Mike Green-Chief Strategist of Simplify Asset Management #17

Hi everyone and Welcome Back

Our summer finance series continues. Up next is Mike Green, the Chief Strategist of Simplify Asset Management and the author of what most investment professionals consider to be a must-read weekly newsletter. Mike is a very sophisticated global macro investor with an incredible track record and is one of the most respected thought leaders in global finance. As you’ll see in this episode, he has a knack for taking very complex ideas and explaining them in ways we can actually understand.

I wanted to have Mike on the show because he has some really important perspectives about investing, the direction of the economy, potentially consequential nuances in market dynamics, and much, much more. I had high hopes for this conversation and it did not disappoint. We covered fascinating ground and talked about everything from the brewing signs of trouble in real estate and high-yield debt to China’s demand problem to the surprising relationship between the rise of passive investing and the problem of capital misallocation in the broader economy.

As you’ll see in this episode, Mike’s understanding of these issues is jut at a different level. But like all true great investors, he approaches things with both self-understanding a sense of humility. With Mike you won’t get hype or hyperbole or anything like that but you will get incredibly deep understanding and nuance. I, for one, would take that all day.

Thanks for tuning-in!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music and Youtube or on your favorite podcast platform.

Nick Halaris

I’ve been fascinated by investing for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I would read the Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Barron’s, pouring over the data tables, stories and interviews with a passion and an insatiable kind of curiosity. As I grew into adulthood, I struggled to find the right outlet and channel for this passion and spent much of my twenties wandering and trying out different things. I had a very brief career as an attorney, spent some time as a strategy and leadership consultant for big multinational companies, failed in an attempt to start a hedge fund, and even ended up helping run a scrap metal recycling operation for a while.

At the age of 30 though, I took my stand. I made up my mind that no matter what I was going to be an entrepreneurial investor. As crazy as it sounds, I owe everything in my life to this one foundational decision—even my amazing wife and my beautiful kids. I don’t think I would ever have met Alicia had I not made this one choice. At that moment in time, the financial world had just been devastated by the crash in the housing market and the near systemic failure of the global banking system that followed. I’ve always had a contrarian bent to my investment thinking; so, to me the carnage in real estate looked like an opportunity.

It all started with one house in Compton California. The business plan was simple: buy a distressed foreclosed home from a bank, bring it back to life with a big renovation and sell it to a first-time homebuyer. Things progressed slowly as they tend to do with real estate. In the first years of this, I think I did 6-7 homes. But then after plugging away day-by-day, suddenly it seemed, things just came together. I found the right investors and the right loans and the right deals and in just a few short years I ended up investing in over 100 such transactions, building a portfolio of almost 2,500 multifamily units and creating a fully vertically integrated real estate company with almost 100 employees.

Fast forward to today and I’m running the second evolution of my entrepreneurial investing career and having so much fun that I have to stop and remind myself that this is all real.

http://www.nickhalaris.com
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How being a Maverick Can Change Your Life #18

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Isaac Saul - Founder Tangle #16