STUHLBERGER, ELEIÇÕES E BRASIL: O QUE PODE FAZER A BOLSA EXPLODIR (PARA CIMA OU PARA BAIXO)

Episode Overview

• The episode features an in-depth conversation with Verde Asset's Luiz Stuhlberger and Luiz Parreiras, who begin by sharing a personal anecdote about meeting a uniquely inquisitive Warren Buffett.
• The discussion covers Verde's strategic portfolio evolution, detailing a structural shift from a heavy allocation in Brazilian equities to a more balanced approach that includes a significant portion of credit to manage volatility.
• The guests provide a critical analysis of the current market, highlighting the historically low equity risk premium, significant mispricing in tax-exempt credit, and the behavioral biases that affect investors.
• The conversation concludes with insights into Stuhlberger's recent political commentary, the business decision to sell Verde to Vinci Partners, and personal reflections on gratitude and family.

Key Concepts

• Intellectual Humility: The conversation opens by highlighting the intellectual humility of great investors, using a story about Warren Buffett, who spent a meeting asking questions rather than answering them.
• Structural Portfolio Shift: Verde has structurally reduced its "neutral" allocation to Brazilian stocks from roughly 33% to 20%, substituting that risk with a 15% allocation to credit, which historically offers similar returns with lower volatility.
• Market Misjudgment of 2020-21: A key industry error was the belief that Brazil had become a developed country with 2% interest rates, a "fallacy" that led to paying unsustainable multiples for growth stocks.
• Low Equity Risk Premium: The current Brazilian stock market (ex-commodities) offers a very low equity risk premium (under 2%), making high real interest rates in sovereign bonds a more attractive investment on a risk-adjusted basis.
• Investor Psychology & Behavioral Bias: Investors often treat multi-market funds as an opaque "black box," judging them solely on share price. This leads to personifying losses by blaming managers, a bias not typically applied to more tangible assets like real estate.
• Market Mispricing in Tax-Exempt Credit: There is a significant mispricing in tax-exempt assets like CRIs and CRAs, where the tax incentive creates a "fantasy" that masks inadequate compensation for the credit risk being taken.
• Verde's Business Evolution: The sale of Verde Asset to Vinci Partners was driven by Stuhlberger's desire to focus more on portfolio management and less on the day-to-day administration of the business.

Quotes

• At 1:33 - "O Warren Buffett veio uma vez só pro Hemisfério Sul... e Luiz Stuhlberger tomou um café da manhã com ele." - Thiago Salomão introduces an anecdote highlighting Luiz Stuhlberger's experience and connections.
• At 2:50 - "Você quer fazer perguntas pra ele, mas ele perguntou muito que tipo de empresa a gente gostava, como que a gente investia." - Luiz Parreiras describes the dynamic of the meeting, where Buffett acted more as an interviewer than a speaker.
• At 22:28 - "Tem esse conflito de interesse entre o interesse do gestor e o interesse do investidor." - Luis Stulberger on the core principle of aligning interests and avoiding taking undue risks with client capital simply to chase performance.
• At 24:38 - "Hoje, a alocação estrutural em bolsa brasileira, o neutro, deveria estar mais perto de 20%... Porque tem essa parte que tá no crédito, que é 15%." - Luis Stulberger explaining the strategic shift in Verde's portfolio, substituting part of its equity exposure with credit.
• At 28:58 - "O maior erro que a gente, como gestores brasileiros, cometeu... foi em 2020/21 achar que a gente era país desenvolvido." - A speaker analyzing the industry's misjudgment during the period of low interest rates, leading to overpaying for growth stocks.
• At 32:44 - "Você tem dois jeitos de medir o valuation da bolsa hoje... Ela tá, em termos de earnings yield... a 9.2, 9.3, contra uma NTN-B longa de 7.20. Então tem aí menos do que 2% de equity risk premium." - Luis Stulberger providing a technical valuation of the Brazilian stock market, concluding that the risk premium is historically low.
• At 37:57 - "Foi o rally mais triste da história, porque ninguém tinha." - A speaker describing a recent stock market surge, which occurred when most funds were defensively positioned.
• At 50:52 - "O multimercado, eu acho, tem até aquela coisa assim, ele é uma caixa preta, a pessoa não sabe o que tem dentro. Então ela só olha a cota." - Luis Stuhlberger contrasts the tangible nature of real estate funds with multi-market funds, which investors often judge solely by their share price.
• At 54:06 - "Se você tem uma B longa e a taxa foi de 6 para 8... 'ele tá screaming on my face' que é IPCA + 8! Ela dentro de um fundo, é só uma porcaria de uma cota que o gestor fez uma merda desgraçada e perdeu o seu dinheiro." - Stuhlberger illustrates the psychological difference in how an investor perceives the same asset directly versus within a fund.
• At 58:19 - "Pelo menos 2% ao ano errado. Então, quando você tem um negócio de 10 anos, significa que você tá comprando um negócio 20% errado." - Stuhlberger quantifies what he sees as a significant mispricing in the tax-exempt credit market.
• At 1:00:29 - "O motivo que eu quisesse... era mostrar que o Bolsonaro perdeu a eleição porque ele perdeu de 2 a 3 milhões de votos de pessoas como eu... que seriam naturais de votar nele." - Stuhlberger clarifies that his political statements were an analytical exercise to explain why Bolsonaro lost the election.
• At 77:00 - "Eu tenho estado nos últimos anos, já não é de hoje, mais focado na gestão do fundo do que em dirigir a Verde como um todo." - Stuhlberger explains his personal decision to focus on portfolio management, a key factor in the sale to Vinci Partners.
• At 81:55 - "Eu diria hoje... que é a Bruna, minha atual esposa... O fato de eu ter encontrado uma companheira maravilhosa... eu considero uma das coisas mais incríveis que aconteceu na minha vida..." - Luis Stuhlberger shares a personal reflection on the gratitude he has for his wife.

Takeaways

• Cultivate intellectual humility; the most successful investors are often defined by their curiosity and the quality of their questions, not just their answers.
• Re-evaluate portfolio construction by considering asset classes like credit that can offer equity-like returns with potentially lower volatility.
• Avoid being swept up in prevailing market narratives, such as the idea that Brazil could sustain developed-market interest rates, which can lead to overpaying for assets.
• In an environment with high real interest rates, carefully weigh the low risk premium offered by equities against the safer returns available in sovereign bonds.
• Look beyond the daily share price of a fund and strive to understand the underlying strategy and assets to avoid making emotionally-driven decisions.
• Depersonalize investment losses by focusing on the performance of underlying assets rather than falling into the common behavioral bias of blaming the fund manager.
• Be wary of assets where tax incentives may be masking inadequate compensation for risk; always analyze the real, risk-adjusted return.
• Recognize that client intolerance for high volatility constrains fund managers, making the outsized returns of the past more difficult to achieve today.