Asset managers spend considerable time and effort trying to get to know capital allocators. Luckily, there is now a bit of a shortcut–at least to understanding what drives their investing decisions and their world views. Today, my good friend Ted Seides is launching his podcast, Capital Allocators. I’ve published the first episode below: Ted’s great conversation…

This week’s episode is the most unique to date. My guest is Boyd Varty, who grew up in the South African Bush, living among and tracking wild leopards. The main theme of our conversation is tracking, and how the same strategy for pursuing animals in the wild can be applied to all aspects of our…

My guest this week is my father, Jim O’Shaughnessy. He was a pioneer in quantitative equity research, part of an early group of explorers who combed through data to find factors which predicted future stock returns. While we’ve both written extensively on factor investing, we chose to mostly avoid that topic for this conversation. Instead,…

My guests this week are Trish and James Higgins, who run Chenmark Capital Management.  In this episode we continue to explore a style of investing I call Permanent Equity.  Returns in permanent equity come first from the ongoing cash flows of portfolio companies, not from reselling businesses down the line.  The partners of Chenmark are…

My guest this week is Peter Attia, M.D., whose mission is to understand and improve human lifespan and healthspan (quality of life).  Reading Peter’s research, you find that there are many similarities between health and investing—for example, ideas like compounding—which we explore in detail. We spend a lot of time on mind, body, spirit and…

My guest this week is John Rogers, founder, CEO and CIO of Ariel investments, one of the longest standing asset management businesses still in existence.  John has a very impressive resume.  In addition to his success at Ariel, he was the captain of the Princeton University men’s basketball team, he was the co-chair of Barack…

My guest this week is Alex Moazed, the co-author of Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy, which explores the platform business model (Uber, Airbnb, Github).  Alex is also the founder and CEO of Applico, a company that he started in his dorm room that is since grown into a huge…

My guest this week is Ian Cassel, a microcap investor who is always on the lookout for small companies which are run by men and women who are what he calls intelligent fanatics. Ian’s livelihood is based on the success or failure of a small group of companies that you have never hear of—he takes…