Getting access to what the top asset allocation brains are thinking is easy– “Google it.”
For example, I googled “yale endowment asset allocation filetype:pdf” and the top document was a PDF outlining Yale’s asset allocations.
http://investments.yale.edu/images/documents/Yale_Endowment_12.pdf
Why is this potentially useful? The endowments have to spill the beans so their alumni can keep tabs on what they are doing with all the cash.
The results are hypothetical results and are NOT an indicator of future results and do NOT represent returns that any investor actually attained. Indexes are unmanaged, do not reflect management or trading fees, and one cannot invest directly in an index. Additional information regarding the construction of these results is available upon request.
How might you clone this on the cheap?
- Head over to http://us.ishares.com/home.htm https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/etf or http://www.proshares.com/ and starting finding low-cost exposures.
- Ditch private equity since its way too expensive, highly correlated with stock markets, and hard to access in a way that is beneficial to the investor.
- Get creative on absolute return. A lot of the funds are expensive in this space.
Meb’s book “The Ivy Portfolio” is a good place to start if you want to clone the endowments.
We have a simple spreadsheet that might help you get started (numbers need to be updated, but it will provide a framework to get started):
The results are hypothetical results and are NOT an indicator of future results and do NOT represent returns that any investor actually attained. Indexes are unmanaged, do not reflect management or trading fees, and one cannot invest directly in an index. Additional information regarding the construction of these results is available upon request.
About the Author: Wesley Gray, PhD
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Important Disclosures
For informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as specific investment, accounting, legal, or tax advice. Certain information is deemed to be reliable, but its accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed. Third party information may become outdated or otherwise superseded without notice. Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) nor any other federal or state agency has approved, determined the accuracy, or confirmed the adequacy of this article.
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Alpha Architect, its affiliates or its employees. Our full disclosures are available here. Definitions of common statistics used in our analysis are available here (towards the bottom).
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