Jul 9, 2018 · 1h 5m · capital-allocators
Anthony Scaramucci – It's Called a Mooch (Capital Allocators, EP.60)
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In this episode of Capital Allocators, host Ted Seides interviews SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci, exploring his career journey across alternative asset management, entrepreneurial resilience, leadership principles, and lessons learned from high-profile public setbacks.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Ted holds 16.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Ted as informed peer 2.8 Guest teaching 2.6 Guest disagreement 1.7 Ted pushing back 0.5
speaking balance: gold is Ted, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 6:18 Attacking media and political caricatures
Scaramucci forcefully rejects media narratives and algorithmic bots that attempt to reduce his thirty-year career down to an 11-day stint in the White House.
Hardest push from Ted ▶ 23:52 Ted challenges turnover versus relationship buildingTed directly presses Scaramucci on how SkyBridge can claim to be a long-term relationship-oriented allocator while actively running 35 to 40 percent annual portfolio turnover.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 27:40 Historical analysis of Wall Street public sentiment cyclesScaramucci delivers an in-depth historical breakdown tracing how public anti-Wall Street sentiment lasted 23 years from the 1929 crash until Prescott Bush's 1952 election, projecting a similar multi-decade pariah status following 2008.
Ted holds their own ▶ 25:39 Ted cites Scaramucci's Obama town hall confrontationTed demonstrates deep institutional knowledge of Scaramucci's public track record by bringing up his televised town hall exchange with President Obama over Wall Street being treated as a pinata.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Ted as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Ted pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Redefining the Narrative Beyond the White House Stint | 2 | 3 | 4 | 1 | Ted opens by asking Scaramucci to tell his story from the beginning. Scaramucci immediately commandeers the framing, aggressively pushing back against media narratives and robotic social media accounts that reduce his thirty-year career to an 11-day White House tenure. | |
| Founding Oscar Capital and the Lehman Brothers Collapse Lessons | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Scaramucci describes founding Oscar Capital and his experience holding Lehman Brothers stock, emphasizing that excessive conviction rather than ignorance is what damages investors. Ted acts as an engaged listener guiding the timeline. | |
| Launching SkyBridge and Surviving the 2008 Financial Crisis | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Ted references having run a competing manager seeding platform at the same time SkyBridge launched. Scaramucci recounts losing seeds in the 2008 crash, mortgaging his home, launching the SALT conference, and acquiring Citi's fund-of-funds unit. | |
| SkyBridge's Core Investment Philosophy and Portfolio Construction | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Ted asks Scaramucci to explain his investment philosophy. Scaramucci details SkyBridge's three pillars: concentrated manager bets, thematic top-down structuring, and dynamic portfolio turnover. | |
| Balancing Relationship Management and Portfolio Turnover | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | Ted challenges Scaramucci on how he reconciles high portfolio turnover with being heavily relationship-driven. Scaramucci defends his approach, detailing multi-year manager durations and reframing his infamous Obama town hall confrontation about Wall Street being treated like a pinata. | |
| The Macro Regime and the Outlook for Hedge Funds | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Scaramucci explains how global quantitative easing distorted long/short fundamental equity performance over the prior decade. He asserts that rate normalization under Powell will mark a revival for active micro security selection. | |
| Life Lessons on Firing, Media Scrutiny, and Stoicism | 2 | 3 | 3 | 0 | Scaramucci discusses the emotional discipline required after getting fired publicly, recounting how he leaned into self-deprecation on late-night television and eliminated words like 'ought' and 'should' from his vocabulary. | |
| Political Battles, the Failed CFIUS Sale, and Returning to SkyBridge | 2 | 3 | 2 | 0 | Scaramucci details the political infighting that stalled his appointment, the CFIUS regulatory block on selling SkyBridge to a Chinese buyer, and his realization that returning to manage SkyBridge was ultimately advantageous. | |
| Sponsor: Ridgeline AI-Native Investment Technology | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Following a mid-roll sponsor break, Ted brings up Scaramucci's book 'Goodbye Gordon Gekko.' Scaramucci recounts his blue-collar roots and humorously describes showing up to his first Goldman Sachs interview in 100 percent polyester. | |
| Leadership Principles: Delegation, Esprit de Corps, and Shared Credit | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Ted asks about Scaramucci's leadership philosophy across his 60-person firm. Scaramucci outlines his reliance on delegation, shared credit inspired by Ronald Reagan, and enforcing collective pronouns over selfish ones. | |
| Thoughtful Hiring, Humane Firing, and Rejecting Greed | 3 | 3 | 2 | 0 | Scaramucci discusses staffing philosophy, advising slow hiring, swift and humane firing with generous severance, and fiercely warns hedge fund allocators against becoming arrogant and greedy pariahs. | |
| Post-White House Gratitude, Networking, and Coping with Fame | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Scaramucci describes how surviving intense public scrutiny humbled him and grounded his perspective on fame, comparing his support network to George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life. |
Statements from this episode (27)
Scaramucci: Jason Miller, not me, is the shortest-serving communications director
“And so now, I'm known as the former communications director for Trump, shortest serving communications director, but I'm actually not, because Jason Miller is the shortest serving communications director. He served for one day.”
Scaramucci: Fired from Goldman Sachs real estate group after 18 months
“My first day on the job was August 1419 89, I got fired from the job on February first, 1991, so I was only there for 18 months.”
Scaramucci: Rehired at Goldman Sachs in 1991 as interdepartmental transfer
“And on March 2819 91, I got rehired at Goldman Sachs. And now the best part of this story Is the personnel director for the division called me and said, hey, you know, you got really good news for you. You're never going to have to tell anybody you got fired. …”
Scaramucci: Dick Fuld gave SkyBridge $10M in balance sheet capital
“Dick Fould gives me ten million dollars of balance sheet capital put in my fund.”
Scaramucci: Unyielding conviction, not ignorance, destroys investors
“It's not the stuff that you do not know that's going to hurt you in the world of investing. That's not what's going to hurt you. It's the stuff that you think you know with absolute clarity and absolute axiomatic fact, ok? It's your unstinting conviction and b…”
Scaramucci: If Lehman hadn't forced a stock sale, I'd have lost everything
“Every time in my career where I haven't done that, I've gotten blown out, except at that time, through the grace of God, I was forced out of the stock in 2005. I would have held that stock and lost all that money.”
Scaramucci: SkyBridge lost seeding investments in seven of eight managers in 2008
“And so we raised a three hundred and thirty million dollar fund. We seeded eight managers. One manager is still doing quite well, Westport Capital Partners, and we still own a piece of that firm on their great guys and they went on to win. But unfortunately, o…”
Scaramucci: SkyBridge had to redeem capital from Abdiel due to fund redemptions
“There's one guy, he runs a firm called Abdiel, Connor Morant, and we seeded him, and then unfortunately I had to pull my money from him because I was getting heavy redemptions.”
Scaramucci: I liquidated all personal assets to fund SkyBridge
“And so I liquidated, in addition to the mortgage I had on my house, I liquidated all of the assets that I had, and I took all of that money, and I put it into what ultimately became Skybridge's business today.”
Scaramucci: SkyBridge grew Citi fund of funds from $1.4B to $14B
“So that business was 1.4 billion dollars. We got it up to 14, and it's now about 10 and a half billion.”
Scaramucci: SkyBridge allocates roughly 65% of its portfolio to 8-10 managers
“Our top eight to 10 investments, our hedge fund managers that we give money to, are probably 65% of the portfolio.”
Scaramucci: SkyBridge maintains 35% to 40% portfolio turnover
“We have probably a 35 to 40% turnover on our portfolio as we're searching for the right recipe to generate that eight to nine percent return.”
Scaramucci: SkyBridge maintains three- to seven-year durations with managers
“Another thing is, even though we have this turnover, if you looked at our duration with managers, we're three to seven years, depending on the manager”
Scaramucci: SkyBridge increased its allocation to Dan Loeb over the past year
“We have more money with him today than we did a year ago, but a year ago we had way less money with him than we did three years ago”
Scaramucci: Wall Street is the essential arterial system of capitalism
“Wall Street is the arterial structure of the capitalist system. It's literally the design of where capital can flow. You want to go into fracking, you come to Wall Street, you raise money. You want to build a new search engine, your name is Google, you come to…”
Scaramucci: Wall Street will remain public pariahs for another 15 years
“To my Wall Street brethren, brothers and sisters that are listening to this podcast, I got bad news for you got about another 10 to 15 years to go, Before the cycle will swing back and you'll fall back into favor, but you're still going to be treated like pari…”
Scaramucci: Rising interest rates will trigger a hedge fund renaissance
“The macro trade of just being long, everything is going away. The micro trade of security analytics, hedge fund investing, looking for strategies that reduce volatility, or have some level of non-correlation will come back into vogue. And so, for me, I think t…”
Scaramucci: CFIUS blocked the SkyBridge sale on dubious national security grounds
“The Genworth deal just gets approved by CFIUS, but the Skybridge deal doesn't, and it's not approved for national security reasons, ok?”
Scaramucci: I objected to Italian stereotyping inside the Trump White House
“I didn't like all the Italian stereotyping that was going on inside the White House, by the way. That's one thing I totally disliked. I didn't think that was fair.”
Scaramucci: SkyBridge had almost no employee turnover over eight years
“So, we're 13 years old. We've had hardly any turnover the last eight years.”
Scaramucci: Delaying firing an employee is never the right decision
“Waiting to fire somebody has never been the right decision”
Scaramucci: The hedge fund industry is full of arrogant, selfish people
“There's a lot of rich, arrogant jerk-offs in the hedge fund industry. You personally don't need to be one. And I don't mean you, because you're actually not one, but I'm talking about your listeners. Don't be an arrogant, selfish hedge fund jerk-off.”
Scaramucci: I own 45% of SkyBridge Capital and control the vote
“I'm the, basically the majority shareholder, because I have 45% of the company, but I control the vote here, so, I mean, even if these guys didn't want me back, I could have voted myself back in, right?”
Scaramucci: Asset management behaves like a cyclical fashion business
“Well, my pet peeve is that a lot of people think we're in the investing business, but I sort of think we're in the fashion business, and so the skirts come up and down in our industry, so you have to be very, very careful about that”
Scaramucci: Countries that easily fire workers ultimately hire the most
“The country that can fire the most people will hire the most people, ok, and that's a little bit ironic these socialists don't understand that, but, If you can't fire anybody, like in France, then guess what? You're not going to hire anybody, because if you hi…”
Scaramucci: Separating migrant children at the U.S. border is barbaric
“Doesn't reflect well on the American society, whether they're breaking the law, not breaking the law, don't separate people from their kids. Ok, that's a barbaric thing, and we're better than that as a society. Ok, so there's nobody can debate me on that, I ca…”
Scaramucci: Taking a chainsaw to Reince Priebus was a massive mistake
“So the minute I got the job, I started the chainsaw, put the hockey mask on, and I went right after, you know, the rancid man, you know, and it was my, and I want to take him out because of what he did to me, and that was absolutely in hindsight, a mistake. I …”