The Value Perspective with David Salem

Jun 5, 2025

David Salem, Managing Director of Capital Allocation at Hedgeye, shares his impressive journey in finance and investment. He discusses the vital role of manager selection versus asset selection. Salem dives into the impact of tax reforms on educational endowments, reflecting on how these changes could affect their financial strategies. He also addresses the concentration of the U.S. equity market and its consequences on capital allocation. With insights drawn from personal experience, he emphasizes the importance of adaptability and learning from past mistakes.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

ANECDOTE

Hiring Ben Inker Story

David Salem shares an anecdote about hiring Ben Inker after meeting him during a Yale class dinner.
This connection led to Inker's significant role at GMO's asset allocation group, highlighting the impact of networking.

ADVICE

Mitigate Manager Selection Biases

Avoid bias in manager selection by conducting extensive reference checks beyond those offered.
Recognize biases as unavoidable and mitigate them through diligent, hard work.

INSIGHT

Manager vs Asset Allocation

The importance of manager selection vs. asset allocation depends on context and specific investment program.
Effective allocators avoid overgeneralizing and tailor strategies to their unique institutional needs.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Our guest for this episode of our Allocator’s Edge mini-series is a true legend of the investment world, David Salem. David is currently the Managing Director of Capital Allocation at Hedgeye, a role he took on in 2023. Before that, he was the founding President and Chief Investment Officer of The Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF) and a partner at GMO, where he worked closely with Jeremy Grantham on investment solutions for large institutional funds. David received a JD cum laude from Harvard Law School and an MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School, where he was elected a Baker Scholar. David’s career spans public service, academia and philanthropy. He has served on boards including Middlebury College, the Core Knowledge Foundation and The Atlantic Philanthropies and worked closely with the legendary David Swensen at TIFF. In this episode we dig into David’s decision to leave GMO to build TIFF; his evolving approach to manager selection; whether manager selection is more important than asset selection; indexing versus cash; and finally, how the Trump administration’s tax plans may impact endowments. Enjoy!

NEW EPISODES:

We release main series episodes every two weeks on Mondays. You can subscribe via Podbean or use this feed URL (https://tvpschroders.podbean.com/feed.xml) in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and other podcast players.

GET IN TOUCH:

send us a tweet: @TheValueTeam

Important information. This podcast is for investment professionals only.

Marketing material for Financial Professionals and Professional Clients only. The material is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, accounting, legal or tax advice, or investment recommendations. Reliance should not be placed on any views or information in the material when taking individual investment and/or strategic decisions.

Past Performance is not a guide to future performance and may not be repeated. Diversification cannot ensure profits or protect against loss of principal. The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amounts originally invested.

Exchange rate changes may cause the value of investments to fall as well as rise. Investing in emerging markets and securities with limited liquidity can expose investors to greater risk. Private assets investments are only available to Qualified Investors, who are sophisticated enough to understand the risk associated with these investments. This material may contain “forward-looking” information, such as forecasts or projections. Please note that any such information is not a guarantee of any future performance and there is no assurance that any forecast or projection will be realised.

Reliance should not be placed on any views or information in the material when taking individual investment and/or strategic decisions. The views and opinions contained herein are those of the individuals to whom they are attributed and may not necessarily represent views expressed or reflected in other Schroders communications, strategies or funds. Any reference to regions/ countries/ sectors/ stocks/ securities is for illustrative purposes only and not a recommendation to buy or sell any financial instruments or adopt a specific investment strategy.

Any data has been sourced by us and is provided without any warranties of any kind. It should be independently verified before further publication or use. Third party data is owned or licenced by the data provider and may not be reproduced, extracted or used for any other purpose without the data provider’s consent. Neither we, nor the data provider, will have any liability in connection with the third party data.