A WSJ article features a fund which outperformed all of the actively managed US stock mutual funds by a large margin. We found its twin ETF from WisdomTree that was spared the accolades. And we use advanced quant techniques to dissect the strategy and its winning bets.
Performance Attribution
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.
In 2019, we presented a return-based analysis framework that can be used to analyze complex fixed income funds such as PIMCO Income fund. In this updated blog, we apply a similar methodology to the fund as we did previously to evaluate the performance of the fund during the COVID market distress.
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.
Since its launch in 2007, PIMCO Income Fund has become one of the top-performing US bond funds. However, in 2019 the fund has underperformed both the benchmark and most of its peers. Using this fund as an example, we will demonstrate how advanced returns-based analysis can be used to analyze complex fixed income products without delving into volumes of complex holdings.
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.
Returns across the Ivy League are largely seen as being driven by exposure to private equity and venture capital.