than of losing money or status. Money is a tool.
  6. Why Do People Fear Looking Foolish in Business?Bill Perkins says most people who never start a business or chase an opportunity skip it because of ego, not because of the money risk.
  7. How Do You Separate What You Want From Cultural Programming?Bill Perkins says a lot of what he thought he wanted was marketing from society or the movies, absorbed until it felt like taste.
  8. Why Is Life Balance a Pendulum?Bill Perkins says a life is not perfectly balanced in each day, month, or even decade. Balance is a pendulum.
  9. What Is the Difference Between Time Buckets and a Bucket List?Bill Perkins says a bucket list treats life like a movie sprint in the last month before death. He thinks a person has many deaths, not one.
  10. How Should You Plan Your Year?Bill Perkins says his family plans in time-bucket periods rather than one someday list.
  11. What Does Bill Perkins Regret Right Now?Bill Perkins says the part of life he is most dissatisfied with is health adherence.
  12. What Is Die With Zero?Bill Perkins says Die With Zero was the title that landed after about 10 or 20 tries.
  13. Why Should an Inheritance Be Given Before Death?Bill Perkins says an inheritance should not be a bequest.
  14. What Does Bill Perkins Spend His Money on?Bill Perkins says he has not stopped working, and he would not quit just to look finished with money. He still likes the puzzles.
  15. Why Did Bill Perkins Pay $15 Million for a Painting?Bill Perkins paid $15 million at Sotheby's for a second copy of Sugar Shack, painted by Barnes, a football player who became a painter.
  16. Why Did Sylvester Stallone Regret Selling a Monet?Sam Parr says Sylvester Stallone regretted selling a Monet that Parr thinks is called Haystacks. In the 1980s Stallone bought it for $110,000.
  17. Will Bill Perkins Write a Book After Die With Zero?Bill Perkins says his wife does not want another book, because it takes a lot of time, and a rule against new projects is how she helps him stay accountable.

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