Episode summary
Luis Laboy: Why Every Market Is Now an Emerging Market | Hewlett Foundation
Investment Management Operations
· · 50 min · Hosts: Ted Seides · Guests: Luis Laboy
Summary
Luis Laboy traces how a childhood shaped by politics, debate, and contrarian thinking led him into economics and then emerging markets. He says the appeal was never “stocks” from the bottom up, but the top-down interaction of politics, macro, and market structure, which first drew him to Mexico and then to a career across Latin America, Turkey, Europe, and Africa.
He describes the move from direct investing at Everest Capital to the allocator seat at the Hewlett Foundation as a natural extension of wanting a longer time horizon and broader responsibility. On the hedge-fund side, he learned how firms change over time, how culture affects risk-taking, and how to make decisions without confusing being right with making money. On the LP side, he says that experience sharpened his manager selection process, especially his focus on asking better questions, understanding alignment, and avoiding both shallow diligence and analysis paralysis.
At Hewlett, he says the portfolio has gradually shifted from concentrating an inherited, mature manager roster to balancing portfolio construction with sourcing the next generation of managers. COVID accelerated that rethinking, pushing the team toward quality compounders and away from value. Laboy argues that the risks once associated with emerging markets now describe nearly every market, so public equity portfolios need to think dynamically about disruption, policy, geopolitics, and technology rather than rely on static labels.
Key takeaways
- Luis Laboy says his investing style came from politics, economics, and contrarian family debates, not from a classic stock-picking origin story.
- He says Everest taught him to focus on making money, not being right, and to understand firm culture, incentives, and decision-making over time.
- At Hewlett, Laboy and Anna Marshall use portfolio construction first, then manager selection, and have concentrated the book while making room for a next generation of managers.
- He says the old emerging-markets risk set now describes most markets, so he looks for managers who can handle disruption, policy, geopolitical, and technology risk.
- Laboy’s biggest manager-selection lesson is to define what the portfolio needs in advance so he does not chase the shiny object or impose his own bias.
Notable quotes
“The biggest change has been that right at the beginning we had a larger manager roster and we were concentrating that manager roster”
“it's not just the time at the hedge fund that was helpful. It's the amount of time that I got to spend at Everest that was really helpful”
How the episode opens
Luis, I am so excited for this conversation. — Thanks, Z. I'm very excited to be here.
With these conversations, we're keen to explore your path to the seat, how you spend your time, and really insights into the life of an institutional LP. To start, tell me a little bit about your upbringing. I was very fortunate to grow up in a big family, right?
I was uh the fifth of six kids. So, there were six kids, two parents, one grandmother, and apparently my parents thought that wasn't enough. So, they got a St.
Bernard, right? And uh and here I grew up in this big house, right, with lots of people and thankfully lots of love, laughs and and a lot of strong opinions which obviously invited a lot of debate and you know and all that played out in our daily dinners together and that was some of my fondest memories come from those dinners, you know, and it was they were always full of lively conversation and you know everything from school and what happened at school and friends to current events and and to politics, right? And you know, and think about it, like I remember as early as being about 6, 7 years old, sitting at what was essentially the big kids table, right?
The adult table, and listening to all these conversations. For example, like I remember vividly like when we moved to the States, you know, listening to conversations about the Iran hostage crisis back in the early late 70s, right? And and even the 80 election with Carter and Reagan.
And you know, it's it's interesting because I think of myself back then and I think I've always been fairly contrarian by nature. And I think those family conversations really sharpened that, you know, and I and investors may appreciate this, right?
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- manager selection
- portfolio concentration
- emerging market risk
- portfolio construction vs selection
- public equity investment strategy
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Hewlett Foundation
- Everest Capital
Watch the episode
Watch “Luis Laboy: Why Every Market Is Now an Emerging Market | Hewlett Foundation” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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Investment Management Operations, this episode and its artwork belong to Ted Seides – Allocator and Asset Management Expert. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
