How Money Moves Through Markets

Afford Anything

Paula Pant | Cumulus Podcast Network

Investing, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.6 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2025

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

#650: Sarah Williamson is the kind of person who shapes the decisions that move trillions of dollars. She earned her MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School and holds both the CFA and CAIA designations, two of the most demanding credentials in finance. In this episode, she helps us understand how investing really works, who the major players are, how capital flows through the system, and why the incentives driving investors, activists, and asset managers often collide. Sarah spent more than twenty years at Wellington Management, where she rose to Partner and Director of Alternative Investments, after working at Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Company, and the U.S. Department of State. Today she leads FCLTGlobal, an organization dedicated to helping companies and investors focus on long-term value creation. She is also the author of The CEO’s Guide to the Investment Galaxy. She explains why index funds now dominate corporate ownership, how Reddit and retail traders changed the market’s dynamics, and what it means when activists push companies to “bring earnings forward.” She also introduces a framework for understanding the “five solar systems” of investing, a map that connects everyone from day traders to trillion-dollar sovereign wealth funds. Whether you are a passive investor or simply curious about what drives the market, this episode gives you the clarity to see how capital really moves and why it matters. Key Takeaways Reddit and the meme-stock movement permanently changed how individual investors move markets Index funds now dominate ownership, creating both stability and new corporate challenges Activists often prioritize short-term profit over long-term innovation Sovereign wealth funds act like national endowments, investing with century-long horizons Understanding who owns what (and why) makes you a more informed, confident investor Resources and Links The CEO’s Guide to the Investment Galaxy by Sarah Williamson FCLTGlobal, a nonprofit that helps companies and investors focus on long-term value creation Chapters Note: Timestamps will vary on individual listening devices based on dynamic advertising segments. The provided timestamps are approximate and may be several minutes off due to changing ad lengths. (00:00) Meet Sarah Williamson: CEO, CFA, Harvard MBA, global finance leader (5:41) The five “solar systems” that organize the investing world (7:55) Reddit and the rise of the retail investor (16:25) Tesla, brand loyalty, and shareholder activism (22:57) How sovereign wealth funds invest for generations (28:57) Inside asset managers and their incentives (41:56) Activist investors and the tension between short and long term If you want to understand the real power dynamics behind modern investing, from Reddit traders to trillion-dollar endowments, don’t miss this episode. Share this episode with a friend, colleagues, and your cousin who is obsessed with latest meme stocks: https://affordanything.com/episode650 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you own index funds, you're a shareholder in hundreds of companies, but you might not realize that the other investors who own those same stocks have completely different goals than you do.
0:10.9	Some want the companies to succeed. Some are indifferent, and some are actually rooting for them to fail.
0:16.6	Today, we're going to map out the entire investment universe, everything from sovereign wealth funds to Reddit traders, from activist investors to sell side analysts.
0:26.4	We're going to map out this universe so that you understand who's driving the markets where your retirement money lives.
0:34.0	You're going to learn why your index funds can sometimes feel like a roller coaster based on trades that are happening at the edges.
0:43.0	You're going to discover why the investors who own your stocks might not actually care whether or not those companies win.
0:50.8	You're going to cut through the jargon, private equity, hedge fund, investment banker.
0:55.3	Who are all of these players and how do they work in concert to impact the markets?
0:59.8	We're going to decipher all of this today. And you're going to leave with a clear understanding
1:04.4	of how the investment universe works. Our guest is Sarah Williamson. She has an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School
1:13.3	and holds a chartered financial analyst and also the chartered alternative investment analyst
1:19.5	designations. She was an M&A investment banker at Goldman Sachs. She worked at McKinsey. She served
1:26.0	at the Department of State. She spent two
1:27.7	decades at Wellington Management, rising to partner and director of alternative investments.
1:32.3	She serves on the boards of two publicly traded companies, Evercore and EXL Service.
1:37.9	And she chairs the board of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. She's the CEO of
1:43.2	FCLT Global, a nonprofit that's dedicated to
1:46.2	mobilizing companies and investors to create long-term value. She's a member of the Council on
1:51.4	Foreign Relations, and she's the author of a book called The CEO's Guide to the Investment
1:56.7	Galaxy. That book creates a framework in which the investment universe is divided into these solar
2:04.2	systems and every solar system has a series of planets around it. And when we create that framework,
2:09.2	that Linnaean classification system, we can better understand who the players are and how
	...

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