Press

“Quant funds that employed risk parity saw their riskiness as measured by realized volatility levels surging 50% to 80% higher than their stated targets, according to a study from Markov Processes International obtained by Bloomberg based on results through November… Markov found that majority of the 10 popular risk-parity strategies it reviewed saw record levels of volatility, with a “staggering” gap between the winners and losers.” – writes Bloomberg’s Isabelle Lee and senior editor John Authers in his column discussing results of MPI’s research Risk Parity Not Performing? Blame the Weather.

Matt Toledo with CIO Magazine reviews in this article recent performance of top endowments from Yale, UPenn and Stanford and compares them with projections from MPI Transparency Lab. “Stanford announced on Thursday a 4.4% return in fiscal 2023, slightly below MPI’s estimate of 6.42%. Stanford attributed its underperformance—as compared with Cambridge Associates’ 6.9% median return for university endowments—to losses in its venture capital investments, in line with MPI’s projections,” – he writes.

“Style analysis is a useful tool that can illuminate how a portfolio operates if people understand how to use it, which Markov and his employees do, Sharpe said in an interview. “I would pay serious attention to the results they produce,” he said.” Justin Mitchell quotes Nobel-prize winner in Economics William Sharpe in his article.

“…the reports posted by Oregon and other public pension funds routinely understate these risks, new research has found. The new findings are from Michael Markov, a mathematician who heads MPI, a financial technology company. He provided early warnings about the fraudulently consistent returns in Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. I’ve known Mr. Markov for years. And he now says that, on average, the risks being carried by public pension funds are at least 20 percent greater than they are reporting, largely because they aren’t taking account of the true risks embedded in private equity,” writes Jeff Sommer in his weekly column about MPI research focused on uncovering risks of public pensions. “His company uses proprietary statistical techniques to adjust for these lags and posts the results for individual pension funds on its website for everyone to see,” writes Sommer underscoring the importance of the MPI Transparency Lab.

“State pension funds with higher allocations to private markets will underperform their peers with greater exposures to global equities this year, according to a report from the MPI Transparency Lab issued Wednesday,” writes in her article Cheyenne Ligon.

Michael Thrasher with Institutional Investor provides an overview of MPI Transparency Lab’s FY2023 performance projections for major pensions and endowments in his article
Private Assets Drove Endowment and Pension Returns Last Year. Now They Are a Drag. He writes “…from returns you can glean a lot of information: risk, the skill, the trend, the style drift, you name it,” MPI chief executive Michael Markov said. Strategies change sometimes. When things don’t add up, there is a red flag.” Among MPI’s customers are U.S. regulators, who use its tools to surveil funds…

An in-depth coverage of MPI Transparency Lab projections for FY2023 by one of the oldest college newspapers in the nation Investment analysis company predicts brighter future for Columbia’s endowment – Columbia Spectator

“Columbia’s endowment—even with its comparatively poor performance when measured up against peer institutions—may come out on top in terms of investment risk and is likely to report high returns this fiscal year, according to a recent lab launched by the investment analysis company Markov Processes International.” – writes Shea Vance.

In this article, FundFire’s Justin Mitchell uses MPI’s FY2023 intra-year estimates of pension performance in his in-depth analysis of impact of private assets on pension returns.

“Public pensions with sizable allocations to private equity tended to weather the last year’s market volatility better than their peers, but that could change in coming months, according to new projections from a top data analytics firm. Markov Processes International’s new “transparency lab” analyzes the publicly reported returns of institutional investors to provide a better understanding of what the actual holdings are.”

Institutional Investor article by Julie Segal based on the eight-year track record of MPI Eurekahedge 50 Tracker Index raises an important question: if the collective wisdom of top hedge fund managers results in index-like performance why take risks, headache and expense investing in large number of individual funds?

“Thanks to their high exposure to private markets, endowments have been sheltered from the worst effects of the market sell-off,” writes Pitchbook’s James Thorne, using MPI’s research. ”It will take several months, or even longer in the case of venture capital funds, for public and private asset prices to reach an equilibrium, assuming stocks and bonds remain depressed.” Please read full article here.