Mark Gerson of Gerson Lehrman Group on Charity, Investing, Inflation, and Valuations

Panic with Friends – Investing for Profit and Joy

I am excited to share my conversation with Mark Gerson, the co-founder of GLG – the original expert network. Mark has seen a few things in the markets and investing so we talked about it all.

I joke that the kids have it so good today with their iPhones and Snapchat and Doordash….. Mark and I used to walk up hill in the snow both ways to school, we had Hebrew class eight days a week, and we had to read actual books at an actual library.

I first met Mark about 13 years ago in the early days of Stocktwits; at the Macanudo Cigar bar. It was a pleasure to finally have a long chat and I hope you enjoy Mark’s takes on charitable work, market cycles, investing, inflation, and valuation. It was good to catch up.

You can listen to the podcast here on Spotify or Apple podcast and now all the episodes are on my YouTube channel as well.

You can also listen right here on the blog:

Guest: Mark Gerson

Profile: cofounder, Gerson Lehrman Group

Where to Find Him: LinkedIn

What’s Mark Panicked About?: How I’m going to do on the show.

Charities:

United Hatzalah

African Mission Healthcare

The Takeaway:

There hasn’t been a fraction of as many highly compelling and extraordinarily interesting investing opportunities as there are now in the history of humankind. This includes both the public and private markets. We’re living in very special era of investing and business. Anyone who is intellectually curious and open-minded will find lots of things that captivate them and lots of business opportunities to align with that curiosity. However, be aware cycles do exist. Many of the younger generation haven’t seen or experienced cycles before, and there’s a form of education that comes with that experience unlike any other. We haven’t had inflation in decades, and we have to come to grips with it. There are real implications. Many are too young to appreciate inflation, and it’s come upon us quite suddenly. It could have significant effects about how we view the macro economy and is particularly pernicious to those living on fixed incomes.

Show Notes:

• (00:04) – Show intro

• (04:17) – Introducing Mark

• (08:03) – Investing ideas Mark’s passionate about

• (12:18) – Developing an addiction to exercise

• (12:46) – The best self-help book ever

• (15:04) – Charity: The power of a well-deployed dollar

• (17:30) – Three minutes separate life and death

• (20:54) – The ‘ambicycle’

• (28:39) – Separate the urgent from the important

• (31:08) – Education – not one system fits all

• (31:14) – Investing in the markets

• (32:48) – Cycles do exist

• (33:36) – Tiny bubbles

• (34:06) – Valuation is important

• (35:28) – Inflation will have significant effects

• (38:06) – Saying inflation is temporary isn’t helpful

• (39:32) – Closing thoughts