Institutional Investor features MPI’s latest research series on university endowments in fiscal year 2021. In the article, Co-founder and CEO Michael Markov discusses how asset allocation played a far more important role in returns than manager selection.
Haunted by the ghosts of 2009, Harvard endowment’s lower risk appetite still pays off with a 33.6% return.
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.
UPenn’s $20.5 Billion endowment posted a return of 41.1% for FY 2021, driven by strong returns in private equity and venture capital.
For the second straight year, Brown outperformed all other Ivy endowments by a large margin. Our research team, using MPI Stylus Pro to dissect the endowment annual returns, provides a plausible explanation of the endowment’s spectacular results.
We take a quick look at Ivy schools’ endowments’ performance results both for the 2020 fiscal year and also long-term for 10-year periods.
Using our analytical tools and publicly available endowment annual performance data, we project FY2019 performance of large and small endowments, as well as the Ivy League average and Yale
We sought to examine the relationships between endowment size, pedigree and exposure to private assets and what impact that may have on portfolio risk using advanced quantitative methods and a cutting edge methodology to better model the true behavior and risk profile of private market assets.
The endowment model, and active management in general, has come under increased scrutiny, while indexed, or passive, products have grown in popularity and number. Regardless of where you stand on that debate, it’s hard to deny that the Ivies approach to asset allocation has been very good.
Similar to 2017 performance, this past fiscal year was a strong one for most Ivy League endowments. Fiscal year 2018 is noteworthy, however, for being the first year that long horizon (10-year) returns from all Ivy endowments lagged behind the 60-40 portfolio.