Dr. Ashby Monk is the Executive and Research Director of the Stanford University Global Projects Center. He is also a Senior Research Associate at the University of Oxford, a Senior Advisor to the Chief Investment Officer of the University of California, and the co-founder of Long Game. Ashby advises sovereign wealth funds and large pension funds, and is involved with a bunch of fin tech companies, all of which attempt to create innovative solutions to fixing the financial future for individuals, pensions and countries in the years ahead. Our conversation starts with Ashby’s early work experience and path through academia, and flows into an exploration of next generation, lower cost approaches to active management for large asset owners.  We touch on investing in public equity, private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds using examples from the Canadian and Australian pensions, New Zealand Super Fund, and University of California endowment. Lastly, we discuss Long Game, an innovative company seeking to improve personal savings in the U.S.  Ashby is a passion-driven, creative thinker who rightfully has the ear of some of the most important pools of capital in the world.  His ideas will change the way you think about allocating capital. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Jason Klein is the Senior Vice President and CIO at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he oversees the hospital’s $4.5 billion in long-term investment assets. Jason has spent the last decade and a half overseeing endowment pools – 9 at MSKCC and 5 at the Museum of Modern Art. Jason got his start in the investment business learning the tools of private equity, and had training as an investment banker, management consultant, and lawyer. Our conversation starts with the distinctive features that drive the investment structure for Memorial Sloan Kettering and flows through core beliefs, asset allocation frameworks and manager selection. Aspects of his due diligence process, including 30 questions and pre-mortem analysis, offer new arrows to an allocator’s quiver to those in previous conversations. Jason’s curiosity and eagerness to ask questions provides a terrific structure for applying capital allocation to a distinctive pool of capital. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides  

Ellen Ellison is the Chief Investment Officer of the University of Illinois Foundation, which she joined in 2013 as its first leader of the now $1.7 billion pool of assets. Ellen restarted a program and a portfolio from scratch at a time when longer-established University investment offices already had their chips carefully placed in the markets. Yet with a small team, she built a clever portfolio and is starting to reap its rewards. Prior to joining Illinois, Ellen was the Executive Director of Investments at the University of Miami for five years, the leader of a small family office for a year, and a thirteen-year veteran of Fiduciary Trust Company.  She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and Columbia University Business School, and currently sits on the Investment Committee for Mount Holyoke. Our conversation starts with Ellen’s career path and dives into the challenge of starting an endowment investment program from the ground up, including establishing governance practices and figuring out when to put cash to work when markets feel pricey. Her favorite opportunities in the market, including a long discussion of agriculture investing, offers a very different take on the world today. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

David Barrett is the founder of David Barrett Partners, a leading executive search firm focused exclusively on buy-side asset management. Prior to founding DBP in 2005, he spent 19 years in the search business, including long stints at Russell Reynolds Associates and Heidrick and Struggles. He began his career as a self-professed failed equity research analyst in the early 1980s.  David is a graduate of Yale University and Columbia University Business School. In just the last two years, David’s firm has completed searches for the Chief Investment Officer positions at Harvard University, Dartmouth College, University of Texas Investment Management Company, TIFF, and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, each a multi-billion dollar pool of assets. Our conversation explores the search process for senior asset allocators, including the business of search, the interview process, governance structures, and trends. Anyone with a thought to navigating their career will pick up nuggets of insight throughout the conversation. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Scott Malpass is the esteemed Vice President and CIO of Notre Dame, where he oversees the University’s $12 billion endowment. Scott earned his B.A. and M.B.A. degrees at Notre Dame, and returned to South Bend at the ripe age of 26 following a brief stint on Wall Street. His track record for almost 30 years, as defined by both performance and impact, place him indisputably in rare company at the very top of the field. Among his many accolades, Scott received Institutional Investor’s Endowment Manager of the Year award, NACUBO’s Rodney H. Adams Award, and CIO Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award.  He has taught students at Notre Dame since 1995 and among other directorships and advisory councils, he serves on the Boards of the Vatican Bank, Vanguard, and TIFF, and previously served on the Investment Advisory Committee for Major League Baseball. In 2014, Scott became part of the founding group for Catholic Investment Services, Inc., a not-for-profit offering top tier investment solutions to Catholic organizations nationally. Our conversation is a full-blown master class on endowment management, including the benefits of a long tenured team, asset allocation frameworks, passive management, preparing for dislocations, the state of venture capital, sourcing, monitoring and exiting managers, incremental process improvements, professional and personal development, and education and alignment across constituencies. It’s hard not to be in awe of Scott’s combination of humility, experience, and success. For more episodes go to CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/Podcast Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides Join Ted’s mailing list at CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com   Show Notes 3:26 – How Scott got started at Notre Dame  6:22 – Why tenure of the staff is so long on Scott’s team  8:26 – How did he handle bad hires among such a tight knit team  9:37 – Committee makeup  11:18 – How the continuity and depth of institutional knowledge allowed them to make better decisions  12:51 – Their first single asset real estate investment  14:21 – What is the best use of time for the investment team, managing a direct investment or researching new managers  15:07 – Core investment beliefs from Scott’s past that drive the portfolio  17:28 – Core investment beliefs that drive the portfolio today  20:43 – How does Scott think about portfolio construction techniques  22:49 – Factors they like to tilt towards  23:36 – Any concerns about the focus on active managers in a world that is moving towards passive  26:02 – How much of the US investing market should be indexed-based  27:37 – The baseline that Scott has to consider when making investment decisions  29:43 – Their focus on emerging and middle markets, particularly Europe  34:01 – Pricing in the venture capital markets today  36:31 – Implications of all of this new money moving into private market investing  37:40 – Do private equity owners make better decisions for businesses  39:52 – Scott’s manager selection process  41:44 – How much time does Scott spend with managers before making a decision to invest with them             43:14 – Jim Dunn podcast episode  44:04 – What has Scott learned about the behaviors of making that final decision on a manager 45:39 – Mistakes that Scott has learned from and corrected over the years 49:36 – Creative ways to monitor managers in the portfolio 52:08 – Scott sharing how special the managers in the portfolio are to them 54:49 – How would Scott think about an investment portfolio of $1,000,000,000 of cash 56:57 – Benefits and drawbacks of direct vs co-investments 59:43 – Biggest current subject of debate on an investment topic in the office 1:01:47 – Lessons from their annual offsite meetings 1:04:31 – Biggest concerns about the markets today and over the next 10 years 1:07:52 – Closing Questions  

Jim Dunn is the CEO and CIO of Verger Capital Management, an Outsourced CIO business whose anchor client is Wake Forest University. Prior to forming Verger, he served as CIO of Wake Forest for five years. That transition from a sole client to an OCIO business, is a fascinating part of our conversation. Before joining Wake, Jim traveled the world as CIO of Wilshire Associates, where among other things he experienced the best story of a manager getting their foot in the door that I’ve ever heard.  He got his start in the business trading death spiral convertible bonds at a now defunct hedge fund and got introduced to manager selection at Investorforce. Our conversation starts with Jim’s career path, and covers a full range issues in allocating capital. We discuss defining risk tolerance, a factor-based approach to asset allocation, separating talent from luck in manager selection, the politics of endowment management, challenges using internal management, and culture.  If you listen carefully, you’ll hear a few one-liners. Jim is chock full of gems and life lessons. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Dan Egan is the Director of Behavioral Finance and Investing at Betterment, the market leading robo-advisor overseeing $10 billion in assets. Dan has spent his career applying behavioral finance principals to help individuals make better financial and investment decisions. Prior to joining Betterment in its early years, Dan spent six years as a Behavioral Finance Specialist for Barclays Wealth Management. He is a graduate of Boston University and the London School of Economics and lectures at New York University, the London Business School, and the London School of Economics.   Our conversation discusses how Dan has created evidence-based tools that improve outcomes for individual investors, ranging across tax-loss harvesting, rebalancing, client reporting, mental accounting, commitment mechanisms, and communication during turbulent market times. As he spoke, Dan had head my head spinning thinking about how institutions and individuals alike could implement quantitative tools in their investment processes to avoid known behavioral pitfalls during critical market moments. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Chatri Sityodtong is the Founder and Chairman of ONE Championship, Asia’s largest sports media property. Chatri started his career as many listening to this show have: he graduated from Tufts University, worked at Fidelity Investments and Bain Consulting, attended Harvard Business School, took a run at a technology start-up, and then spent a decade working at hedge funds, culminating in launching his own fund, Izara Capital, that grew to $500 million in assets. But Chatri’s story is vastly different from any stereotype he may appear on paper. Despite a comfortable life growing up, his family lost everything in the Asian financial crisis. A decade later, despite his financial success, Chatri felt an emptiness and loneliness at the top that he couldn’t shake. Instead of pushing on, he returned investor capital and moved back to Asia. From there, he followed his passion for Muay Thai fighting and began building a budding sports empire. Our conversation tells Chatri’s story, replete with lessons about entrepreneurship, investing, hard work, and the warrior spirit. For those who wonder if a career in the financial markets is the only thing they know, Chatri’s path suggests a different and fulfilling way forward. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Richard Lawrence is the Chairman and Executive Director of The Overlook Group, a $5 billion investment organization focused on Asian equities that Richard founded in 1991. Over the past quarter-century, Overlook developed and implemented disciplined investment and business philosophies that interconnected to drive extraordinary results for its partners. Overlook has compounded capital at an annualized 14.5%, outperforming its benchmark by an insane 9% per annum. But that’s not all, as Richard would proudly tell you himself, the capital weighted return of the average investor in Overlook is nearly identical to the time weighted return over any period of time – a rare feat in the money management industry. Indeed, today’s asset base is the result of $4 billion of investment gains on top of $1 billion in contributed capital. Our conversation starts with a look at investing in Asia in Overlook’s early days and walks through the particulars of the approach Richard takes to investing and running his business, including attractive investment attributes, management integrity, portfolio construction, selling discipline, and China Yangtze Power - the only stock the firm supersized in an SPV in its history. We discuss Overlook’s long-held cap on subscriptions and periodic reductions in its management fee, two business philosophies that Richard believes have been key drivers of Overlook’s success. If you enjoyed my conversation with Tom Russo, you won’t want to miss this one with Richard. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Kip McDaniel is the Chief Content Officer and Editorial Director at Institutional Investor.  Prior to joining II a year ago, Kip spent seven years as the Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of CIO Magazine, a media platform that led him to interview 2,000 Chief Investment Officers across every type of asset base around the world. Kip is a graduate of Harvard College, received a Master’s at Cambridge University, and was an elite crew rower, culminating in bringing home bronze medals for Team Canada in two World Championships. Kip is inordinately well-liked in the community, and I had a hunch I would learn a lot from getting his perspective on the people who make capital allocation happen. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t disappointed. Our conversation starts with an inside look at Chief Investment Officers – how Kip finds them, ranks them, and discovers what makes them tick. Over the back half of the discussion, we turn to the lessons he’s learned about investment success, incentives, fads, and issues that permeate capital allocation. Kip’s modus operandi is story-telling, and this conversation is chock full of good ones. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Dan Schorr is the founder of Vice Cream, an early stage company that is bringing back unapologetic indulgence to the ice cream industry.  After graduating from Tufts University, Dan turned his passion for running into a career working with consumer brands, including Power Bar, Saucony, and PepsiCo.  Following two unexpected life events, he turned his focus towards developing a brand of his own. Our conversation tracks Dan’s path and walks through his start-up story. His energy is infectious and his road traveled has great parallels with investing and lessons for managing a business. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Tom DeLong is a renown expert in organizational behavior, leadership, and human development of high performance professionals, the so called “soft skills” often dismissed in the asset management business. After starting an academic career under the wing of Stephen Covey, Tom found himself recruited by John Mack to work alongside him to develop a positive culture at Morgan Stanley.  After eight years in the trenches, he returned to academia as a professor at Harvard Business School, where he has remained the past twenty years. Unlike most of us, Tom’s resume and achievements are unusually difficult to locate online or elsewhere. It was a sign of things to come in our fascinating conversation, which is simultaneously a master class in authentic leadership and a live case study in self-exploration with Tom as his own protagonist. Tom is exactly the type of person he has studied, and strives to be the type of leader he promotes. We discuss the meaning of work, the importance of feedback, the ways high performing professionals derail themselves, the difference between your image and your essence, the omnipresence of insecurity in high achievers, and some techniques to foster deeper conversation in relationships. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Adam Blitz is the CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Evanston Capital Management, a $4.5 billion hedge fund of funds manager with a decade and a half of experience managing hedge fund portfolios. Adam joined Evanston at its inception in 2002 and leads investment research and portfolio management. Previously, he worked in the Prime Brokerage area and Asset Management Division of Goldman Sachs and served as head trader at AQR.  Adam earned a B.S. in Economics at the Wharton School. Our conversation dives in the hedge fund category of investing, covering how a leading allocator in the space thinks about strategic asset allocation, portfolio construction, risk management, manager research, decision making, and monitoring managers. Adam’s perspective on the evolution in how allocators perceive hedge funds and the resulting unattractiveness of the “average hedge fund” today resonate strongly with how I’ve viewed this widely discussed and recently scrutinized corner of the markets. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Tom Russo is the Managing Member of Gardner Russo & Gardner, where he manages $11 billion in a long only, global value strategy. Tom buys the stock of global consumer businesses with great brands and holds them for a really long time. He looks for businesses with a capacity to reinvest free cash flow and a capacity to suffer through short-term pain in order to achieve long-term gain. Tom started his investment career at the Sequoia Fund in New York, where he worked from 1984 to 1988. His first partnership, Semper Vic Partners, has compounded at 14.6% per year for 33 years, besting the S&P 500 by 3.6% per annum. Tom is a graduate of Dartmouth College (B.A., 1977), and Stanford Business and Law Schools (JD/MBA, 1984). He has served on Dean's Advisory Council for Stanford Law School, Dartmouth College's President's Leadership Council, and the Advisory Board for the Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing at Columbia Business School, as well as on the boards of the Winston Churchill Foundation of the U.S., Facing History and Ourselves, and Storm King Art Center. Our conversation covers how Tom created an investment strategy by personalizing early lessons from Warren Buffett, the capacity to re-invest, the capacity to suffer, and what it takes to own a stock for decades.  Tom’s time horizon and fortitude as an investor parallels those of institutions with permanent capital. Listeners will get a fresh perspective on what it means to be a long-term investor For more episodes go to CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/Podcast Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides Join Ted’s mailing list at CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com   Show Notes 3:20 – How the spark got lit for Tom to become a value investor             3:54 – The Sharpe Ratio  6:26 – Family and personal background 8:03 – Move to consumer brands 12:06 – Key tenants to investing in consumer brands             12:26 – Family controlled             14:04 - Capacity to reinvest             15:17 - Capacity to suffer 19:10 – Portfolio turnover and the investment in Heineken 22:46 – Position sizing when portfolio turnover is so low 25:08 – Opportunity costs and behavioral finance 28:58 – Benefits of insider insights 31:02 – The capacity of Tom's investors to suffer 34:00 – What is happening today with the investor base and their capacity to suffer 36:07 – The structure of Tom's strategy vs. a more a diversified portfolio 37:28 – Sitting on investment committees 38:02 – Comparing Tom's decision-making process to Warren Buffett's 40:29 – Case study of Wells Fargo 44:21 – Does reputational damage impact the ability to reinvest 47:04 – Tom's research process and the importance of listening 49:46 – How Tom keeps track of nuggets in everyday conversations 51:00 – Closing questions

A few months ago an idea came to me to share some conversations with great capital allocators that I’ve been fortunate to know from my time in the business. I lined up my first three guests, and didn’t know what would happen from there. Taking this journey without goals or expectations was new for me, and it’s been a ton of fun. My first unexpected surprise in podcasting came from the answers to one of my closing questions. That question is : what is your favorite thing to do that’s a complete waste of time. My own time consuming vice is pretty harmless, but I was curious what others would reveal in answer to the same question. As you’ll hear, some of my guests followed my lead, but most quickly came upon an important life lesson. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Chris Douvos is Managing Director at Venture Investment Associates, a fund that invests $1B in commitments to venture capital funds. Chris is responsible for the management of relationships with the funds’ managers and the identification and development of new manager relationships. He is the author of an entertaining blog about venture capital entitled SuperLP – Adventures in Investing, available at SuperLP.com. Prior to joining VIA, Chris spent seven years co-heading the private equity program at The Investment Fund For Foundations, or TIFF. In this role, he was responsible for another $1 billion in new capital commitments. Before joining TIFF, Chris worked on Princeton University’s endowment team. He started his career as a strategy consultant at Monitor Company. He is a graduate of Yale University and the Yale School of Management. Our conversation starts with Chris’ path to venture capital, through strategy consulting, investment banking and an endowment investment office. We talk about perception and reality in venture investing, exciting areas of future innovation, and the nuts and bolts of research, portfolio construction and decision making when running a portfolio of venture funds. When Chris pulls off his suit, the red undershirt of the Super LP remains. He’s a charismatic guy with great insight into how the venture capital game is played and draws many parallels from venture to investing in general. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Andy Golden is the President of Princeton University’s Investment Management Company (PRINCO).  Having grown from $3B at the time of his arrival in 1995 to $22.5B today, PRINCO has been among the highest performing endowments in the world. Andy came to PRINCO from Duke Management Company, where he was an Investment Director, and received his formative training in the business working for David Swensen at the Yale University Investments Office. Andy currently serves on the fund Advisory Boards of several well-known private equity and venture capital managers, including Bain Capital, General Catalyst Partners, and Greylock Partners. He was a founding member of the Investors’ Committee of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets and serves as a Trustee of the Princeton Area Community Foundation and Rutgers Preparatory School. Andy holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Duke University and an M.P.P.M. from the Yale School of Management. Our conversation discusses Princeton’s endowment two decades ago and today, including its strategic advantages as an institution, shifts in thinking about asset allocation, decision making, team development, and partnership with managers. Andy’s long tenure in his seat, insight, and wisdom provides a treasure trove of information about how a top endowment manager practices his craft, and his subtle wit always keeps things light. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Mario Therrien is Senior Vice President of External Portfolio Management at Canadian asset manager Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDP). CDP oversees $270 billion Canadian ($200B in USD) for the pension funds in the province of Quebec. Mario joined CDP in the early 1990s after completing his Masters degree in Finance and has worked there ever since. Mario started out at CDP managing a tactical asset allocation strategy, created an internal global macro hedge fund, and later built and managed the team responsible for investments in external public market funds. Starting from scratch, CDP oversees $20B of external manager allocations today. Mario's team serves as CDP’s ‘window to the world’ of markets, strategies, and managers across the globe. Our conversation dives into the ‘Canadian pension model’ which has gained prominence in recent years for the strong performance by funds north of the U.S. border. The model incorporates internal management, risk control, partnership, and collaboration.  Drawing on a quarter century of experience, Mario shares his window into this little-known world of investment success. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Larry Kochard is the CEO and CIO of the University of Virginia Investment Management Company (UVIMCO), where he provides leadership, connectivity to the University, and responsibility for the University's $8.5 billion long-term investment pool.  Before joining UVIMCO in 2011, he served as Georgetown University's first in-house CIO. Prior to that, he was Managing Director of Equity and Hedge Fund investments for the Virginia Retirement System.  From 1997-2004, Larry was an adjunct, and later full-time, professor at Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce.  He spent his formative professional years in debt capital markets at Goldman Sachs, and corporate finance at Fannie Mae and DuPont. Larry received his B.A. in Economics from William & Mary, an MBA from the University of Rochester, and an MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Virginia. Our conversation covers tricky issues involving the internal management of portfolios alongside external manager allocations, UVIMCO’s five core principals, and the consideration of absolute and relative metrics in asset allocation and performance. Our deep dive on UVIMCO's core principals and asset allocation provides an inside look at the subtleties required to maintain seemingly simple tenants. I’m quite sure everyone that touches the University of Virginia will come away thrilled that Larry is the steward of their capital. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides  

David Gurfein is a decorated Marine Corps Combat veteran whose nickname “Bull” fits the bill. Enlisting at age 17, Bull drove tanks and was an honor graduate from Officer Candidate School while attending Syracuse University. Upon graduation from college, he accepted a commission as a Marine 2nd Lieutenant. Over the subsequent eleven years, Bull served as a combat Infantry Officer, leading Marines in the jungles of Panama, the deserts of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and on the fence-line at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He left active duty to earn his MBA at Harvard in 2000, where he was Co-President of his class. Bull started a business career after graduate school; however, when the U.S. was attacked on 9/11, Bull voluntarily returned to active duty. He saw combat action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and served as a Congressional Liaison for the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, and the Special Operations Command. With a daughter on the way and 25 years of service under his belt, Bull retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. Since then, he has applied his leadership and management experience to the business world, focusing on organizational design and business development. His leadership training program, entitled WHOOPASS, has positively impacted start-ups and Fortune 500 companies alike. Oh, and he took a break from that in 2016 to run for U.S. Congress. Our conversation discusses principles of leadership, management, and resource allocation, alongside colorful stories of success and failure. Bull's frameworks have clear applicability to anyone overseeing an investment process. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides  

Jeffrey Solomon is the President of publicly listed Cowen Group (TK: COWN), a financial services company focused on supporting and providing active management to the marketplace. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988, Jeff deferred an acting career with a brief respite on Wall Street, but he hasn’t looked back since. In 1994, he joined Peter Cohen, then the former head of investment bank Shearson Lehman Brothers, to form money management firm Ramius Advisors. Ramius grew to become one of the largest hedge funds in the world, and in 2009 merged with boutique investment bank Cowen Group. Following the merger, Jeff switched over to the investment bank side of the business and today serves as its Chief Executive Officer, where he embodies the firm’s core values of vision, tenacity and empathy. Our conversation starts with a passionate description of Pittsburgh sports, and flows to how active managers succeed in the 1990s and need to evolve to succeed today. We discuss the importance of empathy in the investment business, and touch on how Jeff’s summer camp experience as a kid informs how he manages people today.  His answers to my closing questions are just amazing. If you’re short on time, fast forward to the 51stminute of the show.  You’ll miss plenty along the way, but you don’t want to miss these. Please enjoy my conversation with Jeff Solomon.   For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Charley Ellis is one of the most highly regarded experts in the investment business.  After spending nearly a decade as an equity research analyst in the 1960s, Charley founded financial services consulting firm Greenwich Associates in 1972 to help institutions understand what their clients think of them.  Over 50 years, Charley has worked hand in hand with nearly every major financial institution in the world and has published sixteen books on investing, including his most recent “The Index Revolution: Why Investors Should Join It Now.” Charley is not just another preacher for index fund investing. He extols the virtues of indexing after having looked both broadly and deeply under the covers of some of the most successful active managers in the world. Our conversation begins with a glimpse at what equity research and the structure of the markets looked like in the 1960s and the monumentally different way research is conducted and markets function today. Charley describes elegantly why indexing is a winner’s game for many, and then walks through very special and rare qualities of three of the most successful active managers over the last few decades – Vanguard, Capital Group, and Yale University. Charley is a brilliant communicator and masterful storyteller. I hope you enjoy the show as much as I enjoyed the conversation.    For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Jenny Heller is the President and Chief Investment Officer of Brandywine Trust Group.  Brandywine formed 25 years ago to manage the capital for a small group of families that all share a long-term, multi-generational time horizon. Today, it oversees almost $9B for those same families, much of it from compounding over a quarter century. The Group invests flexibly across asset classes, with a focus on partnering with people who they believe have sustainable competitive advantages, share their long-term vision, and have highly aligned interests.  These elite managers often start with great ideas, but limited capital.  Before taking the helm at Brandywine five years ago, Jenny worked at the Sloan Foundation, Stanford University Management Company, and Merrill Lynch in its investment banking program. She is a graduate of Williams College, where she serves on its Investment Advisory Committee, and Stanford Business School. Our conversation starts with Jenny’s frustrating experiences with a non-profit micro finance in India and South Africa and turns to her career allocating money on behalf of non-profits and families. We touch on subtleties in picking managers for taxable investors, challenges in executing a long-term strategy, learning from mistakes, and mentorship. Jenny’s clear and deep thought process provides pearls of wisdom throughout our conversation. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Josh Brown is the CEO of Ritholz Wealth Management, a NYC based financial advisor that helps people align their investments with their financial goals. He is well known in social media financial circles for his decade-long, insightful blog, The Reformed Broker, his Twitter handle, Downtown Josh Brown, and his regular appearances on CNBC’s Halftime Report. Josh has written two books on personal finance and has been published in every major financial newspaper and periodical.   Josh’s personal story is one for the ages, rising from a start learning all the wrong lessons in a boiler room-style brokerage to embodying the moniker of the reformed broker. We spend some time hearing his story and then turn to how he applies the lessons he has learned to managing portfolios for individuals. The principles Josh employs at Ritholz are simple to say and hard to deliver.   Don’t be fooled by Josh’s casual speaking style and occasional, entertaining slip of the tongue; he has one of the sharpest minds in the business and is chock full of deep insights.   Please enjoy my conversation with Josh Brown. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Today’s show is a little different from my ongoing series of conversations with Capital Allocators.  As you probably know, about 9½ years ago I made a bet with a certain Oracle, in Omaha, that pitted the performance of a group of five hedge fund of funds against the S&P 500. In this year’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Warren wrote extensively about his views. You can find that letter at www.berkshirehathway.com/letters. Now I haven’t said a lot about the bet, although fairly often I’m asked how it came about, why I made the bet, what I really think about hedge funds and the market, and of course, who's winning. I thought long and hard about whether to share my views publicly, and had been leaning towards staying out of the limelight.  But my guest on Episode 2 of this podcast, André Perold, convinced me that I should share the many other investment lessons the public can learn from this exercise. I thought a podcast would be a perfect venue to discuss my thoughts, so I asked my friend Patrick O’Shaughnessy to discuss the bet with me, and that conversation follows. Before we dive in, I thought it might help to let you know where to find answers to some of those common questions I’m asked. For starters, Carol Loomis, the legendary and recently retired Fortune columnist, wrote a wonderful piece called “Buffett’s Big Bet” back in 2008 that described in detail how the bet came to pass.  You can find her piece at www.capitalallocatorspodcast.com/bet. On that same page, you can find links to some of my written thoughts – both at the time of the bet’s inception and two years ago. Next week, I’ll add another link with some concluding thoughts.   For more episodes go to CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/Podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Tom Lenehan is the Deputy Chief Investment Officer of The Rockefeller University, where he helps lead the management of the University’s $2B endowment.  Rockefeller University is a unique duck – with a focused mission of improving the understanding of life for the benefit of humanity.  Founded in 1901, it was the first institution in the country devoted exclusively to biomedical research. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Brett Barth is a founder and the CIO of BBR Partners. BBR manages north of $12.5B on behalf of 125 families in its multi-family office. In this episode, we start talking about raising twins, a family issue close to both of our hearts. From there we learn about how Brett came to form BBR. We spend a lot of time going into depth on his firm’s asset allocation process and on the decision-making process of manager selection.  Along the way we touch on inefficiencies in Asia in the early days and in music royalties today.  Brett offers nuggets of practical substance for allocators of all types – from financial advisors to large institutional managers. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides