Chief Investment Officer

Bowdoin College Endowment has been outperforming all Ivies on a 10-year basis since 2015 with its latest FY2021 result bringing it to 14.4%, an almost impossible number to beat.

In his latest article, Chief Investment Officer’s Michael Katz, explores MPI’s analysis of how Brown University’s endowment has managed to outperform its rivals in recent years.

Read more on MPI’s annual assessment of the Ivy League Endowments, featured in Chief Investment Officer, where our analysts provide a deeper look into FY20 performance and the likely reasons behind the sharp drop over FY19.

“Despite reporting strong returns for the second straight year, Ivy League university endowments have lagged behind a simple portfolio comprised of 60% stocks and 40% bonds over the past 10 years, according to a report from Markov Processes International. The report said that from fiscal year 2009 to 2018, a portfolio made up of 60% stocks and 40% fixed income had annualized returns of 8.1%. Meanwhile not even the top-performing Ivy League endowments beat this over the same time period as Columbia University and Princeton University’s endowments were a shade behind with annualized returns of 8.0% each.” Read the full article here.

“According to investment research analysts Markov Processes International, the strong performance has been driven in large part by investments in private equity and venture capital, which have returned 18.7% and 18.3%, respectively, in fiscal 2018, compared to a 14.4% return for the S&P 500…. Markov estimated that private equity and venture capital contributed 8.3% and 3.3% of Yale’s 12.3% return for 2018, with other asset classes contributing only 0.8% of its annual return. The firm also estimated that private equity and venture capital contributed 5.2% and 3.2%, respectively, of Dartmouth’s 12.2% return; and 3.6% and 3.3%, respectively, of Harvard’s 10% return.” Read the full article here.

“Despite having the second-smallest endowment in the Ivy League next to Brown University, Dartmouth has had among the top-performing investment portfolios of any of the elite universities in recent years. According to investment research firm Markov Processes International, Dartmouth has been among the top-four performing Ivy League endowments five out of the previous six years.” Read full article here.

“In general, one might expect that the size of CalPERS’ portfolio will make it harder to generate excess returns in almost any asset class as they are actually moving markets,” MPI President Jeff Schwartz tells CIO’s Randy Diamond in his article about the system’s active investment risk-taking review. “As such, they really need to pick their battles when it comes to identifying areas to pursue excess returns, especially on a risk-adjusted basis, given that less-efficient market segments tend to hold more risks.” Read full article here.

“Brown and Cornell bucked their historical trends by outperforming Yale, Princeton, and Harvard. Over the past 11 fiscal years, either Brown, Cornell, or both were among the bottom two performers among Ivy League endowments.” This CIO article features interview with MPI’s Sean Ryan and discusses our 2017 Ivy Endowment returns analysis report.

Chief Investment Officer finds that risk parity strategies were hit hard by the fallout from the UK’s referendum on European Union membership, data show—and they could be caught off guard again.

Chief Investment Officer associate editor Sage Um utilizes MPI research on the relationship between scale, selection and impact of pensions’ allocations to hedge funds on portfolio risk and return profiles to ask if CalPERS would have been better off with a significantly greater allocation to its ARS program. Um notes MPI commentary on fee structure challenges and necessary evolution to better align interests and drive successful investment outcomes.