Ted Seides - Capital Allocators

Capital Allocators

How the worlds elite money managers lead and invest

Ted Seides

Contents

For the virtuous circle of guests and listeners on the Capital Allocators podcast

And especially for my wife Vanessa, whose enthusiastic support from the front row seat lights up the stage

Praise for Capital Allocators

Through his podcast, Ted has talked with the best investment minds in the world. Capital Allocators assembles this collective wisdom into an incredible guidebook for anyone who wants to be truly thoughtful about long-term investing.

Raphael Arndt, CEO, Australia Future Fund

Capital Allocators is jam-packed with actionable advice from the worlds leading investment experts on topics ranging from interviewing managers to decision-making. Ted distills the wisdom of his impressive array of podcast guests into a compendium that deserves highlighting on every page. Take it from me, choosing to read Capital Allocators is a good decision.

Annie Duke, former professional poker player, best-selling author, and decision strategist

Ted Seides has achieved a remarkable book that draws on the expertise and experience of a broad cross-section of industry leaders. He expertly distills interviews that he conducted directly into a book that seamlessly covers executive, leadership and investment skills and lessons. Capital Allocators is a well-crafted and informative read for existing and prospective investment professionals as well as for those who work with the investment industry in any capacity.

Gregory J. Fleming, President & CEO, Rockefeller Capital Management

A fantastically broad, deep guide to the asset allocators world. I wish it had been written 25 years ago. The quotations in it are alone worth the price. You can quote me on that.

Andrew Golden, CIO, Princeton University Investment Management Company (PRINCO)

Ted understands the nuance of investment management better than anyone I know, because hes talked to more investors than anyone I know. Its been said that books dont change minds; sentences do. There are so many good lines in this book its hard to put down.

Morgan Housel, Partner at Collaborative Fund and best-selling author

Unlike many invest like the best books, Capital Allocators does not pretend there is some magical trick that will turn anyone into an investing genius. Instead, Ted Seides details how great investors do the hard work that leads to better outcomes. You wont get rich quick reading this book, but if you take the time to really understand the lessons it teaches, you will be a better, more thoughtful investor.

Ben Inker, Head of Asset Allocation, GMO

Capital Allocators is an excellent collection of toolkits and frameworks for investing that reflect both the institutions and the different styles of their CIOs. Capital Allocators is a starting manual for all the things aspiring CIOs need to consider as they develop their style and strategic vision. Importantly, Ted acknowledges that there are many ways to be a successful CIO and that CIOs can learn from each other in that diversity of viewpoints.

Ana Marshall, CIO, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

The world of institutional investing needed Teds voice it just didnt know it yet. With this book, and with his unparalleled podcast, Ted has brought a whole hidden world to a broader audience, and anyone interested in how the worlds most prominent investors move money is better for it.

Kip McDaniel, Editor-in-Chief, Institutional Investor

Ted has made the world of capital allocation approachable for everyone across hundreds of conversations. Now hes further distilled the lessons into a package that will make any investor better at what they do. Required reading.

Patrick OShaughnessy, CEO, OShaughnessy Asset Management

This book boils down the most interesting insights and important lessons from the biggest and most powerful investors on earth the ones that literally put the capital in capitalism. It offers a glimpse into the thinking of capital allocators in a coherent and digestible format. It should be required reading for anybody interested in investing and certainly will be for my students!

Ashby H. B. Monk, PhD, Executive Director, Global Projects Center, Stanford University

Page by page, Ted Seides Capital Allocators brings us tools, frameworks and a rich collection of wisdom captured from his professional network. Teds book allows us to discover how successful CIOs incorporate various aspects of the investment process and lessons learned in navigating financial markets. This book should be mandatory for any investment teams aspiring to evolve and win.

Mario Therrien, Head of Investment Funds and External Management, Caisse de dpt et placement du Qubec

I have learned something from every podcast, and this book pulls them all together. There is no one right way to be a CIO, we are all unique, but there are still lessons that we can learn from one another and value that comes from understanding the nuances among us. Thank you, Ted, for providing a forum for CIOs to share ideas and for writing this great collection of highlights.

James Williams, CIO, J. Paul Getty Trust

About the Author

Ted Seides, CFA has spent 25 years as an institutional investor, allocating money to managers. He started in 1992 at the Yale University Investments Office, seven years after David Swensen arrived at Yale. Ted spent five years learning under Davids tutelage and departed to attend Harvard Business School shortly before David wrote the bible in the industry, Pioneering Portfolio Management .

Ted spent a summer job and two years after business school investing directly at three of Yales managers, hedge fund Brahman Capital, and private equity firms Stonebridge Partners and J.H. Whitney & Company. He learned that life inside the sausage factory is rarely as clean as the final product appears.

He returned to investing through managers in 2002, co-founding and serving as President and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Protg Partners. Protg was a leading multibillion-dollar alternative investment firm that invested in and seeded small hedge funds. In 2010, Larry Kochard and Cathleen Rittereiser profiled Ted in the book Top Hedge Fund Investors , and in 2016 Ted authored So You Want to Start a Hedge Fund: Lessons for Managers and Allocators to share lessons from his experience.

On a slow day in 2007, Ted had the bright idea to challenge a statement made by Warren Buffett about the superiority of index funds over hedge funds. With aspirations to demonstrate the value of hedge funds to institutional portfolios, he initiated a charitable wager with Warren that pitted the 10-year performance of the S&P 500 against a selection of five hedge fund of funds from 20082017. Protg Partners lost the bet, and Ted still wonders about the probability distribution of outcomes and the quality of his decision process.

In 2017, Ted launched the Capital Allocators podcast, a series of interviews with leading Chief Investment Officers. The show reached four million downloads in August 2020. Barrons , Business Insider , ValueWalk , and Forbes each named it among the top investing podcasts. He also advises asset managers and allocators across business strategy, audio content, and investing.

Ted writes opinion pieces for Institutional Investor , wrote a blog for the CFA Institutes Enterprising Investor and guest publications for the late Peter L. Bernsteins Economics and Portfolio Strategy .