Ep. 70 Ted Seides, Capital Allocators – Investing Lessons from Decades Interviewing Elite Money Managers

2021-07-07

Ted Seides, founder of Capital Allocators LLC, host of the Capital Allocators Podcast, and author of his second book, Capital Allocators: How the World's Elite Money Managers Lead and Invest, is our guest on Raise Your Average.Takeaways• Ted Seides reminisces about his old friend and mentor, David Swensen, Endowment Fund Manager and CIO, at the Yale Endowment and Yale University, who, sadly, passed away the week before we recorded this episode.• What he learned from David Swensen during his 5 years at ...

Ted Seides, founder of Capital Allocators LLC, host of the Capital Allocators Podcast, and author of his second book, Capital Allocators: How the World's Elite Money Managers Lead and Invest, is our guest on Raise Your Average.

Takeaways

• Ted Seides reminisces about his old friend and mentor, David Swensen, Endowment Fund Manager and CIO, at the Yale Endowment and Yale University, who, sadly, passed away the week before we recorded this episode.

• What he learned from David Swensen during his 5 years at the Yale Endowment Investment Office, and the impact that working with him had on the trajectory of his career and his life.

• What impact David Swensen had on the investment industry and everyone who knew him.

• David Swensen (and team) reportedly added $35-billion in alpha to the Yale Endowment (above and beyond peers and market returns) during 30 years, all the while forgoing insane amounts of compensation.

• Ted shares Swensen's timeless framework and first principles, and stories from his time with Swensen.

• Swensen created for his own use, what are now called 'factors' and 'factor-based' approach to diversify portfolios in a time when factors did not exist.

• Where are the edges in the market today?

• What are sophisticated institutions with spending needs/liabilities of 5-8% per yearf doing to get those returns?

• Beyond Diversification and Asset Allocation, what are the 3 new 'buckets' institutions are using to construct portfolios?

• Ted's infamous bet with Warren Buffett - Ted talks about this in some detail.

• The lessons learned from decades interviewing elite money managers

• What are the investment learnings?

• What are the non-investment learnings?

• What are the biggest challenges?

• How are the people evolving?

• What happens in the Investment Offices of elite money managers?

• The 3 Ps and the 3 Cs

• How do you make good allocation decisions? As an individual? As a team?