factor exposures

Yale Endowment – a Levered 60/40?

2017 Yale endowment report rebuts Warren Buffett’s 2016 Berkshire Hathaway investor letter that “financial ‘elites’”, including endowments, are better off investing in low fee index products and not “wasting” money on active managers’ hefty fees. We did our own calculations and here’s what we found…

3 comments

Uncovering the Hidden Risks of the Endowment Model

It is generally known that endowments invest in risky assets, but quantifying such risks has remained challenging due to a lack of information about returns. We set out to address this challenge and developed a new basis for estimating endowment risks.

Standard Life GARS Fund: MPI’s Factor X-ray

Using Standard Life Global Absolute Return Fund (SLI GARS) weekly performance data, we show how sophisticated factor analysis can provide valuable insights into this fund’s complex global “go anywhere” investment strategy.

5 comments

Ivy League Endowments 2016 Performance Review

An 1873 meeting that brought Harvard, Yale and Princeton together to codify the rules of American football also debuted a sports conference later known as the “Ivy League — eight elite institutions whose heritage, dating from pre-Revolutionary times, became formative influences shaping American character and culture.  These schools also pioneered endowment investment management, thus helping to secure the nation’s educational legacy for posterity.

3 comments

Smarter Beta? Part 1 of a Series on Multifactor Smart Beta ETFs

The questions fueling “smart beta” debates carry on, but that hasn’t stopped a number of providers from launching a “smarter” product – and from picking up assets as a result. In this first post of a series, MPI will begin to explore multi-factor smart beta, an up-and-coming take on the strategic beta concept.