Capital Allocators

How the World’s Elite Money Managers Lead and Invest

By: Ted Seides

Narrated by: Ted Seides

Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

The chief endowment officers at (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, data analysis, 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.

©2021 Harriman House (P)2021 Harriman House

Great blend of insight, humor, and unique perspectives

Ted is a masterful interviewer and moderator and I loved the fact that he narrated his own audio book. For much of it, I felt like a fly on the wall of some really interesting discussions. Not only was it an entertaining “listen,” but also there were many nuggets of actionable feedback for asset managers trying to figure out how to navigate the increasingly competitive institutional investing landscape. Bravo!

Filled with wisdom

I don’t think I’m the specific target audience for this book, but I still really enjoyed it. I’ve only been investing for a few months, but I’m trying to soak up as mutch knowledge and wisdom as I can. I hadn’t heard of Ted Seides or his podcast before, but I saw some authors and others I respect sharing the launch of this new book, so I decided to pick it up. Ted has interviewed so many money managers that he’s seen and learned about a lot of successes and failures, and that’s what he put together in this book. The chapters are short (not a bad thing) and cover a variety of topics like investment strategy, technology, and managing risk and uncertainty. These chapters as well as the one with a bunch of rapid fire nuggets of wisdom were my favorites, but as an avid reader, I really appreciate how Seides ends each chapter with book suggestions. Some of the other chapters definitely went over my head, but as I continue to learn about investing and the markets, I’ll be sure to revisit this book because it provides so much value.