John Arnold: evaluation

Transcript context

…Now, in energy, you had to make a lot of trades, and you hoped to win on average. In art, it seems you make a relatively small number of buys, but each one is a very good decision. What’s your overall model of yourself that ties together those two facets of decision-making? Art’s hard once your walls are full because then, not only is the question, do I love this piece, but do I love this piece more than the piece I love least in my collection today? That’s a higher hurdle all the time. Trading was and is a great industry because of the immediate feedback loops associated with it that are very rare in most industries. Probably, I’m on the opposite one today in terms of philanthropy, where you have extraordinarily long feedback loops. Those feedback loops, I think, drive improvement because you can see what’s working, what’s not. It also creates much higher stress. I’ve appreciated that I had that moment of my career where I had that strong feedback loop and high stress level. It’s not something that I thought was sustainable for my entire life. Your skill and decision-making at philanthropy, which is done with your wife Laura — how does that fit into the schema? It’s more like trading, more like buying art, something else?…

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