YouSaid · the spoken record

David Morehead

lines on the record: 96
first: 2024-04-22
most recent: 2024-04-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Probably that everything's going to work out. It may not work out the way that you think that you don't have to have all the answers today. That's actually like we teach our investors here. We teach in the business school. And that's one of the things that I always say to the college students is I found the job that I was made to do 20 years after being in the workforce. So you don't have to do it day one. Just do. Just go do your smart. You'll figure it out. It'll work out. It'll be okay. But you don't have to know it all today.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Never know the difficulties that those next to you are walking through. And I think as you get older, you really come to understand that, that what you see from the street, when you're looking in the house and it looks like everything's perfect and everyone's got it nailed down, you're like, oh my gosh, I wish that for myself, you have no idea what the disasters are that that family or that person that you're comparing yourself to is dealing with. And it's folly to think that they're necessarily in a better place than you're at. So being kind, being considerate, and caring for the people that are around you, I think is an important part of life.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think be kind. I've seen that in my own life. I think as you get older, obviously you learn things that you didn't know previously. To me, I would say 20 years ago, I had a really rough time with anxiety. Really, really difficult. I actually have a shirt that says be kind.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those times where you feel like you're not on the right track and you don't know which way is up to have somebody that's, again, on the path further ahead of you to say, no, no, no, you're on the right path. You're doing okay.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's one in particular, Michael Holmberg is Neuberger Berman presently. We've known each other for. 22, 23 years. Easy to say he's my best friend in the business. Probably one of my top five closest friends. And we talk about everything under the sun. I think in this business, because it's very difficult that's given to all the Monday morning quarterbacking and people think that it's easy. They're like, you should have just done that. And I'm like, come on in. The water's warm. I think it's really important to have somebody else in the business that understands that you can talk to, particularly in those times when nothing's working. And that happens periodically in this business where quote unquote in the box and you can't see a way out. Michael's been that for me for 20 plus years, but it goes well beyond that family and on the personal front, et cetera. I've told my wife if something happens to me call Michael. He'll help sort it out. He's 10 years older than I am. And so there's some wisdom there as well that comes my way that”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It actually fits with this business is not telling the truth. For that reason, I have a really hard time with politics this year for me is exceptionally difficult. And basically what I do to deal with it is I just literally, my only news sources are Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. That's it because I can't handle. I talk to the TV a lot. I'm like, that's not true.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'll do a little bit of a public service announcement. Most people don't know that two and a half years ago I broke my leg very, very badly. I was up in a tree on a ladder and that did not end well. I ended up with full length of my leg blood clot, not to be melodramatic, but I almost died. And so the little PSA coming from that is if you're older than 50, you should not be on ladders. It doesn't matter if it's Christmas decorations, trimming trees, whatever, ladders, you're over 50, you're out.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Huge difference. Once you start doing it, you're like, oh my gosh, it's just me, and I can't hit the red dot for the life of me. It's like a little bit of win in Rome.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It changes. Guy get bored easily. I really like figuring things out, but then once I figured it out, I'm less interested in it. See, a number of years ago, I was doing woodworking stuff, but I haven't really done that recently. And then, I don't know, five or seven years ago, I had a Jeep Wrangler that I was working through modifying and putting all this stuff on. It can become a little bit of Franken Jeep kind of thing. Recently has been shooting. They put up a gun range a mile from my house. I'd never shot before, but I was curious. And it helps me turn my brain off because you have a dangerous thing in your hand and you have to be very careful and entirely focused on that. It's actually a little bit like golf. It's very, very difficult. And it's the thing if you're a quarter of an inch off at 25 yards that makes a”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was actually a suggestion of a couple of the investor relations people, some of our managers, I tend to prefer to be behind the scenes. I don't really like to be out front. What they have said to us is you ask questions that we don't get asked otherwise. And you do things differently than what we see or almost invariably what the rest of the universe is doing, you're not doing and you're doing something else. If you believe that this is a social good, then maybe you should share this. There's honesty and truth there. So I started doing it just to be helpful. People want to hit the delete key. Great. If it's beneficial, whatever, it's super. We're just trying to be transparent and helpful.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I have to be a little bit careful because don't do this usually has a story behind it. Not putting any names with anything. I'll give you, for instance. If there were a particular opportunity to own property or land right next to the university, somebody in my seat could be like, oh, well, that makes a lot of sense because that is something that is probably strategic to the university. So at some point down the road, it would be worth a lot of money. The problem is that I work for the same organization that that would be strategic with. And so 10 years from now, it's probably true that that piece of property is worth a lot of money, but it's worth a lot of money to the person that I work for. The Board of Regents doesn't care that I saw an opportunity. It was a broken deal so they could just say, yeah, that's a great place to put a dorm. So we're going to put a dorm there. I'm like, hey, it's worth 10x what I paid for.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good. We have this huge rivalry Baylor does with TCU, who's up the street. But I know Jason really well. And do I actually care whether a student who is considering going to college and might not be able to go to college or if they're a Baylor student or a TCU student? Of course not. Education changes their lives, their family's lives, their neighbors' lives. It's a generational thing. So we're happy to help and talk to answer the question. I don't know exactly. It's a little bit of, I'm not there, so I don't know. But the industry, I think, is of the sort that it's gracious enough that people are willing to help.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here's the question that I have. We're sitting at a little over $2 billion. We obviously know how to run that because we're doing it every day. I don't have the foggiest idea how to run $20 billion. There's a whole different set of cants or shoulds or think about this that I don't understand. We have started to connect with folks like Seth Alexander at MIT has been very kind and gracious, helpful in explaining some of what they do. And Allison Thacker at Rice has been exceedingly generous and helpful. What they do, what they've seen, the quote unquote, don't do this. Oh my gosh, that's hugely helpful. And we're happy to chat with anybody because our view is that helping kids go to school when they wouldn't otherwise be able.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you hire those people who are really good, really smart, you have to give them rope, you have to give them responsibility and increasing responsibility. And so those are significant aspects of what we're doing here that we're going to have to do more of and figure out how best to do that. I mean, it's a real question. You're like, I'm responsible for this book, but how do I give responsibility to this other person? I can't be looking over their shoulder. I have to give them real responsibility, but at the same time, I'm still responsible for the returns. How does that work? Those are the types of things that can blow up organizations. And so we spend a lot of time on that.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Allocations of capital there than you did previously. And so that's something that, frankly, I'm curious about. I'm interested to see how it plays out. And then further, Renee and I both, we've tried to do this, but as people grow and develop, we have to increasingly hand off responsibility to the up-and-comers, Kaylee, who's our youngest analyst. My gosh, it's like one of those things that you look at your alma mater and you're like, man, glad I went when I did because I might not get in now. All of us are looking at Kaylee and going, my gosh, this is what's coming out of the business school here. I'm glad I have a job. Hopefully she doesn't take it before I leave.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said that we've launched into this fund of one thing. It's what big endowments have done for a long time. So it's new to us. And again, we're not trying to recreate the wheel. We look at our larger pierce and like, oh my gosh, I don't know how to run $40 billion. We try to learn from them and the good work that they're doing. They're ahead of us on the path on portfolio management, God willing that Baylor's endowment gets to $40 billion at some point. We should learn from the people who are ahead of us on that path. How that fund of one thing works within our portfolio because it's a new thing is something that I think that we'll look at and monitor and learn from and assess over the next three or four years. We probably have three of those set up now. We might add another two. But that fundamentally changes what your portfolio looks like and how it acts because you have bigger”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the market is telling you flashing signals you should be doing something. And the question is, but how much? And so that's why we've tried to systematize that allocation in. Frankly, the allocation out on the other side in 10 percentage point increments to try to put some methodological process around that. The other thing, doing it that way is that it takes the emotion out of it. That's the key bit to make sure that you can do this.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Should I allocate to fintech? So then the discussion isn't around the manager. If the answer is fintech yes, then I have the manager. But the question is, FinTech yes or no. Compare FinTech to energy compared to what's going on in rates compared to some sector in the equity markets. And the risk associated with each of those, the liquidity associated with each of those, when the capital is going to come back. And then the top bit is really more art than science. And that's the most difficult thing, I think, is the when do I allocate to such and such? Something is down 30%. Do I allocate now or do I think that it's going to be down 50% and I wait? And so what we've tried to do in that, the market tells you you're down 20%. You're now down 30%.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The bit where some of our older investors are at where you can pick managers, but then how do you decide should I allocate to this manager when I could allocate to eight or ten other things the midpoint between manager and portfolio construction. So you have the manager level, then you have what I'm talking about, the other opportunity set. How do I compare a manager that's in fintech?”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's hard, and that, I would say, is a work in process. We have a young team. Aside from myself, we have four other investors, Renee Jinn and Kaylee, focus on the private side, Maggie's working with me on the public side. Some of the science-y things are pretty easy. how you actually get to picking a manager. That's pretty science-y. Even the subjective bits about character. If we're hiring people here who have the same perspective and philosophy on what matters. Character wise and individual. We want people that are kind, that care about the people around them, that care more than just about money, et cetera, then even the subjective bits are pretty easy to get to. The next stage is half science, half art.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So much of the approach you're taking comes from your two decades of experience investing. I'm curious how do you take what's in your head and turn that into a process so that you can train your team so it's not just dependent on what's in your head for the long term.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And focusing more on concentration. I'm partying ways with managers not because they have done anything wrong. In fact, if you look the last 13 years, the vast majority of the managers that we have parted ways with have outperformed their benchmarks. But structurally, we're doing something different. The thing that we're doing now that we haven't done before and it's actually resulted in the biggest turnover in the marketable side of the book since the time that I've been here is we're starting to do funds of one. As you get bigger, you're able to do that. And that has particular benefits. We're seeing it already. But as you do funds of one and as you concentrate capital in there, then there are some other managers and strategies that need to go away. And so we're very upfront with managers and say it's true.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Three or four years on, you were looking at, and I did the math, and I was like, we have 750 individual equity names in our portfolio. That's absurd. Warren Buffett has 10. All the academic stuff is like you need 8 to 12 to get rid of systemic risk. And I'm like, but if you look through all of the managers, you add them all up and whatever, you were like, we have 750 different individual equities. And you're like, well, that has to change. Diversification cuts both ways. It eliminates systemic risk, but it also diversifies away your alpha if it's too diversified. So then at that point, we're working on cutting back.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If that's true, then those managers have to go. They're a great quant managers. Fantastic. But if there's a quant manager, I don't know when to allocate to it or take money away because I don't understand the black box. No one lays out their quant algorithm. Because if they did, you could be like, oh, yeah, well, these are the times when I should add and when I subscribe. But they don't. So we don't do quant. And then say,”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very diversified, owns everything, whatever. And so that was the approach that I didn't know. So that's what I did. And then you're three years into it, you know the lay of the land a little bit better. You're a little bit more secure in who you are as a person, an investor, an allocator. And you're like, What the thing that I want to do is to be able to allocate to these managers at the right time. And so it turns out that I have things in my book where I don't know when the right time to allocate is.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From our perspective, we know that we have a job to do. And our job is to provide the highest risk adjusted returns to our university because that's what we're charged with. And this is a tough business. I've sat in that manager's seat before. It's really, really difficult. What I have found over my time here at Baylor is that we basically rework different parts of the portfolio every three to four years. And it actually has nothing to do with the manager, but it has something to do with how we're thinking about could we do this better and structurally, is there something that we could change to drive better returns? So I'll give you some examples. When I first got air again, I didn't know what I was doing. You look around, everyone basically 70% of the universe.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Once you've done that work and you've really understood the person to fit with what you're trying to do in the portfolio, Other than an investment opportunity going away, how do you think about turnover of managers?”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because my view is that people don't really change. If they're cursing their neighbor out when they're taking the trash out, they're probably don't belong in our book. So that's what we're trying to get at.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Figure that out. And so a lot of times we end up knowing more about the manager, their family, their kids for references. This is pretty funny. I actually put this on Twitter X last night. But like, we'll ask things with managers. Like, I want to talk to your neighbor. And somebody rightly, but cheekily responded, well, so-and-so is okay except for the cat sacrifices during full moons and stuff like that. I want to know if there's cat sacrifices going on. Then we're like pencils down. We don't need that in our book. We talk to neighbors. We talk to old college roommates. We talk to people who have known this person for 20 years outside of the industry.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can tell the numbers from a tear sheet. I can put them into our system. I can run all sorts of analysis on it and be like whether the numbers work or not. But I'm trying to figure out if you're going to blow up, if people are going to stick with you, if the firm is going to grow, if I'm going to be able to keep this capital with you for three to five to ten years. And I need to know the character of the person.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Present with you and the kids? Do you understand that if I fund this, that this is an all-consuming thing and does he have the switch to turn it off? Because I don't want to blow up your marriage. And she was like, no, I get it. He's very able to do that. This went on for like an hour. And I was like, because I don't want to do this if this is not going to be good for your family. And we got the green light. And it turns out he actually is. He's really good at flipping that switch. I'm not. I'm bad at that. But he's good at it. He's sitting there. His wife's on the phone. He gets off the phone and he's like, what did he say? What do you talk about? She was like, I just told him it would work. He's like, that's it for an hour.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably at least 90 minutes up to like three hours. And then we're asking all sorts of questions. And it depends on who you are. If you're a young single guy, I'm asking you what your favorite drink is when you go out with friends because that tells me something. If you're married with kids, I ask questions around vacation time. Is your spouse in agreement with you doing this? I have one manager in our book and it was early in the life of this firm. I already had known the guy, but he was starting this new firm. And I actually called his wife. I was like, I need to know this is okay with your wife. So I called his wife and spoke to his wife for an hour on the phone. And basically I'm saying, is he able to come home and be”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we start almost all manager meetings, at least on my side of the book, saying who we are. Managers have said to us repeatedly that nobody does this. And it's really from a partnership perspective, yeah, yeah, we need to know you and understand your process and business and whatever. But you should understand who we are as an organization and what we're trying to accomplish and how we do things. And if that doesn't work, we should just part ways now. We probably spend the first 20, 30 minutes talking about us. And manager meetings, if you're in our office, there's already been this sorting process to get there. So we usually start with a deck, say send us a deck because we can tell you in five minutes whether it's a fit or not. So we go deck, zoom in our office. If you're in our office, then that's probably a pretty lengthy meeting.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Critical to win in the markets over time because the markets are constantly changing. If people are too fixated on an approach. Now, it's a tricky thing because we don't want people wandering from third base to second base. If we hire you on third base, we want you always on third base. But we also want you to look at who the batter is and who the pitcher is and where that pitch is likely to be relative to the batter and how that batter swings to a play third base. Maybe you're in shallow left. Maybe you're closer to the short side. Maybe you're playing the bunt. That's your universe. You should play that. When we want the person on third base playing third base the same way, regardless of who the batter is, they should be adjusting. And so humility, I think, relates to flexibility of mind and being able to adjust.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then they're not likely to give authority or rope or opportunity to the other people in the organization. Everything's going to have to run through that person. Well, over time, good people chafe at that and will leave. And that person ends up being siloed, won't accept other people's critique of them. So ceases getting better. One of the obvious ways to test that is how widely is equity pushed down in the organization because secure people will trust the people around them, encourage them. They want smarter people than them sitting next to them and will reward those people, push equity down in the organization. So I think flexibility of mind is really...”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We want to avoid the blowout. I've been wrong before on the humility bit, so it is tricky what I have gotten wrong before is that insecurity, masquerades as humility. Insecurity is a big issue because it infects the organization. If you're talking to portfolio manager who at their core is insecure.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the tricky part on the manager side. Because at the end of the day, this business is between people. We have a couple of tongue-in-cheek ways of describing this. We typically don't like people who are in page six of the post. If your goal in life is to be on page six, you're probably not going to be one of our managers. Or if you're having a fight with your neighbor over sand, you're probably not going to be one of our managers. That's pretty straightforward. Your real question is around what's motivating that person. And we don't always get it right. But one of the key characteristics that we look for is humility because in this business you hope to be right 55% of the time. Well, that means you're wrong 45% of the time. And so for the person who is unable to admit that they're wrong, that doesn't work for us because the market's probably going to put you in a position where like you're wrong. You don't admit it. And then you blow up.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're going down and sitting with a manager, the questions you just mentioned, character, those types of things that people talk about are very different from when you're taking a top-down perspective and trying to target investment areas. How do you go about interviewing managers where you're blending this top-down investment discipline with trying to pick the partners that you want working with you?”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then we find a group of managers that here's another way of looking at it. Say you took a convertible arbitrage as a category. Do we want to participate in that? Yes, because it's like we can get in and out. All right. But there's five different ways to run a convert our book. And we only like one of those five ways. So that would remove 80% if it was all ratable from that category. Then we would look at that 20%. We would talk to them and figure out what motivates them, who they are. And then we get down to character, personality, they're easy to deal with, all the typical due diligence.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hundred million dollars from us. And we have other managers, strategies that have $250,000. And the high yield strategy does not have a lot of money in it right now. But it could at some point in the future. We start from that perspective and then we work our way into what is the risk return profile that we're looking for from this category.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or deep enough to get out of it when we want to get out of it, then we simply decide not to play because our entire ethos of how we invest, our entire philosophy is built around this idea of being able to take capital from the thing that is doing well and give it to the strategy that is not doing well. And if we can't get out of that, then the whole thing breaks down. What we have tried to do is pick the markets, the areas, the strategies in which we want to participate, and then go find those managers in those things and stock our pantry, if you will, in that manner. We allocate, broadly speaking, between zero and a hundred million to individual managers. And we have some managers right now that have”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For us, at least on the marketable side, we identify the strategies in which we want to play. The strategies are markets. And because we're running an active allocation portfolio on the marketable side, we can only be in liquid categories. We would participate in U.S. high yield and European high yield, but we would not participate in Asian high yield because it's easy to buy something. The trick is getting out of it. And so if a market or a strategy is not”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's actually beneficial to me to have an up year of 5% followed by another up year of five percent than to have two years of zero because my NAV goes up and that means the distribution to the university goes up and so there's more dollars for professors and students and what have you so I'm coming around to a perspective that at least at our size Not being over allocated to the private side makes a lot of sense for that reason.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And because the investment managers at the private shops are incentivized to not mark things down, over time, what happens is that same marking process has occurred, but it's occurred over two years. And so what that means for the institution is that you're having return drag on your portfolio. It seems to me that diversification of that Valuation lag. Is beneficial to the ENF portfolio because then the ENF portfolio benefits from the public market bounce. And so the NAV of the fund continues to compound positively over those subsequent years. And in a case like Baylor's, I'm trying to get more dollars to Baylor.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Isn't just blasphemy. A tornado went through Waco and raised the town in the 50s. So it can happen. Good stewardship suggests that we have a billion dollars that we can get our hands on. Setting that aside, it increasingly seems to me that something around 50-50 feels right. And the reason for that is because of the valuation lag that occurs in private markets. So you have the situation that we've just had. So private markets were fantastic off the charts. And then you've had this winter. You've had this IPO closure thing.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That, I think, is the super tricky bit of this job. I am coming around to the view that things are different when you have very, very big portfolios. So Yale or Harvard, for example, we're in a different geographic part of the country. And so this example doesn't pertain necessarily to Connecticut or Boston. But we think about what happens if a tornado goes through campus? How much cash do we have to come up with to fund what's going on here? Those are big organizations. They have a lot of building property plant equipment, et cetera, like $5 billion. For Harvard, that's 10%. That's not that much. So they can have very, very big private portfolios. We're talking about, for us, I think the endowment now is around 2.2 billion, something like that. We have to come up with a billion dollars. That's half the portfolio.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“2019, we were having trouble finding things that had 15, 20% return opportunities in that environment. And so I think the endowment here at that time was maybe 1.3 billion or something like that. We had $80 million in long ball and $100 million in cash Because we couldn't find stuff that we thought was paying us for the risk. And at that time, you're earning zero on cash. But the opportunity cost is 5%. And so we are not afraid to hold cash if we feel like we're not getting paid for the risk that we're taking. So if we're not meeting that opportunity cost hurdle, we'll hold cash. And it doesn't matter to us if we're getting paid for it or not because there's this opportunity cost associated with it.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is one that I think we do particularly well. ENF portfolios are way more diverse than the S&P 500. We're investing everything under the sun. It's crazy how diverse ENF portfolios are. Given that as a backdrop, the new analyst walks in. We're like, what do you think the odds are that we come up with a 20% annualized return opportunity sometime over the next four years? And they're like, I don't know, probably pretty high. Let's just say it's 100%. Four years is a long time. And we're looking at everything under the sun. We'll probably find something somewhere that's going to earn us 20%. If that's the case, then the opportunity cost is 5% a year. And so that's how we think. You have treasuries that are two year five year treasuries that are at 5% plus 5%. And the hurdles 10%. And we think about it that way.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's not really a great time to be selling assets. You'd prefer to be selling the real estate assets four years ago. And so to answer your question directly with our spreadsheets, look at our exposure all sorts of different ways. And you can't necessarily communicate that to an English professor, your university. But they should know, is the endowment doing well or is it not? And so that's why I think the categories are more communication devices. Externally And then I think internally you should have as many different slices, different cuts at the portfolio as possible to try to make sure that you're not missing something.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whole thing doesn't lose money. Well, if it doesn't lose money, then it's not the most risky thing. Now, a single venture capital company is a risky thing, but in how we're investing via funds, it's actually not that risky. So from our perspective on the private side, the thing that really drives risk is sector exposure because we have some of these cyclical sectors that depending on when you're having to sell the assets in that fund. If you're having to sell real estate assets today.”
2024-04-22 · Capital Allocators · David Morehead – Top Down Allocation at Baylor (EP.381) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source