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Harris Kupperman
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Harris Kupperman
Our stock market is very overvalued in the US I think everyone agrees with that because we've been taking everyone's excess savings into the US and as a result, we've hollowed out our industry here. And I think everyone recognizes a problem, but no one knows how to fix it because no one wants stocks to go down. So Wall Street's really good at figuring things out 30, 60, 120 days from today. And that's where everyone's time frame is. And that's a really competitive time frame. But I can look at things two or three years out and have some certainty on what's going to happen or at least probability adjusted to say, look, I get my money back or I make a lot of money at some point. You look at AI, they've dumped almost a trillion dollars into this and the data centers make no money. They never will. It's impossible. I mean, there's not a trillion dollars of revenue that could support this stuff.
Matt Ziegler
You're watching Excess Returns, the channel that makes complex investing ideas simple enough to actually use or better questions lead to better decisions. I'm Matt Ziegler, who's with me here today, Praetorian Capital's own Harris Kupperman Copy himself. Finally getting you on the show. How you doing today, man?
Harris Kupperman
Hey, happy to be here. It's been a long time.
Matt Ziegler
All right, so let's dive into this idea of inflections, inflection points, in fact. What, what does the word even mean to you?
Harris Kupperman
So I like to say I'm an inflection investor because I can't figure out any other way to explain what I do. I look at sectors, companies that have been kind of left for dead, that have caused immense ptsd, to portfolio managers that have angst and hate. And I try to figure out why they're going to get better. It's a top down strategy and I call it an inflection. I found Wall Street's really good at taking a company that grows 15 or 20% a year. They kind of drag and drop on an Excel spreadsheet and they discount that back. And they, they kind of argue about what the right multiple is based on 20, 30 earnings. And that's not my game. I don't have any special edge in that. There's people who are really good at it, but not me. I try to figure out where Wall Street's just totally missing the ball, where you could buy something really cheap. I'm a value investor, right? I could buy things for way less than replacement costs. I could buy them at a very low earnings cash flow multiple. I can buy them at a place where it's unlikely I'm going to lose much money. And if it plays out like I think it will, I'm going to make at least three times my money, but more like five, 10 times. And it's an inflection. It's Wall street can't see what's about to happen to this industry because it hasn't happened in 20 years and Wall street has like a two year memory about everything. And there's been so many false starts that Wall street just assumes it's another false start. So you can actually see something evolving and you see it working and the stock's up 20% or something and you think it's going to go a lot further. And that's inflection investing. I try to catch that inflection. It's mostly top down. There's some bottom up tied to corporate events, a new CEO, things like that, but it's mostly top down.
Matt Ziegler
All right, let's parse those two. Let's parse top down versus bottom up. Explain how you think about those in terms of inflection.
Harris Kupperman
Well, I'm a macro guy, right? I think macro is super interesting. It's what drives things. You know, there's this bottlenecks, this cycles. I just try to figure out who's going to earn excess returns because of something that happened. Remember, politicians are very dumb, but they're really smart at one thing and that's getting reelected. But they have two year cycles or three year cycles or four year cycles. And I have a lifetime at this. And so my cycle doesn't line up with their cycle. And there's a cause and effect to a lot of decisions they make. And they make decisions based on getting reelected, based on. And as a result there's winners and losers and it's pretty easy. Early in the process, politician says something, who's the winner, who's the loser, what happens? And there's usually a lag and then you make a lot of money and it's one of the easier things to do. My buddies and I, you know, you know, the analyst, the fund, some of the guys who work at the fund, we sit around every Wednesday, drink a lot of beer and we just say what's happened this week? Who's going to win, who's going to lose around the world. And a lot of it's tied to politics, it's elections. I mean, look, if you have a guy who's anti business and you know, like Argentina and suddenly they bring in a guy like Malay, well, things are going to get incrementally better. Is there a trade? You know, it's. These are the sort of things we do all day, every day. And it usually leads to a lot of money making though. You have to be patient and you have to figure out what ticker to buy once you've identified what the trade is. But that's a lot of what we do. It's sort of simplistic in a way. I'm surprised more people don't do it.
Matt Ziegler
So we're talking about this in the middle of a war. There's a war on. This is March 24, 2026, when we're having this conversation. Walk me through. I'm not necessarily digging for a ticker or an idea, but just give me an idea. Something in the last couple of years, even with the top down framework of thing happens in the world, you ask who's going to win, who's going to lose and then how it gets expressed. Just walk me through the process.
Harris Kupperman
So let's keep talking about Argentina actually,
Matt Ziegler
because let's pick on Argentina.
Harris Kupperman
I was picking up that scab look. We thought Malay had a good chance in the elections. We bought a basket. This is a couple years back, before he became president. We bought a good basket of Argentine stocks. They went up a bunch of in the elections he won. He didn't win by as much as I thought he'd win. I didn't think he'd have a governing mandate. And so we sold them all. We kind of got break even Right. And then he was able to execute way better than we actually thought he was going to be able to execute. And he won reelection. Well, his party did. And he actually gained a lot more seats, which gives him more leg room to operate now. And we started looking at Argentina again, saying, look, all the US ticker symbols are up a bunch. Things on the ground there still aren't that great, but I see line of sight to them getting better. But how do we play Argentina, where you're somewhat insulated and protected, because downside is obviously the number one thing I care about. And so you start thinking about ways you can invest in Argentina where if the elections go bad and they do this every two years, you don't get hurt too bad, and you might make a lot of money if things go well. And I came across the Argentine stock exchange. It's called the Bolsa. It trades at 6 times earnings. It's suffered through multiple currencies, multiple governments. They've tried to kill this thing, like they tried to kill the entire economy there. But it's just kind of like stumbled forward. And so we bought the Argentine stock exchange. I mean, if you think about a country ETF versus the stock exchange, usually the stock exchange does better than the country ETF when you're betting on a country. And I guess if you live on the ground there and you really know what you're doing, you could probably choose the components of the ETF and do better. But history's on my side that you just buy the stock exchange. And oddly, the stock exchange isn't up much. It's actually the same price because they've devalued their currency so much. It's the same price as when Milei first won in US dollars. So it's gone nowhere. Whereas a lot of Argentine assets are up a lot. It's the same price, except for trading volumes are up a bunch, the earnings are up. I mean, a stock exchange is really just trading volume. That's how they earn their money. And Milei has been pretty clear that eventually they're going to allow FDI in. I mean, they want fdi, but this exchange exchange controls. It's messy. Who wants to invest in Argentina? But you're starting to see some big projects get announced incrementally. More capital is coming in, and that's going to balance a bunch of their imbalances. They're going to slowly widen the band of capital that can come out. People are going to feel more comfortable. It hopefully is a reflexive process. And eventually people are going to want to buy Argentine stocks, not the handful of big ones listed in the US but all the other ones. And Malay has been very clear that he wants to do privatizations. And it's so that he can cement his legacy, so that if he comes out of power and he one day will, the next guy is, you know, don't just go back to radical socialism. So he wants to privatize a bunch of stuff. And if you have more Q sips to trade, well, that's just more trading volumes, more revenue, it's more profits. There's a ton of things in Argentina that probably should IPO because they need outside capital. And that's the best way to grow your business and get capital. I think you're. If Malay is given a few more years of Runway here, I think you'll have a dynamic functioning stock exchange in Argentina that's liquid. And this thing will trade at 6 times earnings. I mean, global stock exchanges are 20 to 40 times earnings. But I think you also see a lot more trading volume, a lot more things to trade. I think you could have the earnings go up, I don't know, 3, 5, 10x and the multiple goes up like 3.5x. And you kind of put that together and you can make a whole lot of money. And you have an entry point at six times earnings. Like it's. It's kind of traded around this valuation for a very long time, even when you know the opposition was in power. Look, there's a million ways to lose money in Argentina, as 100 years of history is, you know, proven. But I think it's the sort of setup that if you do this a bunch of times over the course of an investing career, you're going to make a lot of money on average in the aggregate, even with some losses along the way. That's kind of how we frame things. That's how we start. That's how we do inflection investing. I think the earnings of the Argentine stock exchange will inflect higher. They already have over the last couple of years. And I think there's a lot of headroom there to really inflect higher. And no one's paying attention to it. I don't think anyone's ever come on your show and talked about the balsa e mercados, but it's there and we own a bunch of it.
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Matt Ziegler
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Harris Kupperman
It's a great story. Look, they have a ton of commodities. I mean you're talking about the war. I mean energy's up. Well, they're long tons of energy. They're in the final stages of getting it to the ocean so that they can actually export and earn dollars, which would be great for them. They're long a ton of agriculture. Agriculture is going to do great if Hormuz stays shut and fertilizer prices go up. They're along the two trends that are working right now. I mean that's just dumb luck. Sometimes you get unlucky, sometimes you get lucky. It sort of balances out on average. But the difference is that when you're dealing with stocks, when you're unlucky, you lose 20% or more. But usually like 20% when you're lucky because you have huge operating leverage, you make a couple hundred percent. The odds are in your favor if you're going to be unlucky and lucky about evenly. And here look, we got lucky. They're long the sort of commodities the world wants and I think it's going to work out good for them.
Matt Ziegler
How do you think about time horizon or having a trade like this in place? Is it just the monitoring of the situation for those potential inflection points or is there an amount of time where you want to see something working or not working?
Harris Kupperman
I mean, ideally we're going to own it for a long time. You know, we run a decent sized fund here, a couple hundred million. You know, liquidity has a cost. We don't want to just be jumping in and out. I find is if you look at the stock market just from a holistic standpoint, you have a lot of these guys that the trade you see on your screen, it's retail guys, in and out, in and out. It's these pod shop guys and they're looking at credit card data and satellite data. I mean they're basically playing against other pod shop guys at a different firm. And they're trying to basically guess what is going to happen tomorrow based on the credit card data yesterday. That's not my game. I have no edge there. I'm not spending hundreds of millions of dollars on alt data. And it doesn't seem like the guys who are spending that money are making much money either at it. But that's what the moving around is. And they're like, oh, they're going to miss by a penny this quarter. We got to sell it and then we'll buy it back next quarter, quarter. And look, Argentina will have good and bad data points over the course of my ownership period. Hopefully there's more good ones than bad ones. We can't trade in and out of it. I mean, in the case of Argentina there's exchange controls so we can sell our position, but we can't even get all the money out immediately. There's daily limits. I mean we'd be able to get it out over a couple of weeks, but it's, you know, it's kind of annoying. And so we on one side, you size it appropriately for those sort of risks. But at the same time I just take a longer term view. I find that when I was younger I was trying to, you know, look at charts and be, oh, if it goes, you know, it stocks at 50 and it goes to 49, then you stop out, you buy back at 40. I don't think you make any money doing that. I think you just go along and you say where do you think Argentina is? And you kind of like read the news once a week and if Milei's approval rating starts rolling over, then you get out, but that'll already be in the price. So it's not like we're going to do anything great and smart. The stock price will literally trade with his approval rating. But for the most part you're looking at something. It's six times earnings and a currency that's kind of make believe that it's volatile. I don't think I'm going to lose much money in dollar terms and I think there's a chance I can make a lot of money and I'm just going to let it ride. I mean you look at a lot of the things that we trade. The question always is, has the thesis changed? Has it broken? A lot of times when we do inflection investing, we exit something and it's not that the thesis broke, it's that it just, we thought we had a Cat 5 tailwind, you know, there's like huge 200 mile winds and it turns out it's just a little breezy, you know, and the hesitance is working. The earnings are going up Things are getting incrementally better, but it's not enough of a tailwind that anyone's going to care about it. And we just recycle our capital. I mean, I work my money really, really hard. That's how you get the returns we've had. And if my idea isn't really working, it's not really chugging along like there's going to be something better that pops up and we're going to need the capital for something. A lot of times what happens is we have a really great idea and we say, I got to free up a thousand bips. You either go on margin, which is really a bridge to freeing up capital, or you free up the capital and something has to be sacrificed. You throw a virgin into the volcano. And so that's usually how we end up getting an exit. You look at all your favorite virgins on your portfolio, it's like, which one's getting a little old and fat?
Matt Ziegler
Having my TV just trolled me with my TV just trolled me with Joe versus the Volcano the other day. And I've been thinking about these concepts a lot in life at lots of levels. I didn't correct play, but I did think about it a lot inside this, because this is interesting to me too. This is a personal disposition affected as your own discipline on how you're treating this thing, which is you see a new idea or something comes into the level of like attraction that you want to have it in the portfolio. It's the reality. You're either gonna have to like sell something or go on margin. How. How do you. What's the actual process for working through that decision? How much conviction needs to be there in canning an old idea versus putting something new in versus going like just stack all these things up on margin.
Harris Kupperman
I wish there was a better process to this. A lot of times the first thing is, so with inflection investing, a lot of times it comes really fast, right? Something happens. It's obvious we're not buying bottoms. Like we're not averaging into things. We're usually buying. It's already in motion. Someone else has figured out what I figured out. It's starting to, and I'm fighting them for shares. I mean, you know, we're usually needing a good sized position. And so it's going to sometimes take us a couple hours, sometimes a couple weeks to buy. We just start buying. You know, tell to my broker, look, I want blocks. I'm going to be 10% of the volume. You know, we need to get $20 million of this, like, let's go, let's go. And so you're putting it on margin at first, because you see, you get stock done, and usually pretty soon something shakes loose. That's an exit, you know, or you force an exit somewhere. If we have to go on margin, we can go on margin. I mean, we target kind of a 115 to 125. You know, right now we're a little below that because there's a war going on. But, you know, we have some room. I assume through this war, something will shake loose and we'll get to either, you know, some new trend will pop up or some stock I've always wanted to own will drop 30% and I'll get to buy it at a good price. You know, we have a. We always have a shopping list of things, things we want to own. But yeah, you probably go on margin first, and then eventually something comes out. And like I said, it's never like this headline. You're like, oh, wow, we got the thesis wrong. It happens sometimes, but it's not usually that. It's usually, man, I thought that quarter is going to be, you know, 20% revenue growth. They did 6. Like, what's going on here? It's the. It's the second quarter in a row. Like, let's go talk to, you know, the people who know this industry. Like, I'm lucky. We have almost 200 LPs and a lot of hedge funds. They have a bunch of institutional investors. We have a couple of those. Right? We love all our investors, but the institutional guys are looking at institutional stuff. And we mostly have guys that have been in industry, still in industry, just recently retired, they sold their business. That's how they get money to invest with us. And you just reach out to them. What's happening in this industry? You guys are so optimistic. What's changed? Can you introduce me to your sales guy? Like, what's he seeing? Like, you can. We can figure it out pretty fast. What's changed, why it's not working, has the thesis changed or it's been postponed A lot of times. The Wall street world loves to live on Excel spreadsheets. And it's like, this is very linear. That's not how the world works. Sometimes things just get postponed three months or six months. You know, it's something really as stupid as a company has a budget. They set the budget in December. For the next year, it gets to be October. They're not ordering your product because they ran out of budget. It's that simple. And the purchase order comes in January, you know, when they get the new budget. And, you know, we don't think in that sort of term. We think of it as very linear. Like, this grows 20%, quarter over quarter, year over year. And it's kind of lumpy because these. These decisions are made somewhere else that makes the logical sense and. Or, you know, the government needs to buy something and they're waiting on Congress to pass the appropriations, or it's always something dumb. So before we just sell something because there's a slippage cost, we figure out what's changed, why it's changed, and then we make a decision, like, what's going on here, really? How confident are we? And then you got to find the money somewhere, right? So eventually you got to sell something.
Matt Ziegler
What do you think about in the other direction? Like raising cash or moving. Building cash as a strategic position? How do you think about that?
Harris Kupperman
So two or three times a year, something spooks me. I see the news and I'm like, I gotta degrowth. You know, I'm running 125, which is pretty, you know, heavy. It's kind of the top of where I want to be. Like, we're capped at 150 at the fund. It's a, you know, internal rule, we said. But, you know, 125 means that if you have a 20 drawdown, like, you're starting to push up into your upper limits, and you don't want to be the one who's selling stuff down 20% to get your leverage down. So when something happens, you're like, you got to degrowth. Like, you look at your entire portfolio, and it's like, what do I have the least conviction in? Like, the day the war started that Monday, you know, the market was down, like, what, 1% or something? And this is something that we always do like. So we talk across the fund, and a bunch of us have been in markets for a very long time here that work here, and we got to make a thousand bips free. What do we sell? You know, what do we have the least conviction of what could be impacted if this war goes longer? And you just queue up some sales. We don't, you know, smash the bid down 1% that day, but you just say, okay, we need to get some. Some cash in the balance sheet and say, start making sales. I mean, I always run the book with some things that are, you know, event driven. Ish. So that's the first stuff you sell. Obviously. You know, we had some SPACs on the book that were pre Deal spacs, there's free call options. So like that, that's 500bps, you know, that's easy. That's. And you start going through, where do we find 500 other BIPs? And I don't know, it's a process. I mean, you always want to be panicking first. You never want to be the last guy panicking. And I'm never usually the first guy. I'm usually kind of like the second, third inning panicker. But I'm good at panicking and just getting that liquidity. And I'll admit I've probably dodged two of the last, you know, sorry. I've dodged 10 of the last two disasters. But that gives you the strength. I mean, when you think of when I've made the most money in my career, you know, it was the bottom in 2002, the bottom in 2009, you know, 2018, when things fell apart during Christmas, obviously, Covid. And each of these events, I showed up to the event with too much liquidity, with too much on the book I had to sell on the way down to make balance sheet room. Also, some things got impaired along the way because the facts changed. And then on the way back up, I had all this room to pivot into the stuff that I thought was going to work in this new environment we were in. And if you look at my career, I've had really good years, some really terrible years, a lot of in between. But the overall cagr of my career has been, I think, really outstanding. And that's because I get these truncated two to three year periods where we make a couple hundred percent and that balances everything else out. And I want to have the balance sheet strength for that. I mean, most of the time things are more or less fairly valued, right? There's a lot of really smart people daily revaluing stuff and you're arguing about is this thing mispriced by 10, 20%. And there's some, you know, corner cases, my inflection stuff, that's usually mispriced if you think it plays out and some work, some don't. But when people are panicking and people are getting margin calls and bad things are happening, that's when the real opportunity is and you want to be able to pivot into that. And that's where I think the most money gets made. I'm always amazed at guys. Look, the market's at all time highs right now. We have a war going on. If you're running full exposure, that's your way of saying, I Think the economy's awesome. I think the war is going to end yesterday. All these things. I don't have that sort of certainty. I'd rather run a little lighter and have the flexibility to flex up.
Matt Ziegler
Talk to me a little bit more about de grossing or what. And I'm not saying, like, there's some systematic process for this, but the actual process. Yeah. Which I think is fantastic to actually say and admit out in public, because it's important that people understand that this is part of it too. Just like all the stuff that happens in markets where somebody's kid got sick and like, they. They missed soccer practice, so the rebalance didn't happen. So the institutional fund flows didn't come, and you're trying to unpack it to, you know, where the dollar went that day. It's like, no, no. Weird stuff happens. This is how markets work. So when, like, when the war happens, what's. What are the actual conversations like, inside of the fund? How do you actually go, like, all right, event driven, you're off for right now. Let's just reassess from a new position. How's that play out? Days, weeks, hours? Give me a view.
Harris Kupperman
Oh, fast. I mean, look how the sausage gets made. You're in the game of probabilities here. A lot of decisions are really great. A lot of decisions are terrible. There's a lot in between. And over a long period of investing, you hope that you can have more good ones than bad ones. We've made a lot of terrible decisions that are rushed, but we've avoided a lot of mistakes also by making decisions. Look, we were watching this war build up. We said, look, I think something's going to happen here. So we were already running a little, you know, lower gross. I mean, we were looking at what could be impaired. You know, I had a view that the US Was sort of in a recession. There's a global recession. We're not long a lot of GDP to begin with. You know, we're in things that we thought would do better in a world of a lot of volatility. We've been long volatility like, like companies that are structurally benefited by high volatility. And so we were already in the sort of things that would work well in a war. We're just kind of lucky that it played out that way. But look, when that war started, Monday or the weekend, we sat there and said, is anything impaired that we have in the book? And then you say, okay, you got to find 1000 bips. Where. And then you say, what might drop a lot that we want to own. And you say, hey, this war just happened. Is there anything that on Monday we want to own? Of course, the thing is, we want to own. Everyone else wants to own on Monday. So it's good. But you look at it and you say, if it's only up 10%, maybe we should buy it. But we're not usually the sort of guys that are looking to trade things for a week or two to make an extra 10, 20 move on the stock. We're trying to say what's dynamically changed in this business. Look, wars come and go. Has anything dynamically changed? I don't really know. You look at some things like, you know, look when you guys are listening to this, by the time you listen to this, the war might be over.
Matt Ziegler
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Harris Kupperman
Look, we were really bullish. The uae. A lot of people are moving there. I have this 0.1% refugee crisis theory that wealthy people are going to want to go where they're treated best from tax and quality of life. And the UAE has tried really hard on both accords. And so we wanted to be long. The UAE on a pullback for a long time. And then we kind of look at it and we say, well, maybe this isn't the sort of pullback we want to be long. Has the UAE brand been damaged by people launching missiles at $50 million villages, villas? You know, I don't know, maybe I don't want to buy a 50 billion dollar villa if I'm a rich guy. Maybe Monaco looks a little more peaceful this week. You know, Will the UAE figure this out? Well, it depends how the war gets resolved with Iran. Look, if it's resolved in a positive way and everyone's happy again, or this actual regime change, then you probably want to buy this pullback in uae. If it's not resolved in a positive way, well, then that's not. But it made us over the weekend redo our math on a couple of companies we want to own in uae. We're still bullish and kind of build our model and say, this should be on our, like, front of, you know, blotter radar. We want to be long these things in a positive thing, but nothing yet. So like you start building a shopping list of we think these things will be down. We think these things. If it only opens 10%, maybe, you know, the business has dramatically changed. There's some trades we put on obviously, like we're long, like product tankers for. We'll probably be long, you know, sulfuric acid and product tankers and things like that for, I don't know, a couple of hours to weeks. But this isn't the long term of what we do. I mean, you pick up some basis points, you know, in aggregate over a huge number of these little trades. But the core what we do is can we put 500bps to work in UAE down 50%? Well, it's down 25% now. So we're starting to get to our like, hey, this is interesting, but we don't know how the war resolves. So but this is this. You sit around for hours and hours and you just try to say things are going to change. We don't have the quotes yet, we don't have the prices, but what do we want to work on over the next week or two? Because what you don't want to do is all of a sudden the war ends or, you know, UAE opens down 50% and you want to start buying. Well, I haven't done the work. Like, let's go do the work and really understand what's happening, if that makes sense.
Matt Ziegler
It does make sense because you have to have your finger on the proverbial pulse of these things so you have an understanding to then set up those probabilities.
Harris Kupperman
Right, right. And you have to have the work done and you have to know, hey, are we going to buy the UAE ETF or are we going to buy the banks? We're going to buy the property developers. Like, what do we feel confident in and how do we value these in a stressed scenario? And look, I assume property sales are going to be just really terrible in Q1 of 26 in the UAE right now. I mean, who has the Balance sheet strength to take advantage of this. And who's going to be distressed? I don't know. I assume the hotel numbers aren't going to be very good in March. Who's going to be the winner and loser amongst a bunch of companies? And you kind of want to have a understanding of the lay of the land. I mean, of course no one knows the number, right. But you can kind of guesstimate who's going to win and lose and you just kind of want to understand it. Right. I'm usually showing up in a place with a very dynamic range of outcomes. You know, best case, worst case, mid case, they're all over the place. I mean building an Excel model isn't going to work. Wall street research, they have no clue either. They're, they're as lost as we are. Just can you buy really good assets with long term tailwinds at a really distressed price? And do you think, and UAE is the perfect example, do you think UAE is better or worse three years from now? I don't know. But I mean from, from down 25% there's a range of outcomes. From down 50% there's a different range of outcomes. From down 75%, things start getting priced in that you're, you're not going to have much downside. And so you just look at the thing, that's how we do it.
Matt Ziegler
I'm really interested by the process of saying, do I own the country etf? Do I own a sector? How you parse that through use UAE if you can, as just like a templated example. But just you mentioned it with Argentina too, of being like, how do we want to play this thing? And then how do we pick and choose what the assets are that most align with what we think is the probable outcome with that margin of safety? How do you think through that?
Harris Kupperman
So when you look at country ETFs, a lot of times you have a view you want to express in that country. You know, I think this country does okay. And I think, you know, this sector. I want to bet on the banks or the consumer or you know, the stock exchange and whatever it is. But when you look at a country etf, there's usually, I mean think of like Brazil, right? Like the ETF is Petrobras. I don't really have a view on the price of oil. Don't really think Petrobras. Is that, that interesting because the government always interferes in it. So it's always going to trade at a bad valuation. Then you have Vale. I don't really have a view on iron ore. The government always interferes. Then you have Mercado Libre, which is a great business, but it's expensive. You have all these things like I don't want to buy the ew, the etf, I want to go buy the individual. You look at uae, it's a more balanced etf. There's a couple banks, a couple property developers. That's what they have. You have a highway, you have a taxi company. But it's mostly banks. And I'm okay just buying uae, the etf. The problem with uae, the ETF is it's not terribly liquid, but it's a good representative of what we're betting on, which is development of the uae. I mean, are there better things to own in uae? I mean, we already own a little of the stock exchange. When I say little, I mean like very little. I think the stock exchange is probably going to do better than the ETF with less risk. So we're probably just going to buy some more of that. But I think each situation is a bit different in terms of what to buy in which country. And sorry, in Brazil, it's nubank as opposed to Mercado Libre. That's the one I was thinking of. But same point, great business, very expensive. I just think you have to look through it. Usually we're not going to buy the etf. We're usually going to say, I believe this country will get better because of this. Whether it's I think the price of oil goes up, so I want to buy consumer or I think the new government's going to be pro business. I want to buy the banks because they're at 0.6 bucks and I think we could exit it two times buck. Plus they grow deposits a lot. Whatever it is you want to bet on, I'd rather just bet on that thing. I feel like it's pretty lazy just to buy the etf. But sometimes you just buy the ETF also, right? I'll give you a perfect example. I know nothing about gold mining. I know just enough to lose money at it. If I was bullish on the price of gold right now, I would just buy gdxj. It's the leverage small cap ones that are going to get all the multiple expansion. I'll let them choose which 30 gold mines to own because they're going to do it better than me and they're going to do it with more liquidity. Right? And so like pick your poison, right?
Matt Ziegler
Turn, turn the perspective back on the US for a second. And maybe give some backdrop on what, where you think the US Is a recession or whatnot right now. But if you were looking at the US from outside, you kind of are. But think about it this way. Like, why is the US Less interesting to you than, say, the UAE or anywhere else in the world or Argentina or anything?
Harris Kupperman
So the problem with the US Is that we have huge structural imbalances. Our imbalances then lead to imbalances everywhere else. Trump came in with a goal of fixing the imbalances, but he's unable to fix any of the imbalances because to fix the imbalances involves the stock market going down. So every time he tinkers with it, stocks sell off and then he panics and does nothing. And I mean, his approach to fixing the imbalances has been erratic and dysfunctional, but he recognized the imbalances. You need to fix the imbalances. And he can't because he refuses to take the loss on stocks. Our stock market is very overvalued in the US I think everyone agrees with that because we've been taking everyone's excess savings into the US and as a result, we've hollowed out our industry here. And I think everyone recognizes a problem, but no one knows how to fix it because no one wants stocks to go down, which is how you fix it. So in many ways, it's unfixable. That doesn't mean that we don't have things that we're long in the US we're long a lot of things. But I think the US Is currently in recession. I mean, Matt, what's your personal CPI right now of your basket of stuff when you go out and spend your money, you know, over the last year,
Matt Ziegler
year over year, it's between the health insurance and all the other things that factor in and the shrink inflation reality of stuff at, like, the local pizza spot and bar in our funny little corner of northeastern Pennsylvania? It's probably running like 5 or 6% around here, which is.
Harris Kupperman
That's less than me. I'm at 10% here in Puerto Rico. Yeah, so when they say it's 3% in the official government number, they're using the wrong deflator, which means that the inflation rate's higher, which means that the real GDP number is lower. And when you have an inflationary environment, you get these economic illusions, for lack of a better word. And so I don't think the economy's that good here. And I think that's why when you look at, like, consumer confidence, it's been terrible and getting worse. It's why a lot of people are really pissed off. I mean, they're, they're pissed off at the wrong things, but this is a general mood of everyone being pissed off because everyone's getting squeezed and everyone's in a bad mood. And I think it's been going on for a long time. I think we've been in a recession. I think we've been in recession really since 2000, I don't know, 2008. And we had like two good years in 21 and 22. And everyone was kind of happy. And yeah, it was inflationary, but people felt good because there was a ton of fiscal. And now everyone's kind of bitter again. And in a recession, a lot of businesses don't really work. There's tons of problems. We could have like two episodes about all the problems. You know, you have the problem of China having different economic model than we do, where they produce stuff at a 10% negative margin and have the local peasants subsidize it through below market bank loans. And that goes on until it stops going on. You have the US where we're kind of doing feudalism, where I don't think we want economic growth here because then earnings multiples on equities collapse and you know, real estate cap rates expand. And we tried that in 21 and 22 and it was existential. For the rich guys that run our country, they didn't want, you know, their stocks to go down and their cleaning lady to ask for a raise, like it was bad for them. So you have all these like structural concurrent problems. And I don't really want to be involved in any of those problems. I want to go where things are happy and this tailwinds and look, I think incrementally Brazil is going to be better a couple years from now. I think Latam in general is gonna be better. I, you know, until the war started, I thought the Middle east was gonna be better. I'm very hopeful that the Middle east resolves this and has a peace dividend and becomes much better. I mean, maybe there's gonna be some fire along the way, but I mean, I want to be in the places where there's big tailwinds, where good things are happening. I want to be in sectors that are unloved, where things are getting better. I think the US is probably running negative real GDP right now. I mean, maybe not your 6% inflation, but if you take my 10% inflation, we're running negative real GDP. I don't want to invest in negative GDP. I'm an inflection investor, that's what I call myself. But I'm a growth investor. I want to buy things where I can come into it at seven times this year's cash flow, three times, two years out cash flow and you know, see rapid revenue growth. Like I'm a growth investor. I don't want to be in sad, depressing things where there's real hard choices to be made and it sounds miserable.
Matt Ziegler
What do you do or how. What do you say when either investors or other people ask you about the things that are looked at as growth inside of the US right now? So the AI stuff, the tech stuff where they're, they insist there's growth, do you just shrug your shoulders or what do you say to them when they ask you about, well, look, here's growth,
Harris Kupperman
it's growing, but there's no earnings. I mean, at some point you look at AI, they've dumped almost a trillion dollars into this and the data centers make no money. They never will. It's impossible. I mean, there's not a trillion dollars of revenue that could support this stuff. I mean, and it goes obsolete in like two years. The tech companies, yeah, they, they have tons of revenue growth, but none of these things are profitable. It's all earnings X sbc. Well, that's great. When your stock is going up, everyone wants stock options. It's awesome, right? If your stock has two down years, people want to get paid in cash. I mean, you can't take your stock options and buy groceries. At some point you go to your workers are like, I need money and then there's no earnings. And I'd say a lot of this because they've been able to use SBC for so long and Wall Street's been so focused on revenue growth as opposed to earnings growth, which is the thing I care about. These guys have produced profitless prosperity where they produce tons of revenue. And a lot of it's related party. I mean, they'll tell you it's not related party, but it kind of is because they all go to the same country club in Silicon Valley and they all know the same people and they all do these deals with each other. I'll buy your software if you buy my software. And. And then I kind of changed that because you don't need any of this product. You could all just vibe coded in house and I don't know, I don't think there's be a lot of revenue after. I think AI puts us in a really funny place where you don't get revenue growth, you get revenue contraction because you just need less stuff. You can do more stuff for free internally and that cuts your costs, which is going to be great. If you're like Verizon and you know you're going to have less people in the call center or you're like Citibank and you get rid of a bunch of people that are doing fraud monitoring or something. Because I think the AI is probably better at fraud monitoring than the guy doing fraud monitoring. But it's probably not going to be good at a lot of other places. And even at Citibank they're going to get rid of a ton of people that are well paid and those people are going to be replaced by the AI and those people then won't have revenue to spend somewhere else in the economy and there'll be a multiplier effect of this. And when you get rid of a couple people, you have a recession. I mean, AI is going to get rid of how many millions of people that work in office buildings over the next five years. I mean it sounds like a depression. And yes, I know every time there's some new technology, there's a new business created. But like the Industrial Revolution was like a 200 year process. Like the Internet was like a 15 year process. The Internet's still evolving. The AI is going to be like a five year process and you're getting rid of the most expensive people. This is going to be like what happened to the Rust Belt where we sent all those jobs to China and that was a 20 year process and the Rust Belt still hasn't figured it out. Except it's going to happen to the large cities. That's going to happen in the next AI is incredible. They can teach you how to fry an egg and even write a poem pirate style, but it knows nothing about your work. Slack Bot is different. It doesn't just know the facts, it knows your schedule. It can turn a brainstor into a brief. And it doesn't need to be taught because slackbot isn't just another AI. It's AI that knows your work as well as you do. Visit slack.com meetslackbot to learn more. Springfest is happening now at Lowe's. Keep the spotlight on your yard with stay green premium 2 cubic foot mulch. 5 bags for $10. Plus when you want more help indoors, get up to 40% off. Select major appliances that help you supercharge your chores. Our best lineup is here at Lowe's. Valid to 422 while supplies last selection varies by location. Seelowes.com for details. Mold chopper excludes Alaska and Hawaii. Well, it's already happening, but it's going to be like the next two to three years. It's going to be really noticeable. Like, where'd Mary go? Oh, she got AI'd. Where's Billy? Oh, he got AI'd. Well, there's no one left on this floor. I'm gonna get AI'd next. I better stop spending. You know, I was gonna buy a car. Yeah, I can use my car for two more years. I was going to, you know, buy a new house. Definitely not doing that. You know, I was going to, you know, fix the roof. Nah, that's 30 grand. Probably just want to save that. I'm going to get AI. Like, I think it's going to happen. I mean, I think it's already happening and I think it's going to be recessionary. They're going to do the only thing they know how to do, which is print money, and it's going to make certain assets go up and it's going to make certain imbalances worse. And, you know, the game goes on. But like I said, I don't want to be involved in things that are going to be miserable and shitty. I want to be on things that are really growing. And tech will be huge winners in this AI thing. There'll be huge losers. There'll be a lot of in between. I think the bigger winners of AI will be companies that are very top heavy in hr, that are people that are doing really repetitive tasks that can be AI'd. And you're going to see your margins expand because you're going to get rid of some SG&A. But you might see your revenues contract, and that's really odd in an economy. I mean, Wall street puts terrible multiples on businesses where top line is contracting. Even if you're contracting to become more profitable, these things trade at like 4 times, 5 times earnings. The stock market trades at what, like 25 times earnings. This is a long way down. And the government will try to bridge that gap through a lot of money printing and a lot of inflation set. Your top line number will look okay, but your overall unit volumes, the things that I actually care about as opposed to revenue, because you have these weird monetary illusions inside of an inflationary environment. Those will be contracting. And I think Wall Street's smart enough that they'll say, hey, if they're doing less overall business, even at a higher revenue because of inflation, going to give it a low multiple. I Mean, look, go to Brazil, everything trades at three times EBITDA. Like it's been a recession for 15 years. Like that. That's where you end up at in an inflationary recession.
Matt Ziegler
How do you think from the portfolio manager seat of just going. Basically you're just picking what to put the blinder up to or say like, this is a situation I'm just going to monitor and nothing else.
Harris Kupperman
Like how they're a lot.
Matt Ziegler
Yeah, yeah, but that's the reality of it, right? Like you're monitoring most of the world and you're just doing nothing about it and you're saying, this is something I don't want to participate in right now. So it's just another going concern.
Harris Kupperman
Yeah, we have. I forgot what the official name is, actually. Let's call it the shit sector list. It's a giant Excel spreadsheet. Like 200 things that have just been terrible, like countries, sectors, companies, but things that, you know, every 30, 40 years they have a good five, 10 year run. And we look at them, you know, we have a. Once a month and we just go through these 200 things. Has anything changed here? No. Anything changed here? No. Hey, wait a second. This thing's up 20%. Maybe something is changing. Like, let's go spend a couple hours and see if anything's actually happening here. Like, let's try to figure out why it's changing, like why the stock's up.
Matt Ziegler
Do you have any examples from that list? Anything that comes to mind from that exercise?
Harris Kupperman
Things that were long today. I mean, look, Argentina came from that list. Okay, Like Brazil, we're long Brazil in a big way. It came from that list. It's been, it's been a, what, almost 20 year bear market in Brazil. It's been miserable. They've made a number of terrible policy decisions at the governmental level. They had a huge, you know, corruption problem. They. Brazil is a commodity play and commodities have been terrible for a long time. Like it's just been a messy mess. Right? High inflation, it's just been terrible. Right. I like terrible. And structurally, Brazil does really well in a world where the US Dollar is weak. Trump wants the dollar a week. He won't say that, but it's obvious that his policies only work with a weak dollar. And it does well when commodities are bid, which seems to be happening structurally. So you have the playbook of things should get better economically. And the real problem is this guy named Lula that no one wants to leave money in the country. So locals get their money out and no one put Money in. Well, they have elections in Argent in Brazil. There's going to be one this fall. The polling is really close, but we've had a bunch of close elections lately in Latam that the pro business guy won. And I got a hunch that if it's super close, the US might just give it a little bit of a shove like we did with Argentina with Malay. And I think, I mean, Polymarket says it's about 50. 50. I'd say it's more like 70. 30. And so you have all this set up in place to make a bunch of money where Brazil gets better. And is Lula that terrible? I don't know. I mean, he's a socialist, but like, his main goal is he wants to have like free bus passes for poor people. Like, is that so terrible? He wants, you know, he wants to eliminate taxes on people making less than 500 US a month. Is that so terrible? I mean, it's not like he's doing crazy stuff. These are actually probably pro growth, pro consumption policies that on the margin, in a 2 trillion economy or a few billion dollars, like it's a rounding error, it scares foreign investors because it's like that slippery slope of communism. But look, we had a huge boom under Lula once in his professional career, his governing career. We could do it again. I think if Lula wins the election, I have a down 30 in Brazil, and then everyone shrugs their shoulders and Brazil probably does just fine also. And if Lula loses, Brazil just screams out of control. That's the setup of a great trade. And like, we've already been in this trade for almost a year now, and it's done really well for us. But. Sorry, I don't even know where I'm going with this, but I just. Just try to find situations where your setup is you probably get your money back and if it works well, you're going to make a lot of money. I don't feel like that way in a lot of things in the US right now, and especially technology, where it's priced super high and you need great heroic things to happen in technology for things to get better from here.
Matt Ziegler
What's the psychology of that? What do you think is most important, especially in an environment like this where we have the war stuff going on? On one hand, you have all sorts of weird, peculiar opportunities and pockets of the world. What's the kind of psychology that you think A is going to help you get this stuff right with your people? But also for somebody else watching this, where. What should they be thinking? What should they be turning over in their heads and questioning in their own processes to say, how do I adapt in this world that moves at the pace that it's moving in right now.
Harris Kupperman
So Wall Street's really good at figuring things out. 30, 60, 120 days from today. And that's where everyone's time frame is. And that's a really competitive time frame. Everyone is in real time discounting every data point from this war. And crude oil moves $10 on a tweet. You know, like, I have no edge there. I don't know what's going to happen in the war. I don't know if it's going to get, you know, resolved or worse. No one knows, right? But I can look at things two or three years out and have some certainty on what's going to happen or at least probability adjusted to say, look, I get my money back or I make a lot of money. And if you do that over enough at bats, you're going to have a very good career in this thing. And as a private investor, you're going to have great returns as long as you don't make too many horrible unforced errors along the way. And the worst unforced error you could do is to panic out of a good trade because Trump tweets something about Iran and suddenly oil goes up $10 or down $10 and you worry about something that's totally non correlated to that because you see something in the news and you panic. I mean, I'm not saying don't panic. I mean, wars are, you know, crazy things happen. I'm saying look at two, three years. What are the range of probabilities? I mean, we talked about Argentina. What are the range of probabilities? What are the range of probabilities in Brazil, whether in any outcome? And are the range of probabilities in your favor or not? And is the payoff, you know, upside versus downside in your favor or not? And then every data point along the way, look, companies miss earnings, they drop 20%. I mean, is that going to change your life? If it does, then you're too big in the position it should. If you like the trade, you buy more. But I think Wall Street's really good at then pontificating and analysts upgrade and they downgrade. They write these big long research reports, basically taking what was said on the earnings call and then they try to figure out what happens the next quarter. No one knows. No one knows. I mean, when you talk to companies, things just happen in a quarter. You know, some cost goes up, you know, some, some things, some order gets canceled. It's just, there's a certain randomness to quarterly business. You just figure out, do you like your tailwind? Are things getting better? And you let Wall street create the opportunities for you rather than you getting whipsawed by the opportunities. And I think it's really. So when you think of this game, okay, like investing is a game, like you would never go into the ring against a professional boxer. Well, I wouldn't. Maybe you would, but I'm gonna get the shit kicked out of me.
Matt Ziegler
I'm good at getting the crap kicked out of me. I don't need a boxer to do it.
Harris Kupperman
Yeah, but I'm a professional in this game. And retail routinely beats me. It's a very different game in that way. Retail has huge advantages in that they can take a five year view. And as a professional investor with monthly liquidity, I can take a five year view too. But if it doesn't play out within two, three years, my investors say, what's going on here? I want my money back. So. And I'm lucky that I have longer term investors. A lot of funds, you know, if they have one down quarter, they start getting redemptions, pod shops. If it goes 3% against them, they have to go to cash. So like there's this continuum of. And I think I'm really lucky that I have this longer term investor base. So we're in a good spot. But I can't just say I think this is what happens 10 years out. I'm just going to set it and forget it because I'm not paid to do that. I'm paid to look two, three years out. A private investor is paid to look maybe 10 years out. They have a competitive advantage against me and I have a competitive advantage against a pod shop. But I want to live in my little competitive advantage where I don't care about the next 90, 180, let those guys fight about that. I care about 18 to 36 months. That's where I have an edge. My capital liquidity gives me that edge. I think it's a really competitive place to play because most guys aren't allowed to play there. I think private guys, we call them civilians listening to this, they have a different range of outcomes where they can play. And you want to play to your advantages
Matt Ziegler
inside of that, especially in that like 18 to 36 month out view any historical period, any other reference, is there anything you think now rhymes with that you look at for the playbook of how or where process for allocating.
Harris Kupperman
Well, I mean, look, we've mentioned the war like 10 times. There's been a few Middle Eastern wars over time. This. I mean, I'm a history major. I mean, I got into stocks because you don't get paid anything to write history books. But I think being a history major gives me a unique perspective in that these things are cycles and these things kind of mirror and match. And so you start looking at this. Does this look like Gulf one? Not really. Because in Gulf one, oil collapsed the day we invaded. Does this look more like 73? Yeah. Does this look more like when the Suez closed? Yeah, this looks more like an inflationary crisis where you have some bottleneck that's shut and the energy can't get out. It looks like 79. You start saying, here's 10 Middle Eastern wars in recent 60 years. Well, there's like two or three kind of looks like. And then you say, what assets did really well and which assets did poorly. And fortunately, you have AI now, so you don't have to actually even Google this. And it just tells you what the answer is. And then from there you say, well, no, you know, I think this is different because of this fact and this fact and this thing, hey, look, the Middle east now is, you know, a big exporter of, like, urea. It wasn't in 73. Okay, well, let's go learn about fertilizers. You know, and the Middle east was big in this. But you start compare contrast. That's why it's good to have a couple friends that love this game as much as I do. So you can sit around with a bunch of alcohol till three in the morning and see what the world looks like. And that's my process. Right. You know? Yeah. You can only be so smart with AI. You have all this data bouncing around your head. And then you say, what do I actually think? And you have some friend that talks you down from some crazy ideas and kind of prods you, hey, Cuppy, have you looked at this thing? And then from there you go, okay, let's go find some ticker symbols and go learn these industries. And there's a lot of muscle memory because I've been doing this almost 30 years now. This isn't my first or last Gulf War. Well, hopefully it's my last Gulf War. And so you just kind of like, know and it's. I don't know how to explain it exactly, but that's the process. And it works. I mean, our numbers say it works, and I hope it keeps working this way. And I hope I get a little bit smarter and better at this. And better meaning just like one day faster in making the decision, because a lot of smart guys trying to distill this information too. But no, I think this looks like a couple situations minus some other things. Add some other things and you end up with a bunch of companies. The problem really, I think, is that a lot of the trades you want to put on right now, they're like Thanksgiving trades in a way. So you want to be long oil, because it's oil war, right? But the day everyone makes peace, oil is going to be down limit like three days in a row. So you have to be long. And it's a Thanksgiving turkey, a thousand good days and then poof. And so I don't like those sort of trades because there'll be a couple scary moments along the way where Trump tweets something and oil drops 15 bucks and you get scared out and you sell it and you miss the trade. Or one of those times it could be the real deal and then you're going to be scared, you don't want to sell it and you miss it. And I don't like those sort of like Thanksgiving trades where this trade has from a few hours to, you know, a few months duration and no one knows. I'd much rather look at the things like the UAE and be like, does the UAE come out of this in a better or worse place? Because even if it comes out of this in a way better place, okay, from the bottom, the UAE is going to go up the day everyone declares peace. But do you think property sales recover immediately? No, I mean, do you think the banks take some losses? Of course. Like, I think, you know, from the bottom the UAE will bounce and then I'll probably have this like two year period where even in a really positive resolution, it's probably a two year period where things are kind of like shitty over there and the economy sucks and people are scared to go back and you'll have a long window of time to buy distressed assets with good tailwinds and you'll be able to analyze the tailwinds getting better. And I think that's the sort of thing like go learn the uae. You know, I don't know how this war is going to resolve, but that's the sort of thing I'd be much more interested in is something that resolves positively as a result of this. And this scenario is where Iran becomes best friends with the uae. There's a giant, you know, peace dividend and we're off to the races. I think that's the sort of thing to look at as opposed to the Thanksgiving turkey scenario. Doesn't mean we're not playing a few of those, but those are like, you know, 25, 50 bips possessions. Just, I don't know, sometimes you just gotta play the game. But that's not really the thing I'm passionate about. I'd much rather put a thousand bips
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Matt Ziegler
Do you feel like the history background does it help you with this stuff every day? Do you think about it in that context or is it just a cool thing that rattles around in your brain?
Harris Kupperman
I think it helps. I mean, look, I'm not gonna tell you. I learned a lot in in history and in college. I mean, I don't remember much of college. I remember Mardi Gras and Fraternity. I think it's just good to remember that these things repeat. There are cycles, but they don't quite repeat. And having a long history of everything. I mean, like I said, we've had, I don't know, a dozen Mideast crisis in, in the last 60 years. About half of them have gotten really chaotic and, you know, violent. And it gives you, it's a range of outcomes you can look at. And as a historian, you kind of quickly say, well, I have a really good knowledge of these things. And it looks like this, not this, it's like this grab bag. You just pull stuff out and put stuff back into the bag. And then you say, well, what tickers worked, you know, what sectors worked. And I think that gives you just a great framework for how to go about investing and just being a macro investor, you know, I think a lot of macro investors, they, they invest in, you know, interest rates and currencies. And I mean, I'm not going to say we don't do that, but that's not what we do. I mean, I'd much. If I think interest rates are going up or down, there's usually some ticker that gives me operating leverage to that. And I'd much rather put that leverage on someone else's balance sheet operating leverage as opposed to taking financial leverage onto my balance sheet with a bunch of interest rate derivative futures, which is what these macro guys do. And some of them are really good at it. And every quarter one of those guys blows up. It's kind of random, But I think that's how to approach macros as a history guy and then express it through equities, which I think is something that's unique to us, if that makes sense.
Matt Ziegler
Closing question for you. One thing you could teach the average investor. What's one thing you'd want them to know?
Harris Kupperman
Patience. Every time we make a decision that's rushed, it's a bad decision whether it's buying something or selling something. There's a lot of times we start buying something and we buy a third of what we want. And then, you know, a friend of mine reaches out to me or you know, my analyst reaches out, hey, Cuppy, we're totally wrong. We didn't, you know, we learned this new fact. It's like, okay, then you have to go from buying to selling. And you know, the slippage, it cost you some money or some piece of bad news comes out and you panic and you sell and it turns out you misinterpreted the news. It's not so bad. Most of the time when bad news comes out, the Stock's already down 30%. You missed your opportunity. What are you gonna do? It'll be down 35% by the end of the week. So you're risking 5% to actually go and really learn what just happened and how it impacts your thesis. A lot of times just be patient, take a deep breath, go walk around the office building 15 times and think it through.
Matt Ziegler
Copy. People want to learn more about you, the fund, what you're doing, bug you on the Internet where you want to send them.
Harris Kupperman
So you can come to my website. I have a blog. I haven't written that much lately, just I've been super busy. But go to pracap P r a c a p.com I used to write about once a month, now it's about once a quarter. You can find me on Twitter at hcuppy. I hope I don't offend you too badly. And then I'm affiliated with group of guys that are writing an event driven monitor. I launched it and kind of handed off the torch but they're doing a great job and go to kedm.com and take a free trial. I think it'll be life changing in terms of the macro commentary they put in some which I write and also just all the events, corporate events they're tracking which really set off inflections and some of our greatest ideas come from that. So those are my three touch points. And yeah, you know, just follow me on Twitter. I'm usually pretty vocal.
Matt Ziegler
Pretty vocal. A lot of good memes. Cuppy, thanks so much for doing this today.
Harris Kupperman
Hey, thanks so much for having me.
Matt Ziegler
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Episode: 6x Earnings. 10x Potential. | Harris Kupperman on the Inflections Wall Street Misses
Date: March 30, 2026
Hosts: Matt Ziegler
Guest: Harris Kupperman (Praetorian Capital)
This episode explores Harris Kupperman’s unique approach to “inflection investing,” which targets sectors and markets at major turning points overlooked or dismissed by mainstream Wall Street. He details how global macro events, cycles, and idiosyncratic country risks offer contrarian opportunities—using real-life case studies from Argentina, Brazil, and the UAE. The discussion is candid about process, psychology, risk, portfolio management, and the realities facing both professionals and private investors.
For thoughtful, contrarian, macro-driven investing insights, this episode is a deep dive into finding inflections, risk management, and harnessing the unique advantages of time horizon and patience.