The top college endowment fund managers often employ the best investment strategies because they generally operate with more experience, resources, transparency, and accountability than other Wall Street professionals.
Per the article below, the multi-billion dollar endowment funds for MIT, Harvard and Yale have all earned 8% to 9% annually since 2006. While leading endowment funds typically do not report performance on a calendar year basis, their returns are in-line with the passive exchange-traded fund (ETF) portfolio based on Yale’s prescription for individual investors.
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MIT endowment chief tops Harvard money managers
Portfolio grows $2.4b over 9 years
Beth Healy, 6/18/15
In the realm of ivory tower rivalries, one might expect the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to outdo Harvard University when it comes to science and engineering, even in high-tech start-ups.
But managing money?
It’s true: MIT has outperformed Harvard over the nine years since Seth Alexander became president of its endowment. The $10 billion portfolio that he inherited now weighs in at $12.4 billion, the sixth-largest among US colleges.
Alexander, 41, learned the investment profession at the elbow of a famed Yale University endowment chief, David Swensen. Since arriving at MIT in 2006, Alexander has produced average annual investment returns of 9.3 percent, among the best in the university endowment world. Those gains handily outpace a 7.9 percent annual average at Harvard’s $36.4 billion fund and come close to the 9.5 percent posted by his mentor at Yale.
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