Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry

Latest Episodes:

Gregory Zuckerman – Decoding Renaissance Medallion (Capital Allocators, EP.119) Jan 06, 2020

Show notes

Gregory Zuckerman is a special writer at the Wall Street Journal and the author of five books, including his most recent, The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution. Greg joined the Journal in 1996 and writes about big financial trades, firms, and personalities. He's a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb award, the highest honor in business journalism, and his work has included breaking the stories of the discord between Bill Gross and PIMCO, the London Whale trade, subprime mortgage collapse, and meltdown of hedge fund Amaranth in 2007. Our conversation starts with Greg's path to journalism, touches on the aftermath of his book The Greatest Trade Ever about John Paulson and the subprime meltdown. We then turn to his recent tome on Jim Simons and Renaissance, including the formation and evolution of the Medallion fund, precarious moments in its history, the human element of a quant shop, differences between Renaissance and other quant competitors, leadership, impacting the world with vast wealth, and why Renaissance has been so special.

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The Best of 2019 (Capital Allocators, EP.118) Dec 30, 2019

Show notes

Our annual rundown of the most downloaded shows of 2019. Wishing you a new year filled with wealth, health, and joy.

Dr. Sarel Vorster – Conducting Brain Surgery (Capital Allocators, EP.117) Dec 23, 2019

Show notes

Dr. Sarel Vorster is a practicing neuro surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, where he performs procedures on the brain and spinal cord. Sarel has a cross-disciplinary interest in the effect of stress and risk on cognition and decision-making. He attended Yale to study for an MBA at the ripe age of 50 to pursue that interest.

Our conversation covers the process of conducting surgery, offering an thorough example in a high stakes field. We discuss communicating with patients, making the decision to operate, preparing, using checklists, assessing outcomes, managing risk in a life or death situation, managing a team, improving skills, coping with stress, and seeing similarities between surgery and finance.

Neal Triplett and Kim Lew – Issues of Management at Duke and Carnegie (Capital Allocators, EP.116) Dec 16, 2019

Show notes

Neal Triplett is the CIO of DUMAC, the organization that oversees Duke University's $19 billion endowment, and Kim Lew is the CIO of the Carnegie Corporation, where she manages the $3.5 billion foundation created by Andrew Carnegie. A few weeks ago, Institutional Investor named Kim its CIO of the Year. She also appeared on the show last year in Episode 52, which is replayed after this one on the feed. I had the chance to interview Neal and Kim at the 2019 TIFF Annual Investment Forum. Neal and Kim are Board members of TIFF, a non-profit organization founded in 1991 as The Investment Fund for Foundations, that today manages $7.5 billion on behalf of only other non-profit pools of capital.

Our conversation covers a number of topics relating to Neal and Kim's respective day jobs, including the evolving of their investment approach, integrating macroeconomic risk, defining their own competitive advantage, managing a team, countering behavioral biases, using data in manager evaluation, and tackling the most challenging part of their jobs.

Kip McDaniel – How to Get an Allocator's Attention (Capital Allocators, EP.115) Dec 09, 2019

Show notes

Kip McDaniel is the Chief Content Officer and Editor-in-Chief at Institutional Investor. In the early days of Capital Allocators, Kip joined me to share his insights about the CIOs he covers as a journalist. You can find that show in the feed right after this one.

This time, we got together to talk about II's business and the lessons he's learned in producing content for allocators. We cover the four key characteristics of a well-written story, the increasing use of PR firms by asset managers, and the essential importance and tricks of the trade of effectively packaging content. Kip stays true to his roots as a storyteller and offers a few great ones here again.

On the intro, I recorded Please enjoy twice - use the second one (Please enjoy my second conversation with Kip McDaniel)

[REPLAY] Kip McDaniel – CIO Whisperer (Capital Allocators, EP.20) Dec 09, 2019

Show notes

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.

Anne Martin - Pulling the Oars as CIO of Wesleyan University (Capital Allocators, EP.114) Dec 02, 2019

Show notes

Anne Martin is the Chief Investment Officer for Wesleyan University, where she manages the school's $1 billion endowment. Anne's career started in the tech world and shifted to endowment management at Yale's famed investments office. She took over at Wesleyan a decade ago, as one of a handful of Yale Investment alumns serving other institutions.

Our conversation covers Anne's path from competitive rowing to the tech world and a fortuitous connection with David Swensen. We cover the transferable skills from private equity to endowment management, key lessons learned at Yale, experience taking on a "start-up" at Wesleyan, application of knowledge to a smaller pool of capital, development of a team and a portfolio, perspectives on natural resources and venture capital, and Wesleyan's competitive advantage as an allocator.

Drew Dickson – Blending Behavior and Fundamentals at Albert Bridge Capital (First Meeting, EP.13) Nov 25, 2019

Show notes

Drew Dickson is the founder of Albert Bridge Capital, and CIO of the Alpha Europe funds, where he manages $350 million in European equities.

Our conversation covers Drew's early career across the Chicago school, Fidelity and Och-Ziff, and his perch in Europe. We then go through Albert Bridge's investment process, portfolio construction, assessment of risk-reward, and client communication through blogging and tweeting. All told, Drew offers a deep dive on how to blend fundamental research and behavioral finance in taking on the stock market.

Steve Rattner – Overseeing Michael Bloomberg's Family Office (Capital Allocators, EP.113) Nov 18, 2019

Show notes

Steve Rattner is the Chairman and CEO of Willett Advisors, which invests former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's personal and philanthropic assets. Steve's career has ranged from a journalist for the New York Times to investment banking at Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Lazard Freres, to founding private equity firm Quadrangle Group, and lastly to serving in the Obama Administration as head of the successful restructure of the automobile industry after the financial crisis. He returned to oversee Willett Advisors after his work in the government.

Our conversations starts with a quick tour through each of Steve's careers, and then turns to his work investing the assets of Michael Bloomberg's family office, including selecting an investment model, building a team of specialists, using internal management to supplement external managers, and thinking through private equity, hedge funds, public equity, and the manager selection process. We close with Steve's perspectives on China and his ongoing engagement in politics.

Jason Karp – From Hedge Funds to Health and Wellness at HumanCo (First Meeting, EP.12) Nov 11, 2019

Show notes

Jason Karp is the Founder and CEO of HumanCo, a mission-driven, disruptive holding company focused on investing in healthier living. Before diving into this endeavor, Jason had a very successful twenty-year career in the hedge fund industry, culminating in a six-year run as founder of Tourbillon Capital.

Our conversation covers Jason's career in hedge funds across quant research, quantamental investing, and entrepreneurship. Along the way, we touch on lessons derived from checklists, poker, and chess, and discuss Jason's sobering take on the hedge fund industry today.

We then turn to changes in his life, including moving from NYC to Austin and focusing on his lifelong passion for health and wellness. We discuss Jason's autoimmune disease, testing the limits of human performance, and the sickness that led to the creation of Hu Kitchen with his wife and brother-in-law.

Lastly, we discuss the formation of HumanCo, a holding company investing in food and consumables that create clean solutions to common problems using only the highest quality ingredients. We cover the attractive attributes of consumable businesses, use of data and AI to source companies and improve inventory management, efficiency of a holding company structure, incubating companies, leveraging data science, and an example in the cannabis space to work on the controversy surrounding vaporization.

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