Ted Seides
Founder and Host, Capital Allocators. On 1 show, 578 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
hostinvestorfounderauthorexecutive@tseides ↗LinkedIn ↗capitalallocators.com ↗
Ted Seides is the founder and host of the Capital Allocators podcast and author of investment books including Capital Allocators and Private Equity Deals. Previously, he worked at the Yale Investments Office and co-founded Protégé Partners.
1shows
578appearances
339statements
51resolved
40supported
2contradicted
78%fully supported
19said about them ↓ Everything Ted Seides said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Seides: Believed Buffett was 'the patsy' for picking the S&P 500
“I thought Warren was the patsy at the poker table, because he threw out the S&P as the index. I thought that was the wrong index to be picking, and it was something that was going to be an easy hurdle to overcome.”
Seides: Many Private Equity Firms Have Already Raised Their Last Fund
“There are a lot of private equity firms out there today who don't realize they've already raised their last fund.”
NAV Loan Dividend Recaps Are a Gimmick to Juice IRR
“The dividend recap of a private equity portfolio seems like a gimmick to juice distributions and IRR so the GP can ask for a commitment to its next fund. In fact, NAV lenders are pitching this concept to GPs as part of the value proposition for accepting a loa…”
NAV Loans Signal the End of the Private Equity Boom
“NAV loans strike me as a canary in the coal mine signaling the end of the private equity boom.”
NAV Loans Resemble Pre-2008 Subprime AAA CDO Tranches
“In many ways, NAV loans resembled the AAA tranches of subprime CDOs 15 years ago.”
Swensen: Private Equity Fee Burden Almost Guarantees Disappointing Returns
“He said, while illiquid markets provide a much greater range of mispriced assets, private investors fare little better than their marketable security counterparts, as the extraordinary fee burden typical of private equity funds almost guarantees delivery of di…”
Seides: Buyouts underperform public equities after risk and illiquidity adjustments
“He said, in aggregate, buyout investments failed to match public market alternatives. After adjusting for the higher level of risk and the greater degree of illiquidity in buyout transactions, publicly traded equity securities gain a clear advantage.”
Seides: Aggregate venture capital returns fail to compensate for risk
“Over reasonably long periods of time, aggregate venture returns more or less match marketable equity returns, indicating the providers of capital fail to receive compensation for the substantial risk inherent in startup investing.”
Seides: Warren Buffett won 10-year wager with a questionable decision process
“So I would say he won with the decision process that was questionable. We lost with a decision process that looked pretty good.”
Seides: Immediate push to back new diverse-owned funds is structurally misguided
“A lot of the response that I've seen from the people I talked to is we're going to go invest in a diverse manager, a diverse owned manager and my contention all along is that's incredibly misguided because the structure of the industry today was created based …”
Seides: SPAC Sponsor Equity Offers Best Risk-Reward Since Subprime Short
“The sponsor equity in a SPAC is the best risk reward available in the markets anywhere that I've seen since the subprime short.”
Seides: Warren Buffett lacked a robust thesis for their 2008 index bet
“So he didn't have a robust thesis. He was just plying it, you know, to hope to make the point that fees, you know, in hedge fund world are expensive.”
Seides: Would make the 10-year Buffett bet again based on favorable odds
“I would make the bet again, over and over and over again, enough times so that the odds played out.”
Seides: Private Equity Exit Recovery Is Two to Four Years Away
“I continue to think this takes several years. Maybe it's two, three, four years away. It's a question of how long does it take for that bid-ask spread to narrow?”
Seides: Sovereign and Private Wealth Capital Exclusively Benefits Mega-Funds
“The private wealth channel is a whole different distribution mechanism. What those two things have in common is they benefit the largest firms. They don't benefit the middle market player. So the middle market, you have contraction, and then you have expansion…”
Seides: Private Credit Structures Prevent a Bank-Like Systemic Calamity
“I do not think there's going to be some calamity. The structure that the asset managers are using is just much better than what the banks used to use. You know, borrow short, lend long. So these are very long dated structures, which is great. You can work thro…”
Seides: Massive Inflows Will Compress Private Credit Returns to Roughly 6%
“Where I think there is a challenge is when all this money comes in, the one thing it does for sure is compress spreads. I don't think the people buying in the wealth channel have the right understanding of what returns they should expect. There was a pocket of…”
Seides: Venture Capital Has Structurally Shifted Toward Remaining Private Forever
“The one interesting aspect of venture, structurally, is to the extent private equity is private for longer, venture feels like it's private forever.”
Seides: Unlocked Private Market Capital Will Flow Back Into Public Equities
“The biggest impact of that over the next couple of years is that when private markets unlock for liquidity, the first wave of that money from the institutional market is going to go back to the public markets. It's not going to get recycled in the private mark…”
Seides: Wealth investors in mega PE funds will likely get median returns
“I think that's most of what the wealth channel today is going to get. Median, maybe median plus. Maybe you can get to top quartile with some of these funds, but at 20, twenty-five billion dollar private equity funds, it's hard to do that”
Seides: Median private equity has a 40% chance of outperforming the S&P
“I wrote in this piece that I think the chances of private equity average, so the median private equity outperforming S&P's 40%.”
Seides: Allocating to private equity is now mostly about diversification, not alpha
“I think most of it today is about diversification. It used to be the case that you only participated in these alt strategies for alpha.”
Seides: Public markets alone no longer provide a globally diversified portfolio
“It's not clear that you can get the globally diversified portfolio of assets just in the public markets the way you definitely could 25 years ago.”
The other half of the tape: Ted Seides's own voice is left out of every number here. 19 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Statements about Ted Seides, by other people (19)
Capital Group compensates portfolio managers based on returns, not asset volume
“If our investment results are the same and our tenure at Capital Group's the same, our bonus is the same. Meaning we don't incentivize a money grab to manage as many assets as you can.”
Aitken: Fundamental investors account for only 5-10% of listed turnover
“And yet the facts are that if you and I, Ted, decide we're going to buy some listed asset today, well, we're going to be five to 10% of the turnover. Because the way the world works today is that the flow is dominated by the machines, and that's not a criticis…”
Housel: Sustaining average returns over long periods beats maximizing single-year returns
“What actually matters in investing is not what the highest returns that you can earn are in any given year. It's what returns that you can sustain for the longest period of time. And I think the dirtiest secret in investing is that average returns sustained fo…”
Prosek: Firm Culture Does Not Need Uniqueness, Only Unique Packaging
“No, I think it has to be uniquely packaged.”
Duke: Decision groups improve judgment by policing mutual biases
“So if we make a pact between the two of us, That you're going to watch my bias, and I'm going to watch your bias, and now we can form kind of a decision group together where we make rules about what the interaction is supposed to be. You can set me straight. I…”
Stutman: Frame feedback as recommendations to drastically reduce employee defensiveness
“What I tell leaders all the time, Ted, is they need to get out of the feedback business and get in the recommendation and suggestion business. They're going to be able to give a lot more feedback a lot more often with a lot less resistance and defensiveness ju…”
Stutman: Embed feedback inside 'how' questions to completely bypass defensiveness
“A how question, if it's done and carries feedback, actually embeds the feedback inside the question. When I say to you, Ted, how are you going to upgrade the talent on your team? The feedback is that your team talent needs to be upgraded. But I don't say that.…”
Spielman: Six to eight reports are optimal; check-ins need five minutes
“The six to eight is the sweet spot, but let's just even take the 20. I still think that that person can meet with his folks once a week, and it doesn't have to be an hour conversation. It could be Knocking on the door, popping by. Say, Ted, what do you got goi…”
O'Leary: Getting managers to reveal concealed truths is 90% of diligence
“I think holding people's feet to the fire on tough stuff, like the conversation around the succession planning, those conversations where this is a safe venue for us to talk about hard things and really having managers understand that, and then feeling empower…”
Leaving money on the table generates repeat deals and superior long-term returns
“If I can sell you this for one dollar, yeah, I can sell it to you for one 40 because I have the hammer and I have the leverage, but that'll be the last deal that I ever did with Ted, right? But if I can sell you this for nine bucks, when you know it's worth 10…”
Scouting and investing are both processes of elimination, not discovery
“So everything about scouting, just like I'm sure about stock investment, is about elimination, not finding. Everything's about elimination.”
Duke: Decision-makers must form accountability groups because others spot their biases better
“Other people are actually pretty good at spotting our biases. So in the same way that you sort of naturally recruit people into the process with you when you express things probabilistically, why not do that intentionally and just purposely recruit people into…”
Duke: Framing decisions as bets transforms dissenting information into helpful calibration
“What a bet does is it shifts your idea of what winning means. So winning is now actually having the most accurate representation in the world. And that really comes through the accountability that this idea of betting is, because when you challenged your daugh…”
O'Shaughnessy: Zero fund-of-funds fees would not have won the Buffett bet
“If the fund to fund fees had been zero, you still would have lost.”
Moodgal: IADEI comprises 800 global institutions screening minority managers quarterly
“And on the back of that was born IADEI, Institutional Allocators for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, which today has 800 institutions across the world that quarterly sifts through minority owned organizations. Minority led organizations in a certain asset cla…”
Adventur.es closed its last two acquisitions without senior debt
“The last two deals we've done with no senior lender involved. We've done all equity with a combination of equity and seller debt.”
Beshore: Adventur.es conducts deep diligence on about 15% of inbound deals
“In terms of real work, I would say probably 15% of the businesses that come through, we take a really close look at.”
Carnegie maintains roughly 120 external manager relationships across eight asset classes
“We have too many relationships, but we have about a 120. Roughly the way we look at it, eight asset classes. It's roughly 10 or so in each asset.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Ted's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | Founder and Host, Capital Allocatorshost | 578 | 339 | 78% 40/51 | full record on Capital Allocators → |