Alastair Unwin is a fund manager on Polar Capital’s Technology team. We discuss Alastair’s career as a technology investor, AI’s exponential curve of improvement and potential as a general purpose technology, as well as the issues that investors should consider as ever more capital is spent to realise AI’s promise.

Show notes:

[01:33] Alastair discusses how he got into investing

[03:14] Lessons from Herald, Neptune and Polar

[05:05] Heuristics for technology investing

[07:29] AI scaling laws

[10:10] AI bottlenecks

[13:45] Capital formation and AI’s new infrastructure

[17:42] A hardware cycle

[19:37] Motivations for increasing capex

[25:08] Capex in the context of improving models and the global wage bill

[28:49] Increasing circularity of AI financing

[31:14] Is it winner takes all or will models be commoditised?

[33:34] Nvidia and the depreciable life of chips

[37:52] Hyperscalers’ ability to win in the new paradigm

[40:32] Alphabet’s prospects

[44:21] Adoption rates and use cases

[49:03] Sitting with ambiguity and not being dogmatically convicted

Sebastian Lyon and Charlotte Yonge co-manage Personal Assets Trust and Troy’s Multi-Asset strategy. We discuss the strategy’s evolution over the last 25 years, Troy’s equity-centric approach to multi-asset investing, and why creating a resilient portfolio is as relevant as ever in today’s world.

Show notes:

[01:34] Founding philosophy

[04:21] Avoiding complexity

[07:25] Reasons for not owning derivatives

[08:45] Charlotte’s career

[10:41] Becoming co-manager

[12:35] How Sebastian and Charlotte complement each other

[16:43] Avoiding wasting assets

[19:19] Finding opportunities with asymmetric risk

[21:44] Hubbell and Verisign

[24:45] Evolution of fixed income investments

[27:08] Shortening of duration

[31:00] Will the US$ remain a safe haven?

[34:55] Attractions of the Japanese Yen

[36:11] Gold as essential portfolio insurance

[38:44] Does the macro impact asset allocation?

Seth Brennan is co-founder of Lincoln Peak Capital, which owns minority stakes in several asset management companies, including Troy. We discuss Lincoln Peak's long-term partnership model and the importance of autonomy and a strong alignment of interests as foundations for success.

Show notes:

[01:15] Seth discusses how he got into the industry

[02:49] Joining Affiliated Managers Group

[03:43] Lessons from AMG

[06:37] Setting up Lincoln Peak

[07:51] Starting a business in 2008

[10:01] The importance of having long-term capital

[14:10] Lincoln Peak’s long-term ambitions

[16:20] Exits

[18:51] The due diligence process and reasons for a transaction

[22:53] Importance of autonomy and alignment

[25:01] Adding value to partner firms

[28:26] Avoiding the temptation to intervene

[31:52] Continuing relevance of active management

[34:44] Catalyst for Troy transaction

[35:35] Why Lincoln Peak is a good partner for Troy

[37:14] Sebastian’s strengths as an investor

[38:35] Be curious and ask questions