My Insights

Opal Group just concluded their Family Office Winter Forum in New York and I was impressed by the content. Blue Mahoe Capital was a sponsor and I participated on the panel titled You Can Have It All: Sustainable Returns And A Sustainable Future which was expertly moderated by Tami Kesselman (as expected). I will write a separate article about my overall takeaways, including family office succession planning, the importance of private credit in a portfolio, sustainable investing and geopolitical tensions but I wanted to share 3 key quotes that stood out for me at this excellent event:

The UN SDGs are a matrix not a menu. - Tami Kesselman

You do not need to pick only one and Tami was saying that in response to me answering the question about how we measure our impact by looking at how many of the UN SDGs an investment can cover, not just 1 or 2.

Size is the enemy of performance. - Drew Weinstein

The private credit panel mostly focused on real estate and could have included someone discussing private credit to businesses but it was still good. Drew made this remark when speaking about how big a firm could grow.

Bigger is not always better and we have seen that with Berkshire Hathaway now having trouble putting capital to work and Renaissance Technologies turning back money in the past.

All strategies have a point of diminishing returns. Figure that out and optimize for returns, not size.

We have benefitted from a Peace Dividend - Michael Pugliese

My generation has no clue what it is like to grow up under constant threat of war, especially nuclear war. The 60s and 70s were different. We were kids in the 1980s so we didn't know about the Cold War. Since the end of World War 2 the West has mostly had a Peace Dividend with some scares.

We can't think the same way anymore because we now have 2 active theaters; Ukraine and the Middle East; with the possibility of the South China Sea; and none of the panelists brought up the Guyana/Venezuela situation.

2024 going into 2025 is going to be very interesting for the global landscape.

BONUS

I was most impressed by John Sitilides and his frank assessments of the European Union, NATO, American hypocrisy and China. I am going to be watching as many of his interviews as I can find and hunting down his publications. I may not agree with everything but he made me think a lot more about foreign policy and geopolitics than most people do, even though I read a lot and study history because I am concerned about history repeating itself.

Hats off to Daniel Meador and the Opal Group team for an excellent event and I hope that these 3 key takeaways that I have shared bring value to you. Expect some more notes on topics that really caught my attention.

In closing, I would highly recommend you read the novel 2034 if you care about how WW3 could start between China and the USA because tensions in the South China Sea and also read the book The Pendulum by Michael Drew to get a feel for one theory of how societies go back and forth.