From skimmed milk to whole milk to no milk. "Few Americans of the Twentieth Century were more deeply involved in major events, or had more contact with great and famous people, and yet are as unknown today as Floyd Odlum."
Great write up, amazing work bringing this story to light. Perhaps the lesson is that Odlum in his early days had an eagle eye for where his exit was for every asset turn and in his later years perhaps lost focus in this area and got caught in a liquidity trap. Some parallels here to Archegos where towards the end of their days they ended up with larger positions in less liquid investments where an obvious exit didn’t exist. Ofcourse Archegos is also a story of leverage and over-concentration, however there is some analogue in my view.
That's an interesting perspective. It's somewhat true that when rolling up the trusts, Odlum was focused on exiting and rolling the capital into the next deal. He did however invest in longer-term turnarounds like RKO and other companies (retail stores, Greyhound Bus lines, and participated in many other deals and situations). A stronger parallel exists towards the end: the Atlas portfolio did become highly concentrated in three illiquid positions. The final nail in the coffin was that he would not admit defeat and kept adding capital to these losing bets.
Great write up, amazing work bringing this story to light. Perhaps the lesson is that Odlum in his early days had an eagle eye for where his exit was for every asset turn and in his later years perhaps lost focus in this area and got caught in a liquidity trap. Some parallels here to Archegos where towards the end of their days they ended up with larger positions in less liquid investments where an obvious exit didn’t exist. Ofcourse Archegos is also a story of leverage and over-concentration, however there is some analogue in my view.
That's an interesting perspective. It's somewhat true that when rolling up the trusts, Odlum was focused on exiting and rolling the capital into the next deal. He did however invest in longer-term turnarounds like RKO and other companies (retail stores, Greyhound Bus lines, and participated in many other deals and situations). A stronger parallel exists towards the end: the Atlas portfolio did become highly concentrated in three illiquid positions. The final nail in the coffin was that he would not admit defeat and kept adding capital to these losing bets.