It is a good time to be a money manager, with the S&P 500 index reaching a record high this week, but the rewards have not been evenly distributed. Gains have again been concentrated in a select few stocks like Nvidia, while some corners of the market, including small caps and Chinese stocks, are not up at all.
Dozens of investors and business leaders spoke at the third annual Forbes Iconoclast Summit on Thursday at Cipriani Wall Street about where they are seeing undervalued opportunities in public and private markets and what to beware of in the second half of the year. Panelists taking the stage include billionaires Todd Boehly, Jonathan Gray, Vinod Khosla, Andreas Halvorsen and David Rubenstein.
Below is live coverage of the summit as we follow along in real time throughout the day. Join the conversation on social media using #ForbesIconoclast.
View From The Top
Billionaire Andreas Halvorsen, cofounder and CEO of $48 billion hedge fund Viking Global Investments, spoke about how he’s attracted enough young talent to run a successful firm for 25 years. “When you develop people from an early stage, they’re like sponges. They take in your methods, but they also seek advice, and we form these wonderful relationships between apprentices and very successful, proven investors,” Halvorsen said, adding that homegrown talent creates a cycle that sustains the firm when they grow to become veterans.
Halvorsen got his start before founding Viking in 1999 working for hedge fund pioneer Julian Robertson at Tiger Management. Robertson, who died at 90 years old in 2022, is well-known for mentoring several other billionaire hedge fund managers including Halvorsen, Dan Sundheim and Chase Coleman. “Julian Robertson had an extraordinary nose for sniffing out who had the potential to be a great investor,” Halvorsen said.
Halvorsen and Eric Wilmes, head of private equity in the Americas for Singapore’s $770 billion sovereign wealth fund, also discussed how the allocations to private markets in both of their portfolios has grown in the last decade, and Halvorsen cautioned that he feels the macro view on the economy may be unduly optimistic. “I find it somewhat curious that we seem to believe we’re in a benign economic environment. We’re talking about a soft landing at the same time as we’re very concerned about our geopolitical environment,” said Halvorsen. “To me, the two actually coexist.”
Wilmes highlighted three themes of deglobalization, decarbonization and digitization where he’s focused on finding opportunity within disruption, and the two panelists also discussed how they’re viewing the influence of AI. “These things are expensive and there’s a lot of froth, but regardless the long-term opportunity here is going to be large.”
Geopolitical Opportunities And Risks
“We have two supercycles that are in their early innings: AI and the energy transition,” said Dambisa Moyo, an economist and member of the UK’s House of Lords. With the world getting more siloed, she added that “it’s very hard to bet against the United States.”
Moyo was joined on stage by Oscar Fahlgren, CIO of Mubadala Capital, and Mary Callahan Erdoes, CEO of JPMorgan Asset & Wealth Management. Fahlgren highlighted emerging market opportunities in India and particularly in Brazil, while calling developed market in Europe “sluggish.”
Erdoes concurred that investing in China is a difficult prospect but cautioned against being scared away entirely. “If you’re not afraid of the thing you’re investing in, it’s probably already been figured out,” she said. She cited where China is ahead of the U.S. on some aspects of their economy like electric vehicle adoption for public transportation and noted the city of Shenzhen’s bus fleet is now 100% electrified.
Maintaining a common theme throughout the day, the panelists also debated the influence of AI on global markets. “It’s the boring businesses that have started seeing the most impact from AI in our portfolio,” said Fahlgren. “AI will not displace humans. Humans that know how to use AI will displace humans that don’t.”
Leading A Private Equity Giant
Carlyle Group cofounder and co-chairman David Rubenstein interviewed the $425 billion (assets) firm’s current CEO Harvey Schwartz on stage together. Schwartz joined Carlyle last year after a long career rising up the ranks at Goldman Sachs as president and co-chief operating officer.
Schwartz said he views AI through three lenses: how to give portfolio companies a competitive advantage, how to make investment decisions better and faster, and how to run Carlyle. “There’s no doubt you’ll have a change in how work is accomplished,” said Schwartz. “I think it’s pretty good when 23 or 25-year-olds write their own memos, but we are seeing very specific ways in freeing up employees to be able to think more.”
Schwartz also discussed his upbringing in a working class family with parents who battled mental illness. He earned his undergraduate degree from Rutgers and worked as a bouncer at a nightclub while he was a student. Rubenstein asked him lightheartedly whether it was harder to kick people out of a nightclub or fire people as a boss, and Schwartz concluded naturally that being a bouncer was more dangerous.
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