Deals
Ivy League Endowments Humbled as Bull Market Beats Esoterica
- Princeton, Yale lagged behind with alternative investments
- Emerging markets, particularly Asia, boosted Rochester fund
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Harvard, Princeton and Yale universities would have done well to heed the advice of Warren Buffett, who has long advocated investments in low-cost index funds while questioning the value of hedge funds. At least in the last fiscal year.
Endowments with a big slice of their assets exposed to public equities were rewarded by a bull market in the year through June, when the S&P 500 and MSCI All Country World indexes returned 18 percent and 19 percent, respectively. Hedge funds returned just 8 percent on average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Venture capital and other difficult-to-price assets also performed worse than stocks.