Managing $2 Trillion: AI Bubbles & Contrarian Investing | Nicolai Tangen

If you have really really high ambitions, you achieve great things even if you fail. If you have low ambitions, you achieve nothing even if you succeed. >> Where do you think the tech sector evolves from here? >> Well, that's the trillion dollar question, right? >> Luckily, you manage what, two trillion. So, >> when I give presentations at universities, I I ask people, hey, anybody here who thinks differently from other people who kind of think that they are weird, hands up. So, typically less than 10%. I said, you guys, you're great. We'd love to hire you. And then the other 90% is like, you know, sorry guys, you're just like everybody else. You're never going to make much money. Okay, so I never do politics because my job is not is totally not political. But if I were like uh prime minister for a day, I would inject AI everywhere. If you look at the golden ages we've had and you look at, you know, the real powers we've had during the years, you know, Rome, Venice, they were open economies, free trade, um, free movement of, uh, labor, thought, and so on. What they all have in common in terms of the end of the golden ages is what are you leaning against right now? Well, I think uh the stuff to lean against if you really want to do the opposite of everybody else would be to, you know, do less AI related investments and more real estate investments. >> How do you see real estate playing out? >> Well, that's a very tough one, right? But it's not very popular and I see that uh a lot of big investors are uh reducing their exposures to to real estate. So, that's probably a good sign, right, that there are better times ahead. >> What do you think of office? I I guess that's the worst real estate classroom. >> It's very bad. It's very bad. >> So, you have to think uh in a way you've had a bit of a perfect crisis there now in that uh COVID meant that more people were working from home. You had uh some trouble with uh you know part of the banking system. You had rates uh you know being relatively high and so you had a few factors there uh impacting it negatively. >> How do you think about rates? I mean historically there's been a I think the average is 6% or something somewhere thereabouts and we've been lower than that for almost 20 years now. >> Yeah. We have been very low and for a very long period of time. I think there are some structural issues which mean that they probably will be a bit higher than they have been and I think one one um factor here which uh you know people don't talk so much about just now is is the impact on climate you know so climate is impacting harvest is impacting prices for a lot of you know raw material and uh and impact factors in particular to the food side so be it uh you know chocolate coffee and so on then you got various fires uh you just you just get a lot of kind of impacts from climate on pricing structures um you know it also hits kind of insurance rates free insurance rates um and so on so that's on the one hand now the thing which is pulling in the other direction is of course efficiency gains through AI and uh you'll have uh you know just much more intelligence uh at cheaper levels right >> where do you think the tech sector evolves from here. >> Well, that's the trillion dollar question, right? >> Luckily, you manage what, two trillion. So, [laughter] >> um, it's pretty pretty hot, right? That I think we can agree on that. And I think it's quite interesting. So, you have Yansen Huang, the CEO of N Media, who goes to Korea, right? He hangs out with the guys at Samsung. they go and have uh you know some uh deep fried chicken and so when they are photographed in this uh chicken uh restaurant the share price of uh of that chicken chain is going up like 20% right and the company that actually breeds chicken in Korea is going up a lot and the company that does the robotic arms to actually deep fry the chicken is also going up a lot so it's uh just indicates to me that this is now a very very hot sector when things like that What would be your argument for the fact that we're in an AI bubble and then against the fact that we're in >> well I think um okay AI bubble you would look at things like valuations you'd look at circularity in terms of ownership and and uh you know vendor financing uh these type of things. um you'd look at uh news coverage uh you look at things like what happens when they eat you know chicken at a restaurant. So you just kind of just look at how frothy a sector is. On the other side it has huge um ramifications for how we live our lives and we see in our firm we are increasing productivity probably by 20% just by utilizing it more and we're just stuffing it in wherever we can and it's making a huge impact. How does that show up the increase in productivity? >> Well, we it shows up um in that we do more with the same amount of people. You know, we have we are keeping headcount now flat and we are just producing more and producing better quality. >> What do you think would cause inflation to come back? [snorts] >> Um slower world economy, you know, AI leading to more productivity gains. uh humanoids so increased use of robotics which is just a cheaper labor supply. >> Is AI making decisions now at the firm or is it >> No, we are there is always a human in the loop but it's helping us. It's supporting our decision- making. >> Do you think it'll ever replace humans in investing? >> I uh not in our place. Um but clearly in some places right you have uh fully automated uh uh you know investment models in a lot of places. >> What skills do you think will matter more in an AI world? >> Interpersonal skills uh you know the ability to talk to people, the ability to listen and uh you know empathy. I mean these these things have always been important but they are just even more important you know and I'm just I'm just seeing it. so many places. It's really really interesting. >> You talked about uh the ability to listen, I think, in your uh Wharton commencement speech. >> Yep. >> Um how would you teach somebody to do that? >> Well, that's a tough one. Um I mean, it can be taught in that you can point it out to people that they talk all the time and they don't listen, right? So, you can say that, but I think we we would fall back to how we are generally. Um, and I think it needs to come with some curiosity because if you're not curious, you're not going to listen. So, I think it goes it goes hand inhand with that. I mean, generally you should listen twice as much as you speak, right? That's why you got two ears and um but um it's super important. >> A lot of people think they're listening, but they're not actually listening. >> Yeah. They're just processing stuff and can't wait to get to the next questions themselves, you know? So there is there is little listening. Um I um I spoke to this guy called Saul Pearlmutter. He is a scientist. He got the Nobel Prize in physics. And uh he said uh Nikolai we are now at the stage in the world where we for the first time can solve all the problems. We can solve all the problems. We we know how to solve the climate problem. We know how to feed everybody in the world. We have the technology. we have the science. It's just that we don't talk to each other. We don't listen. We don't work together properly. So that's why we need to zoom in. I think >> would you say that's the biggest problem in society? I think one of the biggest problem now is um is the fact that we we close up you know we um if you look at the golden if you look at the golden ages we've had and you look at you know the real powers we've had during the years you know Rome Venice uh you know the Song Dynasty the Netherlands you know these these places which did really really well they were open economies free trade um free movement of uh labor thought and so on. And what has what they all have in common in terms of the end of the golden ages is uh close of free trades, tariffs, um end of immigration, end of free thought, the rise of the strong man, uh attack on you know freedoms of all types of you know sorts. And we are seeing that in many places of the world. And uh and that's a native. >> Which one of those concerns you the most? >> All the above. For me, it's free speech. It's like that seems to be the big limiter. >> Yeah. But you need you need new ideas, you know, you need to rejuvenate countries and societies. But clearly free speech is important. How do you see the difference between American and European mindsets? >> So, this is super interesting, right? Um, uh, and now I'm in New York for a month and, you know, wow, the energy here, uh, the entrepreneurship, the drive, you know, I just get so much energy just living here. Uh, level of ambitions super high. uh versus Europe where there is I mean Europe is a fantastic place too right but for different reasons um you know culturally uh incredible uh you know food pretty good in many places but less ambitions you know the thing with ambitions I think it's so interesting if you have really really high ambitions you achieve great things even if you fail if you have low ambitions you achieve nothing even if you succeed and so having great ambitions is just fantastic And you know in in America five I mean do you think five is a high number or a low number >> for what? >> Well just generally number is number five high >> low. >> Well there you go. You think you think five is low? Okay. You asking you know a European is five high or low? They would say it's pretty high. So it's just like and so the whole concept of you know growth rates ambitions and so on is different. And then of course you work much harder in America. I mean that's just not something I think. It's just like the facts. you got less holiday uh and so on. >> Do you think that it's good or bad? >> I think it's both. I think it's good for um some things in society and I think it's not so good for the people involved. >> It's so interesting because if you think of it from an evolutionary point of view, I mean, evolution doesn't care about you. It cares about the species. >> And so it would sacrifice you and make you work harder for the good of the the whole unit and the survival of the unit. Was it a culture shock when you came to Wharton? >> To Wharton? >> Yeah. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you [clears throat] see the um in a way in Norway is the opposite of Wharton. Um because in Norway everybody's supposed to be the same. You have this thing called Yantelovven. It's just like don't don't think you are fantastic in any way, shape or form. Uh so you come to I sit there in a class and it's just like hey what do you guys want to achieve in life? And one one of the my fellow students just hands up what do you want to do? I just want to conquer the world. And that's kind of a statement which is totally normal, >> you know, at Wharton, but it's not particularly normal in where I'm from. >> How would you change that to add more ambition? >> I don't think you can change it. You can't you can't change a you can't change a nation, but you can change it in your own company, and you can work on the corporate culture, in the firm you work, and you can change it with yourself and your family and your friends. But to change the ambition level of a whole country, I don't think you can do that. It's tough. >> How would you go about it if you had to if that was your task? >> Okay. So, I never do politics because my job is is totally not political. >> But if I were like uh prime minister for a day [laughter] >> and your only job just ambition, nothing sort of like >> I would I would inject AI everywhere. Um I would I would just go all in. I would do what they did you know in Sweden in the 80s they had something called home PC so they bought 800,000 PCs in a country of I don't know at that stage let's say it was 67 million or something eight um put them in people's homes and it just increased the digitalization of the country so now you have you know Spotify cla all these things so is it directly linked no probably not but you know they they increase the digitization now they're doing the same thing with AI now they're doing the same in Iceland in Iceland they are they just did a they announced a cooperation project with um uh you know with Antropics where they're basically going to stuff it in to all the schools and all that kind of thing and I think it should be perfect for Norway. high highly digitalized country and where people think it's pretty nice to have a lot of spare time and of course AI helps you with that and it's a once you know you you read the book uh about uh Nvidia for instance and Yensson Huang talks about this once in a lifetime opportunity and this is just a once in a-lifetime opportunity for people companies and countries to pull apart >> and if you don't do that you're sort of going to be left behind if people There's uh two I mean Alpha School I guess is one of them who's who's using AI to get curriculum down to two hours a day. The students are getting massively better outcomes and then synthesis is tutor has created this math program through I think it's uh kindergarten through grade eight or nine now and the results are like just off the charts. They move kids two standard deviations within like 3 or 4 months. And so we've demonstrated that it's better than teachers. But the impediment to that would be what do you think? Like why wouldn't people do it? What would be the argument against >> I don't know why people would do it. They should do it. I mean they so should do it. >> What's the most important data you look at these days? >> Uh I don't have like just one or two data sources. I read uh just a lot of newspapers and I think what's going on in the world now is just so incredibly fascinating and it's so exciting to be alive, you know, and so I just wake up at 5 and I just spin out of bed. I just can't wait to get out of bed uh to start to read the papers and then I just start, you know, the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, all these things. And wow, the stuff that goes on now is just in incredible things that you didn't think was possible uh you know a year ago that's now happening, right? Um, so I was up in a forest um a few weeks ago and um with seven of my best friends and um and we were predicting okay what's going to happen over the next 12 months. So we and we tape it we tape recorded and then we were we were playing our predictions from last year and you know these are really clever people and how do you think we did? >> Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. I mean we were like 80% wrong. You know, we didn't we didn't we didn't predict that Trump would win the election a few weeks later. We didn't we didn't think about like tariffs and relationship between the US, Europe, you know, what's going on now in the US in Europe, in India, in China. We had no clue. And so I think trying to predict in this world is just more and more, you know, useless. So what you need to do, you just need to work on speed and agility. Go deeper on that for a second. How important is speed and agility? >> Well, I [clears throat] have a big thing with speed, you know, speed is well, I mean, [laughter] speed speed is a mindset and it is, you know, um he struck me again going back to New York, you know, I buy this every morning, I buy this uh you know, egg and uh egg and ham roll and just speed with which they wrap it. I mean, my so the speed in New York is very high, but speed generally I think is is super important, you know. Um it comes to this first principle. Things shouldn't take longer than than they need to take. You know um [sighs] you save time by being fast. So this sounds a bit um strange but you know if you answer if I if I send you an email and you answer within one minute how long does that email need to be? Two two words, right? And I'm impressed because you answer really quickly. If you answer the next day, how long does it have to be? what a paragraph and you answer a week later. It needs to be a page, right? So you so you just save time by being quick. [music] You're in meetings all day. You're trying to stay present, but you're also worried you'll forget the decision, the action item, the important next step. That's where Granola comes in. Granola is an AI powered notepad for meetings. You jot down rough notes like you always do, and in the background, Granola transcribes and turns them into clear, useful notes when the meeting ends. There are no bots joining your calls, no distractions, just a clean notepad that helps you focus. During or after the call, you can chat with your notes. You can ask Granola to pull out action items, help you negotiate, make a decision, write a follow-up email, and so much more. I even use it when I'm listening to podcasts. 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That's one thing we didn't that was not a word we used when we were sort of like thinking about uh American versus European mindsets. >> Yeah, I just think uh you know urgency is I I try to build urgency into most things. you know, in my office, I have a I have this uh this watch, this kind of clock, and it counts down the number the days I've got left in in my job. So, it's not because I look forward to to stop working because I I love my job, but I have this thing on the wall. And so, you come in and say, "Hey, N, we we're going to work on this and um [clears throat] do you know, I'll I'll sort it by January." And I said, "January, look here. I've got 1,765 days left. We need to do it now." And then he said, "Oh, really? you only have 1,765 days left. Yeah, let's do it now. Let's do it now. So, you just you build urgency into these tasks. I love it. >> I like that. That's a really good idea. >> When I was talking with Charlie Mer about predicting, and he basically said, "It's a fool's errand. It's better to position and have agility, but you kind of have to mix that with a stubbornness, too." >> Yeah. >> How do you think about that? Um so I think the most important thing to have in investing is you need to be stubborn but you need to have the ability to change your mind. Very few people have that. Um [clears throat] somebody like Stan Rick and Miller has it but the combination is rare. You need to be stubborn in order to do the opposite of everybody else. Um and when you are when you do these kind of contrarian investing investments uh there will be periods where everything goes against you and it's stressful but you need to hang in there. >> Do you think you can teach people to change their minds? >> Um I think you can to a certain extent you can teach them. It's um easier as you get older I think because you've seen more cycles. But it's difficult to find people who are really contrarian now because it's you need to you need to live in a in a space where you are where people don't agree with you and we you know in in today's world everybody wants to be liked and you know have 100 like you know likes on Facebook or whatever and so to be to be different from other people is is tough. So now when I have when I give presentations at universities, I I ask people, hey, anybody here who thinks differently from other people who kind of think that they are weird, that they that nobody understands them, hands up. So typically less than 10%. I said, you guys, you're great. We'd love to hire you. Can everybody else put a hands up? And then the other 90% is like, you know, sorry guys, you're just like everybody else. You're never going to make much money, but there is hope. you can change, you know, and I I kind of think people hopefully they go out of that room and think, you know what, I want to be different, you know. It's something we should really treasure and and love. I, you know, wear it is good, right? Go deeper on that for a second in terms of I think a lot of people optimize their lives not necessarily to be liked, but definitely not be, you know, hated or disliked by people >> and that causes all these weird societal distortions. >> Yeah. you you don't have to be disliked even though you dis you you know people disagree with you but you know in my in my mind life is not a popularity contest so my wife says that well only people without friends say that but I don't I don't think so I think you life is for sure not the popularity contest and >> you're definitely not popular all the time you have that big number on the screen >> you can't you know you can't be popular all the time and you have to you know you have to be used to the fact that whatever even if you're by 10% will disagree with you. >> Do you read the comments that are negative about you? >> No. >> Do you read? >> But I also I also don't read the positives. >> Okay. >> And I don't believe them. You know, I don't believe the positives. I don't believe the negatives. >> So when you read the newspapers, like how do you read them? Are you reading headlines and then if it catches you, you read the article or is there a different way that you skim or process that? I read I go through headlines and then I drill down if it's either something I am interested in or something I know I should know more about uh or if I'm going to meet somebody who's interested in that particular field or I know somebody who's interested then I pass it on to somebody else or if I've met the person uh or had him on our podcasts. >> How do you test your assumptions before making a big investment? [snorts] So that's where we that's where I think we can be better and I think we can develop this and I think the by using more of a scientific method um I think we can be better and I do think that there is I I think there is something called I think there is an objective truth. I think there is something which is correct and we need to we need to find it and um so I have much more of an open mind now than I had in the past. I I think I listen to more different types of input and opinions and I try not to jump to conclusion. [clears throat] >> Has that made you a better or worse investor based on returns? >> Well, so so I I don't run money myself now. I'm you know running a a company where we have a lot of people running money. But for sure it's going to make you a better investor if you take more uh of the different opinions into into the equation. If you are long something, you listen to the shorts you and vice versa. I mean, there really is a truth, you know. Don't you think? >> Do you think there is an objective truth? >> I would like to think so. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I think that that's But how do we get at that truth is the >> listening to different types of people. >> Yeah. But then you're you're making a judgment call at some point on what >> what's closer to the truth and what's not. >> Of course. And then you have to kind of uh well then you link in analysis and you know some pattern recognition and and so on and hopefully you get to something which is correct. >> I think the the source of most of our poor decisions is just blind spots. There's information we're missing. There's something we don't see. There's something and our job is to >> um >> reduce our blind spots. I don't know if we can completely eliminate them but we can definitely reduce it. >> Yep. And then we reduce it through talking to people and getting different perspectives. And it's just like if you and I were standing beside each other right here and you took a photo and I took a photo. Both of those photos are 100% accurate. >> But if we add them together, we get more of a picture than we do individually because it'll be slightly different because we're standing at slightly different angles with different offsets. >> Y >> How is your attitude towards risk changed? >> It's um it it's a difficult one. I amum probably in some ways become more risk averse. On the other hand, there are some risks I probably take more of now than I did in the past. Right? So the risk people's risk appetite uh depends on many things. Um I mean everything else being equal, men take more risk than women, which is why we crash our cars much more, right? Um young take more than older people. Extroverts take more than introverts. It's geographically based, right? American people take more risks than let's say Asian people. Um, and [clears throat and laughter] I'm sorry, I'm not I'm not the one who has invented this, okay? Because I I did a degree in social psychology and one of my papers was on exactly this is just how is risk appetite linked to the big five, you know? And uh so as you get older on average you take a bit less risk but as you also as you build wealth you take a bit more risk sometimes. Um so I don't I'm sorry this was a long answer. I'm not sure I have a very clear answer here. So risk is interesting right? So then you talk to some people. So in so let's say you do private equity and you interview somebody like Steve Schwarzman which we [clears throat] did on our podcast right? So like okay it's really important not to lose money. So you need to really look at the downside. Now in venture capital, it doesn't matter whether you lose money on a lot of stuff as long as you capture the really big winners, right? So you can lo you can lose nine out of 10 as long as you get the one, right, which is just like going up like a rocket. The the issue here is that the rocket the the entry ticket for the rocket which was $1 million in the past, that's not like $500 million. >> Yeah. >> So that rocket better go up, right? And you guys do mostly it's like index plus. >> Yeah, we are we are we are very index there. We got a very uh we got a really great investment mandate from the minister of finance. It tells us how we're going to be how roughly how we are going to be positioned. It gives us a risk budget and then we are pretty close to that and that's that's important for many things but it's also important because it limits how much money we can lose. So how does that work in practice? you you basically like start with 100% in the index and then you're like okay well we're going to take a little less of this and a little more of that or >> yeah pretty much right so we would have I would say we have 20% of the active 20% of the capital we would run in a very active way and the other one the other part of the capital will do smaller tweaks >> but you you have a lot of money coming in every year I would imagine it's probably on the order of a 100 billionish if not more >> well it's um it depends on energy prices but uh generally there's been inflows And so do you take that and you no matter what the price is like say today where you have uh you know the top seven stocks account for 46% of the US index do you just how do you allocate that new money coming in do you just sort of like pop it into the index or >> kind of we get we get uh the the the inflows or outflows are they're monthly right so you get the money uh on a particular day and then you have to think when do you deploy it into the market you do it a did bit beforehand or a bit afterwards or you know bit before and after and we use AI to optimize those type of decisions. >> Do you try to frontr run index changes? >> Yeah. >> Using AI I would imagine. >> Yeah. >> What's gotten harder in investing? >> Everything. >> Nothing's gotten easier. No, >> everything's gotten harder. >> No, I mean everything has gone harder. I would say what's getting getting easier is research, right? uh because of the deep research functions in [clears throat] some of the models you get incredible incredible amount of knowledge within within 5 seconds. It would take you ages to do that before and it's well structured and it's um and you can play around with it and so that's I mean that's just phenomenal. It's just phenomenal. How do you think about the rise of passive investing when it comes to retail? What are the pros and cons of that? Well, the pros is that it's cheaper, so people don't pay that much fees. It's difficult to beat the market. Um, the natives is that you will, I mean, they would typically perpetuate uh bubbles because with more passive money, they go into, you know, stocks which have done historically well and they perpetuate uh the moves. Is your goal active return like a active um or total return absolute return or is it sort of relative to the index? >> Relative relative to the ind. >> So we are measured against a reference index which is uh constructed by the ministry and then we try to beat that. Historically over the last close to 30 years we've had 25 basis points of performance. So you would say hey that's not so much. Well, the thing is that if if you have a lot of money, >> it's these are pretty they it ends up being pretty big uh you know absolute uh amounts. >> And when you were running your own fund before that, what was the the worst sort of investing mistake that you made and what happened? The worst mistake was during the financial crisis. We were in a subprime lender and it turned out that there was accounting fraud and um it was a big position and that's that's the worst that's the worst investment I've ever made. Uh and what I learned was that um you don't want to go into dubious business models. And so Brian, you can say, you know, it's not really um certainly the type of company we're invested, I I would say it's not really I mean, is it ethical to lend money to people who are in a tough situation in life? Well, I don't know. It certainly was a really bad investment. I wouldn't invest in that type of company. Now, >> what would you like? What was the lesson you took away from that? Is it the business model? Is it the >> it's just a business model and it's just I I just don't want to I just don't think you should profit from people who have a tough time. >> What would be the counterargument to that if you were to argue with yourself? I mean >> I don't think there's a I don't think there's a good counter argument. >> The push back would Wouldn't it be like maybe I'll play devil's advocate here for a second, but wouldn't it be that people uh all need credit? We've all been down on our luck and maybe we don't have the best credit rating and >> but it's just how you do it and how you go about it and what you charge for it. >> Yeah. >> It shouldn't be sort of user rates for sure. >> No. >> Um did you do a postmortem after that? >> Totally. >> And then how do you have the confidence to sort of come back and take big swings after you lo like you lost a lot of money on that one. >> Because you as long as you don't do the same mistake. I mean, why why why make the same mistakes when there are so many mistakes to take from, you know, you find some new ones. [laughter] >> That's originality and mistakes. I love it. >> Um, but you know, Okay. So, so the risk taking is really interesting. So, most people take less risk when they lose money. >> Mhm. >> Even though you should take the same amount of risk. So, here we use a sports psychologist. I I sail and I did a lot of competition when I was a bit younger. And I sailed with some of the British Olympic sailors and they were just really really good, right? And so I asked [clears throat] them, hey, why are you so good? Well, you know, we we have two reasons. One, we have a very uh great we got a really good debrief system and also we work with sports psychologist, you know, to work with mental type of uh you know, strength. And so what is important in sailing is that you know you can be number one and then the wind the wind direction changes and then suddenly you're you're the last one. Now next race you need to take the same type of risks you know you cannot let it impact you and that's the same way it is with investing you know just because you lost you need to get back on your horse and take the same amount of risk and it's very difficult and that's why you need some psychologist to help you with this um you know I did a podcast with Magnus Carlson the chess player and so I asked him hey what happens when you when you lost you know a game do you take more less or he takes more risk in the next game which I think is interesting but normally people take less That's fascinating because I was thinking as you were saying that a little bit that the worst people would take less or more risk because isn't that the I just picture this guy at the or girl I guess or whatever at the gambling table in Vegas and they lose and they keep go you know double down double down double down. >> Investors don't do that. >> Yeah. Why did you take this job? Like what did you see? >> Why did you why did you want it? >> Oh my it was my it was my it was my dream job. Right. So I had um I had run uh this investing company investment company called AKO Capital set it up and um it kind of turned 15 years and and I thought it was time to pass it on to the next generation and do something else. So I wanted to go back to university and do another degree and uh learn some more more things. And then I had just before that taken a degree in done a degree in in social psychology and uh organizational development. And so when this job came up it was just like wow you know it combines uh you know asset management and asset management is the most interesting thing you can do in life because it's about everything that moves everything you eat where drive all that kind of thing. It's about psychology. It's about markets. It's about greed and fair. It's about macroeconomy geopolitics defense. Uh it it's about everything, right? 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[music] If you're building a serious business, your commerce platform needs to meet your customers wherever they are on your site, in store, in their feed, or right inside their inbox. The less they think, the more they buy. Businesses that sell more, sell on Shopify. If you're serious about selling, the tech behind the scenes matters as much as the product. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout that I use. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/nowledge project. All lowercase. Go to shopify.com/nowledge project to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com/nowledge project. >> I'm a huge proponent in sovereign wealth funds. How would you advise the United States or Canada to set one up knowing what you know now? I I I I think I'm too too humble to advise anybody uh in that field. What has worked well for Norway is to have a sovereign wealth fund which is has broad political anchoring. So the political parties generally agree on the on the on the big decisions which means that when you have a change of government you do not change the way you run the fund. That's important. Then transparency, we are the most transparent fund in the world and there is actually a world championship in that and we won it three times in a row. Um it's a world championship which has been run by actually a Canadian company called SEM in Toronto. Uh and then the last thing is you have a we have a spending rule which means that um the politicians spend 3% of the fund every year a maximum of 3%. So I think the you know the broad political anchoring the transparency and the spending rule those those are three really important factors. >> Are there any acute sort of um political factors that go into this? I imagine it would become political. You're like 20 or 30% of the budget at this point. >> Yeah. The fund is 25% of the state budget. Well the whole idea is that the fund should not be political. And then how do how does Norway's politics work its way into how you might vote for your shares on things like ESG or uh >> yeah well so that's so that is not politically decided that's decided how is that >> decided >> well that is decided we got a group of people who sit and look at votes right and uh they are very very experienced people so for instance we look at pay packages are they structured in a way which coincide with with the they um you know I mean are they aligned with our interests? Are they long-term enough? Are they equity based enough? Those kind of things. >> Did those decisions come up to you or are you at least aware of the big ones? >> I am aware of the big ones but I deliberately do not uh make decisions here. >> What was the thinking behind voting against Elon's pay package? Like what was the rationale? Um well the team thought it was too too big and uh didn't have the right alignment with shareholders. >> Yeah. >> Do you think >> and and the fact that it was dilutive and you know we own we own shares in 9,000 companies. If if all the CEOs were going to have a billion dollars that would be pretty expensive for us. I like to think of it as you basically have a almost a 2% toll on the world economy at this point or something similar. Is that a fair way to think about it? >> I think so. >> I think that's a I think that's really cool personally. >> How do you build long-term thinking into the organization? >> It's very [snorts] difficult [clears throat] because because people want to do things. Okay. You know, I think wealth wealth is basically created by owning one or two really good assets and then you just hold on to it for the very long term. That's when you when you know you look at the wealth the really big pockets of wealth. That's basically how it has been created. So you make money by doing as little as possible in terms of ownership and change of ownership stakes. But imagine now you're a portfolio manager. You come home from work on Monday and your [clears throat] husband asks you, "Hey, how how was it today? What did you do?" I did nothing. Okay. And next day, Tuesday, it's like, "Hi, darling. Um, you know, what did you do today?" Nothing. And the same thing on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and it's just like at the end of the week, hey, did you did you do anything? No, I didn't do a thing. It's um it's not intuitive that that's easy, right? So, very often the most difficult thing is not to do anything. And so, one way to look at it is what I call the inert inertia analysis. It mean you take you take the portfolio from January Jan one and you and you see what would have been the investment result if I just stuck to that and not made a single change and then you look at your actual results for the year and so often you actually have detracted from your performance by the things you've done. >> That is so true. What does it mean to think long term? Like if you were to are there elements to that thinking that go into it? Um well, you have to figure out what's your time horizon, right? Ideally, we should be thinking with a wealth fund, we should think 50 years ahead. But that's tough because you haven't got a clue what the world is going to look like in 50 years time. We don't even know what it's going to look like in I would say three years time is probably the max you can you can look into the future. So, it's very tough to be it's very tough to be long-term in what you do. I know um Draen Miller is widely known to take a position then do research after. >> Yeah. >> Uh do you do that as well or? >> Well, I did I did that uh quite a lot and I think it's why do you want to do that? Well, um first of all you if your gut feel is good and you know people don't believe in gut feed. If you call it gut feel if you call it pattern recognition more people believe in it. But if your if your pattern recognition is good and you see something that looks really interesting, the probability of that being a good investment is pretty high. Okay, it's like way over 50%. Um, and by taking a position, you create some urgency in the research process and it's also easier to add to add to the position, you know, if it goes up because you already have you already have some shares, right? So, it's just like mentally a bit easier to get going. So, I I was in his camp. Do you think you can teach intuition or pattern recognition if you will? >> No, you can't. But you can but you gain it with time. So I did uh I did a research process when I studied social psychology. I interviewed the 20 best asset managers in Europe and I asked them you know about pattern recognition you know when do you when do you use it when don't you use it? Well first of all you call it gutfield nobody believes in it. You call it pattern recognition a lot of people believe in it. You don't believe in anybody else's gut feel only your own. You can't apply it when you're young because nobody believes in it. You can't go to your boss and it's like hey you know what I think we should I think we should just you know buy you know 100 million worth of Apple. It's like okay well why it's just a gut feel I have. It doesn't it doesn't work right? Nobody's going to listen to you. So you need to be pretty senior and ideally you want to be the boss because if you're the boss uh you can actually do it and it gets better over time. So the best the best people use a combination of the two. They use a combination of pattern recognition and analysis depending on the situation. If you are if you press for time you you are you're more likely to use pattern recognition and if it's a really complex situation where where it's difficult to put numbers on the outcome their pattern recognition is more important. I think I remember an interview with Magnus where he said something like that whereas I have an intuition like an intuitive recognition of what move I'm going to make >> and then the person the followup was why does it take you like five minutes to move sometimes and he's like well I'm double-checking. >> Yeah, >> I'm slowing down. So what he does uh well according to what he told me is that he his uh his gut feel gives him like three move three different types of moves and then he analyze them and then he spends like five 10 minutes but beyond that uh time he doesn't need time more than that because it doesn't add to to the outcome and we we over anal there are a lot of things we overanalyze by overanalyzing you it doesn't often it doesn't improve the outcome but it makes you more confident about the outcome which is also not always a good thing. How do you re like how do you think about chess which is sort of like a defined board defined rules uh finite it's knowable everything's knowable all the information is knowable it's all visible versus something like poker when it comes to intuition because you if you listen to conman I mean his argument was to really develop intuition you need a constant environment rapid feedback and a lot of iterations and in investing You definitely don't have a constant environment. Feedback can sometimes take a long time and you might not get a lot of iterations at the table. >> Well, I would argue you get feedback all the time in investing. >> How is that >> because you well because you just the share price tells you something, right? >> But the share price tomorrow like if you buy today, the share price tomorrow is that feedback or is that sort of noise? How do you think about that? >> Well, it depends. It depends. It can be can be either. >> So, how do you know when you're wrong? Well, generally speaking, uh, you know, with the share prices going against you, that's an indication of the fact that you may be wrong. But of course, you don't know for sure. >> How do you seek out disagreement? >> Well, first you have to create an environment where people are okay to disagree with you. You need to listen. Um, you need to take what they say into consideration. Uh, so you need to create that kind of atmosphere. In the beginning in my job, people didn't disagree with me. They all agreed and that's not very good. Now they disagree all the time. You know, it's really good. >> How did you change that cuz that so often leaders leaders insulated? >> No, by creating that hopefully security for people to be able to speak up. I mean, is everybody telling me all the things they mean all the time? No, of course they don't because some people have, you know, respect for the CEO and that kind of stuff. But we are creating ways of doing it. For in I mean you're Canadian, right? So you are you I'm sure you are, you know, into isoki. No, [clears throat] you have these pucks is, you know, things that you, you know, play with. We have them on the table. It's just like, hey, here is a straight puck. I disagree with what you say. I think you're wrong. So then you put the disagreement into like a physical object and you take it away from the person. So it's not personal. It's just like, hey, you know what? I think what you're saying here is just crap. And that's really good. So in the front now we have like a straight puck award. So the people who is kind of talking up uh you know properly disagreeing with me gets a buck. It's good. >> I like that idea. >> I love it. I think it's just really good. >> What other ideas do you use internally that would be along the same lines that may seem interesting or counterintuitive that are actually super effective? >> Well, you just have to work on getting a feedback culture. You know, we are working on it. It's not easy. It's not easy to give feedback and it's not easy to receive feedback. So, you just have to do it all the time. I'm getting better at it at this, you know. I'm I'm I'm more of a straight talker. I tell people more now that I disagree with them and uh and I tried to give them feedback straight after, but it's not easy. People are very sensitive, you know. >> Is there anything you've learned about how you disagree with people that makes a difference? >> Well, you I mean, you can pack it in a touch, but I think you just want to be pretty straight. >> Yeah. A lot of people are sensitive when you sort of >> totally I mean but it's also the age right I mean young people are very very sensitive in in the Nordics we are like hyper sensitive and in the public sector they are very very sensitive you know. >> Yeah. And then the the feedback you get is it's so interesting because a lot of these conversations actually turn into that which is like I disagree with you and then it's well I didn't like the way you disagreed with me and you made me feel and then the the whole topic of the conversation has changed from the actual thing where [clears throat] it's not like I disagree with you as a person. I disagree with your opinion on this thing, but now all of a sudden we're talking about how you feel about my disagreement. >> Absolutely. >> And it sort of derails things. It's crazy. What do you look for when hiring? Um, curiosity, intelligence, integrity, drive. >> How do you test for curiosity? Like, what does that look like? >> What are you trying to learn now? What have you learned lately? What have you learned lately? >> Me, I'm learning every day. I've done deep dive on you for the past Tuesday. That [laughter] >> poor thing. >> I've learned lots. I've learned lots about you. One of the favorite things that came up in my learning about you is you have an ice cream stand outside of your office or something. >> That's really good. That's really good. >> Yeah. Why do you use that? because [snorts] you want um you want people to come by and talk to you. And so I got a sofa next to the ice cream box [clears throat] and I kind of hang out on the sofa quite a bit, you know, like uh just chill there and then um people come by to have an ice cream and say, "Hey, what what are you working on just now?" And they tell me what they're working on and it's really interesting. And sometimes he's like, "Yep, but have you spoken to this guy? I think he or she is doing the same thing as you. Have you spoken to that person?" So I just learn a lot. It's great. I mean the payback on that ice cream box is probably I don't know thousand times payback at least. >> One of the other things I learned about you that I found fascinating that I wanted to follow up on actually is you had all these conversations after you started or right before you started. >> You had hundreds of conversations with people. >> I had 140. >> 140. What were those what was the structure of those conversations like? >> Um okay so this is something I learned from a guy called Albert Benny. He was the head of a company in Switzerland called Gabberit and another one called Lonza. And he said, "Nicoline, when you because when I got the job, I thought, you know, gee, I got the job. I mean, what do you do when you get a new job? What do you do?" So, I rang all the best cos I've ever met. I said, "Hey, what do I do? I I got a new job. I mean, how should I how do you approach a new job?" You have a lot of conversations with people and you do them before you start because after you started, you have you won't have any time. and um and you do it because people need to get to know you and you need to get to know them and you need more data points so that you can make your decisions. So that's very important. So I sit down with 140 people and I just start, hey, what's on your mind? >> That's it. Yeah. And then [laughter] people have stuff on their mind, right? Yeah. What do people think about? That's very interesting. But then of course you you develop it's just like okay what is what are the what are the good things here what would you change what's your advice to me those kind of things and it's very clear you know when you the funny thing is that when I had you know when you've had half of them you've [snorts] you get the general gest of what you need to do >> you've kind of triangulated like the same thing is coming up over and over again so that's a strong signal >> absolutely [clears throat] I do the same now so I'm in New York for a month I sit down with everybody in the firm here we got 100 and uh hey what's on your mind and um you know there's a pattern emerging and I if there is a problem I try to I well I change it. Do you ask people what you're doing that doesn't make sense? >> Uh yeah I do but I probably should do even more because people do generally speaking we all do things which are which don't make sense >> and then inertia sort of like takes overtally like we're doing >> totally we make reports which nobody reads right that kind of thing. >> Yeah. >> So so that's the first thing you do when you when you talk to people. So then you distill down okay of everything I've taken from these 140 conversations what is it what are the three most important things and then you put together a leader group and you execute those three things and you take the time you spend the time it takes people leaders who fail they try to do too many things too quickly and we were in the beginning I we moved too quickly twice and then we we got the message and we slowed down. go deeper on that for a second because that that strikes me as um something really interesting where a lot of people are trying to go faster and faster and I'm thinking you know specifically uh my friend Cass had a shirt on yesterday he did the uh open investor call um and his shirt literally said faster and he was all about increasing velocity and he had just taken over I think uh September 14th or 16th or whatever um but like how do you how how do you yeah just go deeper on First of all, um you need to you need to [clears throat] execute change as a combined leader group because if you if you don't have if you don't if you aren't a combined leader group and you try to do something on your own, you'll trigger uh the immune system of the organization. You know, the organization just want to have you out and they often succeed. You know, you are isolated, you just don't get things done and so on. So you need to the organization needs to feel okay this is a this is a combined leader group there is no it doesn't make any sense to try to resist this change because it's going to come I can just as well just cave in and accept it right um and then you need to you need to prioritize and you need to have not too many things and you need to overcommunicate and um the thing with overcommunication it's become just becoming clearer and clearer you know you think you've said it you think they've heard it they haven't heard it it's very very tough to get something to really permeate through an organization. So we just >> But then you think, gee, I've said it 10 times and I nearly I'm I'm so bored of myself, but then you're only halfway. Just need to keep going, you know? >> Same message over and over and over again. >> Yeah. >> And how do you evaluate CEOs from a competence point of view from the outside just using public information? What's your thought process when you're sort of evaluating whether this person's effective or ineffective? I think it's difficult to see before they have been in the position. Most people I see are competent otherwise they wouldn't have gotten the job you know they are >> they are I mean they know their stuff right they know the company they know the things but are they good communicators are they good at executing it's tough to see from the outside how long after somebody has taken over do you start to see it in the finances like the analytic numbers the quantitative numbers >> I think it depends it depends on Uh, it depends on the business cycle. It depends on kind of the product cycle of a company. But it takes time to turn around a company. >> Totally. I guess the >> I would say to change a culture is a 10-year project. >> Oh, wow. >> Yeah. >> Why do you think it takes so long? >> Well, I mean this I've been in the job for 5 years now. I think I'm roughly half the way in. >> If you had to do it faster, how would you do it? Is it a matter of force? Like if we think of it from physics it's >> no I think if you do it faster you need to lay off people then you need to change the people >> right >> and in some in some businesses you can do that but but I but you know we can't do that in I mean in Europe it's it's difficult and also we got great people you know we were amazing people I think we got an incredible lineup of you know very very able you know professionals and so you know but there just are a few things that we'd love to you to change, right? We want to have more feedback into the system. We want to move a bit faster. We want to have a bit less fear. We want to uh do these kind of things. >> But that was I mean it was uh it probably it wasn't working as well um before you as now maybe. Um but it's sort of like that's working when you think about >> Yeah. I mean it was working well. I mean it was is a great company. It was not nothing wrong with the company. I mean really good. I mean, just had a fantastic performance, right? But I just thought it needed some tweaks. >> Yeah. >> But I mean, technologically, it was topnotch. Um, compliance-wise, top-notch, a lot of really, really good things. It's the envy of the world now. Well, it's a it's a good company. You've taken I mean, just in the sense of the sovereign wealth fund, too, right? you've taken these these reserves that you have and you've turned them into perpetual wealth not only for all your citizens but global influence and a tollbridge on the world economy. I mean I think that's amazing. >> Well I well I so I would say that's that's really the um that's to the credit of the politicians. You know, the politicians decided when they found oil and back in ' 69, I mean, they decided after they found oil, listen, we should put this into a fund and so in 96 they set it up. First deposit was, you know, relatively small and now it's grown a lot, right? But the [clears throat] politicians were really foresighted and uh and they've been good ever since to be true to the principles. What are you trying to learn right now? >> Lots of things. I [laughter] I I just feel I know so little and you know I'm just looking at the podcasts I'm doing over the next few months and I'm learning about all these kind of things and I needed to learn them anyway but but that kind of makes it urgent. I really need you know by next week I need to know more about uh networks. Um, I need to read up on crypto. I need to uh read up on IMF. I need to uh [laughter] Oh my, there is just so much I need to learn. >> You guys incredible. >> You guys don't invest in >> No, we don't. But I'm talking to somebody who's in that space >> in crypto at all. >> Yeah. And I I just don't understand. I don't understand it. So, I need to to learn. Is it that you don't invest in the coins themselves or you sort of like a Bitcoin or you don't invest in the exchanges like Coinbase or something? >> Well, we have we have some we have some ownership stakes in in some of the infrastructure >> because it's in the index and we are you know so we would own it in a in a bit more of a passive way. How much do you work? I work uh I work all the time, >> but it's not work. It's >> it's like Jensen. Is it like Jensen? You wake up at 5:00 and you're like go go go go until 9:00 and then you know for him it it doesn't feel like work. It's just >> wait to say I mean uh that's what he that's what he told me and I kind of I I mean he works more than he works a lot more than me because he works every holiday and every Saturday and every Sunday and all the time. You know, I I tend to wake up at 5 and then I read papers and try to understand what's going on in the world and then I start to shoot mails and uh you know I have a notepad at the side of my bed because if I wake up in the middle of the night I typically have some ideas and if you don't get them done a piece of paper you're going to forget them, right? So I do that and then I work for meetings um and I read in the evenings and uh you know check out the papers for the next day and but but it's not work. >> Yeah. >> You know it's just like it's life. So many people Michael Oitz gave me this phrase but it's like so many people fight their job. Um, and so that it's more of like a transaction than an integration between work and life. And >> strikes me that having the view that you have towards work is much healthier. And >> yeah, but not all people I mean, hey, it's not like everybody have the opportunity to work with what they love and you know, not everybody is that fortunate, but I've been really fortunate in that I've ended up with the things I I just cannot think of anything more interesting in in the world. >> Who do you go to for advice? >> I go to lots of people. I um I speak with as many people as I can. The funny thing when you ask people for advice, what do what do what do they think about you afterwards? >> Do you think they think that you are more clever or less clever? >> More >> more clever. They because you must be very clever who asked me for advice, you know. He must he must be really clever. He understands how clever I am and therefore he wants to have my opinion. >> What surprised you the most this year? everything that goes on in geopolitically, >> you didn't see it coming or it just continues to like push the limits of what you thought was possible. >> Yeah. >> But that's makes [snorts] life interesting to live. You know, you can be you can do one or two if you don't like what's going on. You can be really depressed about it or you can put on your student hat and just think, "Oh my, I can't believe I'm alive to see these things." You know, it's so interesting. And I think it is like super interesting. and technology you know so the thing is that everything is coming together at the same time you know the technology development now is just like totally totally phenomenal right >> what a time to be alive I wake up every day yeah >> and I remember it wasn't it was only a couple weeks ago where um AI actually made the first sort of um bio advance that humans hadn't made was on cancer research and they tested the hypothesis and it was true and I was like this is like Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon like This is this is incredible. This is the first stage of the first real thing. I thought that was amazing. I was so excited about that. >> We always end with the same question which is what is success for you? >> Success is to make a an impact in other people's life in a positive manner. >> It's a great answer. Thank you for taking the time today. I really appreciate it. >> Thank you.