Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry

Michael Lombardi is a thirty-year veteran of professional football, including as a General Manager and a three-time Super Bowl winning executive.  He is the author of the fantastic recently released book Gridiron Genius, A Master Class in Winning Championships and Building Dynasties in the NFL . The book is a tour de force of applied leadership through his learnings working alongside football grea...

Last week, the senseless and tragic events at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh left me and many others asking questions about our world today. This one hit a little closer to home for me than the many other equally terrible events that have occurred because my mother grew up in Squirrel Hill. Our family is a generation removed and not closely connected to the town anymore, but my friends A...

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 in...

Karl Scheer is the Chief Investment Officer of the University of Cincinnati's billion-dollar endowment.  Before taking the helm at Cincinnati in 2011, he co-ran a family office and spent eight years in the venture capital industry. Our conversation covers Karl's background, running a family office in the teeth of the Global Financial Crisis, high-functioning governance, avoiding the worst managers...

Andrew Tsai is the Chief Investment Officer of Chalkstream Capital Group, which he founded in 2003 to manage the assets of quant guru Peter Muller.  Andrew's fascinating background started on the Lehman arbitrage desk in the early 1990s, after which he formed a quantitative hedge fund in 1997, built a dot.com logistics business in 1999, and led the turnaround of a private equity-backed business th...

Michael Schwimer is the CEO of Big League Advance, a company that makes investments in Minor League baseball players in exchange for an agreed-upon percentage of their future earnings.  Before founding BLA, Michael was a professional baseball player, working his way through the minors and reaching the majors as a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies.  A shoulder injury left him pondering what to...

Michael Batnick is the Director of Research at Ritholz Wealth Management, author of the Irrelevant Investor blog , co-host of the Animal Spirits podcast , and recently, author of his first book, Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments . Our conversation starts with Michael's atypical career path, his arrival at Ritholz, and his blog. We then turn to stories from his book about...

After getting some great feedback from the replay of my conversation with Scott Malpass, I am going to repeat some gems from the past every few months. This week I picked out my conversation with Andy Golden, the venerable head of Princeton's 24 billion dollar endowment. It's another master class in endowment management from a seasoned veteran. Andy Golden is the President of Princeton University'...

Raff Arndt is the Chief Investment Officer of Australia's AUZ$145 billion Sovereign Wealth Fund, the Future Fund.  He trained as an engineer and dove into infrastructure policy at the beginning of Australia's privatizations in the late 1990s. After investing in the space for six year, he joined the Future Fund in 2008 to head the infrastructure team. Six years later, Raff became CIO. Our conversat...

Professor Stephen McKeon spent six years out of college working in finance for venture-backed startups before returning to graduate school and earning his PhD in finance in 2011. Blending his interest and experience, Steve focuses his research on corporate finance, M&A, security issuance, and most recently, crypto assets, where he has become a leading academic authority in the nascent area. Our co...

Both times I was interviewed (by  Khe Hy  and Patrick O'Shaughnessy ) and shared those conversations on Capital Allocators, I made reference to a special experience I've participated in for the last five years called the Hero's Journey. The weeklong journey in the mountains of West Virginia provides a setting and platform for each participant to access their best self. Michael Mervosh is the deepl...

Sarah Williamson is the CEO of FCLTGlobal, a non-profit consortium of large asset managers, allocators, and corporations dedicated to encouraging long-term behavior in business and investment decision-making. FCLTGlobal conducts research, convenes business leaders, develops actionable tools, and generates broad awareness of ways in which a longer-term focus can increase innovation, economic growth...

Kristian Fok is the Chief Investment Officer of Australia's A46B ($35B USD) Construction & Building Industry Superannuation Fund, or CBUS. Prior to joining CBUS in 2012, Kristian spent 14 years consulting to Australian Super Funds at Frontier Advisors.  Australia's Superannuation program mandates that employers contribute 9.5% of its employee salaries into a Super Fund, which is owned by the emplo...

Josh Wolfe is the co-founder of Lux Capital, a $1.5 billion venture capital firm formed to support scientists and entrepreneurs who pursue counter-conventional solutions to the most vexing puzzles of our time. Josh's innovative thought process across his activities offers frameworks and insights applicable across the spectrum of investing. Our conversation covers Josh's early passion for science a...

Ben Reiter is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated and the author of Astroball:  The New Way to Win It All .  He joined SI in 2004 a few years out of college and has written for them ever since. In 2014 Ben wrote a cover story for SI entitled YOUR 2017 WORLD SERIES CHAMPS featuring the then sorry Astros who were the laughingstock of baseball at the time.  Three years later, his prediction came t...

Roz Hewsenian is the Chief Investment Officer of the $6 billion Helmsley Charitable Trust. Prior to joining Helmsley in 2010, Roz had a storied career in the industry, highlighted by her two decades of work as the consultant to CalPERS while at Wilshire Associates.  Our conversation tracks Roz's career, including lessons from teaching children, the most important rule of management, successful inv...

Investment luminary Charley Ellis is the founder of Greenwich Associates, author of 16 books, and one of the most sought-after industry advisors worldwide.  He also believes deeply in the paradox of skill and his latest book, The Index Revolution: Why Investors Should Join It Now , presents a compelling case for indexing for most investors.. Charley was an early guest on the show and we reconvened...

Manny Friedman is the CEO of EJF Capital, a firm he co-founded in 2005 that manages $9 billion with a focus on the financial services industry. Manny started EJF after his retirement from Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group, Inc., a company he co-founded in 1989 and served as Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer.  Our conversation looks back at Manny's lifelong passion for investing, the global...

This replay is the one of the most downloaded shows from last year, and one that new listeners may have missed.  Regular listeners no doubt might pick up a new insight listening again. Scott Malpass is the esteemed Vice President and CIO of Notre Dame University, where he oversees the school's $12 billion endowment. Scott earned his B.A. and M.B.A. degrees at Notre Dame, and returned to South Bend...

The name Anthony Scaramucci currently has 55% name recognition in the U.S. according to Politico. Anthony has been an entrepreneur in the hedge fund industry for 23 years, growing to prominence within the industry through his oversight of fund of funds Skybridge Capital, creation of the popular SALT conference, regular television appearances, and rejuvenation of the iconic television show Wall Str...

Peter Troob is the co-Founder and CIO of Troob Capital Management, an opportunistic investor and family office with particular expertise in distressed situations. Prior to starting TCM in 2002, Peter spent six years focusing on distressed debt investing at Contrarian Capital and Everest Capital.  He started his career as an investment banker, and after his tenure in self-proclaimed purgatory, he c...

Australian James Aitken is the Founder and Managing Partner of Aitken Advisors, a one-man macroeconomic consultancy based in Wimbledon, England that works with approximately one hundred of the most influential pools of capital in the world. James started his career in 1992 as a foreign exchange trader, moved to London in May 1999, and in March 2002 joined the infamous AIG Financial Products team i...

Brian Portnoy Brian is currently the Director of Investment Education at $100B investment solutions provider Virtus Investment Partners, where he strives to simplify the complex world of money in an effort to help investors make better decisions and lead a joyful life. For the past two decades, he has held senior investment, research, and strategy roles in the hedge fund and mutual fund industries...

Tom Lydon is one of the leading experts in the ETF and mutual fund industries. He is the founder and CEO of ETF Trends, a business he created in 2004 whose website,  etftrends.com , is filled with news, analysis, and webcasts about the world of ETFs. Before creating ETF Trends, Tom ran a financial advisory and publication business that followed the mutual fund industry. Our conversation covers the...

Tali Sharot is a leading expert on human decision-making, optimism and emotion. A neuroscientist by trade, Tali combines research in psychology, behavioral economics and neuroscience to reveal the forces that shape our decisions, beliefs and inaccurate expectations of the future. She is currently a visiting professor at MIT, and is also an associate professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Universit...