Ackman had conviction in the timing of the COVID crisis (weeks, not months or years away) but less conviction on long-term implications; given this timing confidence, the premium cost should be viewed as a 90-day cost (125M), not a 5-year cost (2.5B).

Buffett built the most profitable, best-capitalized, unique insurance business; for certain kinds of insurance, Berkshire is the only place you can call, giving it a very unique, very profitable, near-monopoly position.

China appears to have handled the coronavirus by managing cases and deaths, though there are questions about the accuracy of their reported data; Ackman doesn't think the data is materially different from what China described.

Ackman reads a lot in the evening and spends a lot of time with his partner Neri; he does not have a formal bedtime routine and occasionally watches movies or interesting content.

Between March 12 and March 18, 2020, Pershing invested 2.05 billion dollars buying stocks while simultaneously selling off the hedge (1.3B sold), resulting in a net long position increase of 3.35 billion dollars despite total equity of only 7.5 billion—a very aggressive deployment.

Ackman did not sell all his positions and buy back on dips because: (1) Pershing has board seats and management involvement, so abandoning companies in a crisis would be unsupportive; (2) they owned illiquid positions that are difficult to rebuild quickly; (3) they would incur large tax liabilities; (4) the timing risk of missing the recovery is high.

The most persistent person in America is Bill Ackman's father; Ackman learned never to give up on pretty much anything from living in a home with such a persistent person.

Philanthropy is not genetic; it is learned, and something Ackman's father reinforced from the time he was a kid.

The current crisis is a 'dreamlike opportunity' for companies with cash and prudent leverage to take on 'multiple big elephants' and gain significant market share.

The index fund business is a commodity business: the only way to compete (e.g., S&P 500 index funds) is by lowering fees, which have fallen to a few basis points with some funds now charging zero fees; this commoditization makes it hard to scale governance resources.

The negative side of short selling is when short sellers attempt to cause harm to a company (beyond identifying overvaluation) in order to profit from their short; this crosses a line and is where short selling becomes problematic.

Ackman's biggest driver from childhood was independence—not wanting to rely on his parents financially, intellectually, or in terms of freedom to live as he wished.

Experience is making mistakes and learning from them; Ackman has had the benefit of making a lot of mistakes and learning from them.

When you find yourself in a hole (whether investment or personal), the key is to make small progress every day; compounded progress will eventually dig you out, rather than focusing on the distant peak that seems unreachable.

Most people who attend top business schools like Harvard Business School have not had to deal with failure, which is a major problem because the single most important thing you need to understand for success is how to deal with failure.

Elon Musk is admirable because he takes on unbelievable challenges and succeeds; building a car company to compete with the big car companies is remarkable, and doing so while simultaneously launching rockets into space is even more remarkable.

Because Pershing Square manages a highly concentrated portfolio, they do not need to make investment decisions under time pressure and can go very deep on companies; they add only one or two new ideas per year, which means they can spend more time on each idea than most investors.

Pershing's hedge during the COVID-19 crisis (early March 2020) protecting the portfolio required minimal research time—it was an urgent discussion among the team about the economic implications of the virus, and the decision was made to hedge because credit spreads were at historical tights.

The most important criterion for Pershing's investments is that the business quality is extremely high, defined as a simple, predictable, free-cash-flow-generative business with high degree of confidence.

The value of a financial asset is the present value of the cash that can be taken out of it over its life; in a low interest rate environment, you need to be able to predict cash flows for many years to determine what the business is worth, which is impossible for most companies because complexity means you cannot know cash flows even three years out.