How the world’s elite money managers lead and invest

By Ted Seides

The chief investment officers (CIOs) at endowments, foundations, family offices, pension funds, and sovereign wealth funds are the leaders in the world of finance. They marshal trillions of dollars on behalf of their institutions and influence how capital flows throughout the world.

But these elite investors live outside of the public eye. Across the entire investment industry, few participants understand how these holders of the keys to the kingdom allocate their time and their capital.

What’s more, there is no formal training for how to do their work.

So how do these influential leaders practice their craft? What skills do they require? What frameworks do they employ? How do they make investment decisions on everything from hiring managers to portfolio construction?

For the first time, CAPITAL ALLOCATORS lifts the lid on this opaque corner of the investment landscape.

Drawing on interviews from the first 150 episodes of the Capital Allocators podcast, Ted Seides presents the best of the knowledge, practical insights, and advice of the world’s top professional investors.

These insights include:

– The best practices for interviewing, decision-making, negotiations, leadership, and management.

– Investment frameworks across governance, strategy, process, technological innovation, and uncertainty.

– The wisest and most impactful quotes from guests on the Capital Allocators podcast.

Learn from the likes of the CIOs at the endowments of Princeton and Notre Dame, family offices of Michael Bloomberg and George Soros, pension funds from the State of Florida, CalSTRS, and Canadian CDPQ, sovereign wealth funds of New Zealand and Australia, and many more.

CAPITAL ALLOCATORS is the essential new reference manual for current and aspiring CIOs, the money managers that work with them, and everyone allocating a pool of capital.

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 David’s tutelage and departed to attend Harvard Business School shortly before David wrote the bible in the industry, Pioneering Portfolio Management.

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. Barron’s, Business Insider, and Value Walk 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 Institute’s Enterprising Investor and guest publications for the late Peter L. Bernstein’s Economics and Portfolio Strategy.