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Show Notes

1:21 - (INTERVIEW STARTS)

1:30 – Early days at Vanderbilt and the landscape for university investment offices

3:17 – Career before working at Vanderbilt

3:59 – Transition from Wall Street to going back to his alma mater

4:48 – Pioneering Portfolio Management: An Unconventional Approach to Institutional Investment

5:23 – Out of the box ideas when he first got started

6:25 – Convincing the board to approve unconventional ideas

8:28 – Why Bill retired

            9:28 – Diversified Trust White Papers

9:31 – What is the edge that allocators have when it comes to investing

            9:33 – Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin podcast episode

            9:35 – Pitch the Perfect Investment: The Essential Guide to Winning on Wall Street

            10:05 – Gaining an Edge in Investing 

12:30 – Where can skill from an allocator perspective be applied

14:32 – Judging the skill of managers as an allocator

15:16 – Looking out to the future, how will the endowment model stack up against the traditional 60/40 portfolio 

17: 47 -  How do you manage clients when your strategy may not be keeping up with the S&P 500 in the short term 

19:15 – Thoughts on bitcoin 

20:00 – How Bill was able to get involved with Diversified Trust while working at Vanderbilt 

21:47 – Differences in managing endowments vs taxable pools of capital 

23:22 – Stories that either derail an investment process or educate someone to stay the course 

24:23 – Manager selection process and what Bill looks for when choosing the right one 

28:01 – Bill’s view on exiting managers 

29:55 – How do you measure the evolution of a manager’s investing strategy, especially as the market changes 

31:41 – What is different today about investing vs when Bill first started 

33:56 – Do alternative and emerging investment streams deliver the returns that many hope for 

35:13 – Why don’t endowments, foundations, or pension funds feel comfortable with moving chunks of their portfolio to cash 

37:00 – How does Bill think about the balance of investments with higher return potentials against their higher costs 

38:13 – Any categories that really pique Bill’s interest 

39:22 – What does the asset management industry look like in 10-20 years from now 

41:56 – What should aspiring money managers think about as they move forward in this business

43:09 – What Bill is most proud of in his career

43:54 – Favorite sports moment

45:01 – What teaching from Bill’s parents has most stayed with him

            45:14 – Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

            45:18 – The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America

46:10 – What information does Bill read that he gets a lot out of

            46:20 – The Economist

            46:33 – Wall Street Journal

            46:34 – Bloomberg

46:45 – Life lesson that he wished he knew a lot earlier

47:29 – In his waning days, what advice would Bill give himself today