📖David Swensen
Capital Allocation Assessment
Evaluate management's capital allocation skills.
The most important skill for a CEO is capital allocation. Evaluate how management deploys capital — do they create or destroy value with their decisions?
🏠 Everyday Analogy
📖 Core Interpretation
In Capital Allocation Assessment, David Swensen focuses on the gap between price and value. Returns come from paying less than what a business is worth, not from guessing short-term market moves.
💎 Key Insight：Capital allocation is the CEO's most impactful decision.
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❓ Why It Matters
Ignoring valuation turns even good companies into poor investments. Overpaying compresses future returns and leaves little margin when assumptions are wrong.
🎯 How to Practice
Estimate intrinsic value with conservative assumptions, set clear buy ranges, and act only when price offers a meaningful discount with acceptable downside.
⚠️ Common Pitfalls
Confusing a low price with true cheapness
Using one metric without business context
Overly optimistic assumptions that erase margin of safety
📚 Case Studies
1
Yale Endowment and Illiquid Alternatives (2000)
Swensen increased Yale’s allocation to private equity and venture capital, aligning with long-horizon, equity-oriented partners whose compensation depended on long‑term results, not asset gathering.
✨ Outcome：Generated superior risk‑adjusted returns versus traditional 60/40 portfolios over the following decades.
2
Staying the Course in the Financial Crisis (2008)
Despite severe drawdowns in equities and alternatives, Swensen’s team, whose incentives were tied to long-term performance, resisted pressure to de-risk at market lows.
✨ Outcome：Maintaining target allocations allowed Yale to participate fully in the post-crisis recovery and outperform many peers.
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