Quote · All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Dan Loeb: The Lost Art of Short Selling, and Why Stock Picking is Back
Where this was said
The art of short selling and a homebuilder trade
At 21:35 · chapter starts 16:01
Loeb and the besties dig into one of the hardest questions in modern investing: what constitutes a durable moat when technology disrupts everything? Loeb is refreshingly candid — the confident moat narratives of the past (IBM, AOL, Yahoo) frequently proved delusional. True durability comes less from product or technology and more from management teams with the adaptability to stay ahead of disruption. When David Sacks asks whether management quality can be quantified or systematised, Loeb's answer is a flat 'no.' After 30 years, it's still pattern recognition. The conversation pivots to the besties' own distribution regrets: Third Point sold Palantir in the $20s and sold its Enphase stake below $1 at IPO, leaving an estimated $4 billion on the table. Sacks adds that the $100 billion mental ceiling investors imposed in the Facebook era now looks laughably small in a world of multi-trillion-dollar companies. [1] — Dan Loeb "Third Point sold Palantir in the $20s and missed a near-10x run. It sold Enphase under $1 on the IPO and estimates leaving $4 billion on th…" 18:30
Third Point went short homebuilders with a two-part thesis: the industry was structurally impaired by hidden commitments to land pools it called 'options' (but weren't), and it was the last sector still suffering from unsustainable post-COVID price inflation that buyers could no longer afford.
Loeb shorted homebuilders on the thesis that the industry was the last to still be suffering a post-COVID inventory and pricing hangover while being structurally impaired by hidden land-pool commitments.
Third Point sold Palantir in the $20s and missed a near-10x run. It sold Enphase under $1 on the IPO and estimates leaving $4 billion on the table. The lesson: board seats restrict liquidity, and recalibrating upside expectations for a multi-trillion-dollar market era is the hardest skill in investing.
Third Point was a private investor in Palantir and sold all stock in the $20s, missing a subsequent 8–10x return as the stock soared after going public.
Third Point sold Enphase stock below $1 on the IPO and estimates the position would have returned approximately $4 billion had they held.
Facebook IPO'd at a $50 billion valuation; investors at the time thought $100 billion was the ceiling for any company — a framing that now looks absurd given multi-trillion-dollar market caps.
Dan Loeb called Nvidia absolutely undervalued on a 2–3 year earnings basis. Long-short funds are structurally incentivised to short it because it 'feels safe' — the same mistake made with Google and Amazon at comparable stages of dominance. The stock will eventually break out.
Dan Loeb stated Nvidia is absolutely undervalued on an earnings basis over the next 2 to 3 years, comparing market reluctance to similar past mistakes with Google and Amazon.
