Reuters / Fred Prouser
- Real estate magnate Sam Zell said the US dollar could be misplaced as the world’s reserve in the next decade during a Real Vision interview this month.
- The billionaire investor also said the home-working phenomenon would temporarily test and express skepticism about Tesla’s valuation and Bitcoin’s outlook.
- Here are Zell’s 15 best quotes from the interview.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
Billionaire investor Sam Zell questioned Tesla’s valuation and the value of Bitcoin, predicted many employees would return to offices, and said that the US dollar could stop being world reserves in the next decade during a Real interview Vision filmed Dec. 7 and released Friday. .
The founder and chairman of Equity Group Investments – who made his fortune buying property at discounted prices in the 1970s, then swapping just before the commercial real estate market collapsed in 2008 – also underlined the need for self-belief firm to succeed. life.
Here are Zell’s 15 best quotes from the interview, lightly edited and condensed for clarity:
1. “If you don’t know you can’t, then almost anything is feasible.”
2. “I didn’t know that a young kid at the University of Michigan couldn’t start a large real estate company. I didn’t know I couldn’t buy buildings. I didn’t know I couldn’t rehabilitate them. I didn’t know because no one ever told me that I couldn’t. Everyone looked at what I did and said, ‘That’s crazy.’ “
3. “I figured, if nobody in the world agrees with me – if we’re right, we’re getting pretty serious margins.”
4. “My favorite 11th commandment is, ‘Don’t take yourself seriously.’ You need to constantly challenge your own thoughts. “
5. “Open competition is a destruction of capital. In all my investments, I have always been biased toward barriers to entry. How do I protect myself from the madness of others?”
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6. “We can look at some parts of the stock market today and say, ‘Everyone is crazy.’ I look at valuations and see extraordinary numbers that I can’t support. “
7. “If you move to Nowhere, Iowa, it’s 5 o’clock every day. And what do you do at 5 o’clock? Go across the street to the farm pigs? We are social animals. ” – arguing that a mass exodus of cities is not realistic.
8. “All these people today think this is the end of office space and everyone is going to work from home. I don’t know how to drive by modem.” – emphasizing that urban centers have weathered financial crises, pandemics and other disasters in the past.
9. “Everyone’s going to make Zoom calls. And then one day, a young wiper is going to say, ‘You know, I think I have a better chance if I go sit in front of the guy. ‘ And so he’s going to get on a plane. And he’s going to sit in front of the guy. And he’s going to get the deal. “
10. “I can’t even begin to give you an intelligent assessment of Tesla. It makes Cisco look cheap.” – pointing out that Tesla barely makes any money despite absorbing billions of dollars in investment and comparing it to Cisco, which was priced at 125 times earnings in 1997, a price tag that suggests it is responsible for 25% of the US business environment.
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11. “Everyone else seems to have some kind of timing game in their own right. ‘Well, I can go out before then and so it happens.’ The world is full of skeletons of people who thought they could get out before the bad event came. “
12. “Probably, if your index fund matches the market, you’ve succeeded. But if that market goes down as an elevator, I’m not sure that’s much of success. “
13. “The single biggest risk we are dealing with today is the loss of the US dollar as the reserve. If we continue to do what we are doing right now, I think it’s 10 or 15 years If we lose the reserve status, we can see a 25% reduction in our standard of living. “
14. “Unrestricted debt and irresponsible activity do not bring positive results. That’s a disastrous kind of scenario.”
15. “I’m very skeptical, really, of Bitcoin. Ultimately, that might be the answer or one of the answers. But for now, it’s a populated world uncommon by chameleons and other fast-paced characters. I don’t believe. everyone involved is the kind of people I want to follow. “
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