James B. Stewart, New York Times, has a nice piece on endowment returns of the Ivy League, here…
”This year the 10-year returns achieved by the endowments for all the Ivy League schools lagged a plain-vanilla portfolio of stocks and bonds, according to a new study by Markov Processes International, which closely monitors the performance of Ivy League endowments. It’s the first time that has happened in the 16 years for which Markov has data on all the Ivy League endowments.”
But no moves to a simpler strategy are expected:
”That helps explain why so many institutions have been reluctant to pare back their expensive investments in hedge funds and venture capital — high returns that beat the 60/40 mix could be just over the horizon.
Of course, extremely long measurement periods are convenient for underperforming asset managers, who can always argue that it’s too soon to brand them a failure.”
If the smartest people in the room can’t beat the average what chance do mere mortals have? Do read the whole thing…
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