IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/assmgt/v25y2024i4d10.1057_s41260-023-00346-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Endowment asset allocations: insights and strategies

Author

Listed:
  • Tom Arnold

    (University of Richmond)

  • John H. Earl

    (University of Richmond)

  • Joseph Farizo

    (University of Richmond)

  • David North

    (University of Richmond)

Abstract

Using monthly data from 1997 to 2023, we construct mean-variance optimized portfolios of common university endowment asset classes, including domestic equity, international equity, global bonds, hedge funds, private equity, real estate, and natural resources. We find substantial variation in optimal allocations to these asset classes across subperiods. Some asset classes are substantially more persistent in receiving allocations than others, while some asset classes rarely receive sizable allocations at all. Our results highlight the relevance of asset allocation in portfolio performance and may inform future decisions by institutional investors and endowment portfolio managers.

Suggested Citation

  • Tom Arnold & John H. Earl & Joseph Farizo & David North, 2024. "Endowment asset allocations: insights and strategies," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 25(4), pages 349-368, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:assmgt:v:25:y:2024:i:4:d:10.1057_s41260-023-00346-9
    DOI: 10.1057/s41260-023-00346-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41260-023-00346-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41260-023-00346-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeffrey R. Brown & Stephen G. Dimmock & Jun-Koo Kang & Scott J. Weisbenner, 2014. "How University Endowments Respond to Financial Market Shocks: Evidence and Implications," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(3), pages 931-962, March.
    2. Joseph Gerakos & Juhani T. Linnainmaa & Adair Morse, 2021. "Asset Managers: Institutional Performance and Factor Exposures," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(4), pages 2035-2075, August.
    3. Raman Vardharaj & Frank J. Fabozzi, 2007. "Sector, Style, Region: Explaining Stock Allocation Performance," Financial Analysts Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 63(3), pages 59-70, May.
    4. Philippe Jorion, 2021. "Hedge Funds vs. Alternative Risk Premia," Financial Analysts Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 77(4), pages 65-81, October.
    5. Tim Jenkinson & Howard Jones & Jose Vicente Martinez, 2016. "Picking Winners? Investment Consultants’ Recommendations of Fund Managers," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(5), pages 2333-2370, October.
    6. Andrew W. Lo & Mila Getmansky & Peter A. Lee, 2015. "Hedge Funds: A Dynamic Industry in Transition," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 483-577, December.
    7. William Fung & David A. Hsieh & Narayan Y. Naik & Tarun Ramadorai, 2008. "Hedge Funds: Performance, Risk, and Capital Formation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1777-1803, August.
    8. Roger G. Ibbotson & Paul D. Kaplan, 2000. "Does Asset Allocation Policy Explain 40, 90, or 100 Percent of Performance?," Financial Analysts Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(1), pages 26-33, January.
    9. Nicolas P.B. Bollen & Juha Joenväärä & Mikko Kauppila, 2021. "Hedge Fund Performance: End of an Era?," Financial Analysts Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 77(3), pages 109-132, July.
    10. Adam L. Aiken & Christopher P. Clifford & Jesse Ellis, 2013. "Out of the Dark: Hedge Fund Reporting Biases and Commercial Databases," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(1), pages 208-243.
    11. David Chambers & Elroy Dimson & Charikleia Kaffe, 2020. "Seventy-Five Years of Investing for Future Generations," Financial Analysts Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 76(4), pages 5-21, October.
    12. Cejnek, Georg & Franz, Richard & Stoughton, Neal M., 2023. "Portfolio Choice with Endogenous Donations - Modeling University Endowments," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 125.
    13. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    14. William Fung & David A. Hsieh, 2002. "Hedge-Fund Benchmarks: Information Content and Biases," Financial Analysts Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(1), pages 22-34, January.
    15. Stephen G. Dimmock, 2012. "Background Risk and University Endowment Funds," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(3), pages 789-799, August.
    16. Kosowski, Robert & Naik, Narayan Y. & Teo, Melvyn, 2007. "Do hedge funds deliver alpha? A Bayesian and bootstrap analysis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 229-264, April.
    17. James X. Xiong & Roger G. Ibbotson & Thomas M. Idzorek & Peng Chen, 2010. "The Equal Importance of Asset Allocation and Active Management," Financial Analysts Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 66(2), pages 22-30, March.
    18. William B. English & Mico Loretan, 2000. "Evaluating \"correlation breakdowns\" during periods of market volatility," International Finance Discussion Papers 658, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    19. Brad M. Barber & Guojun Wang, 2013. "Do (Some) University Endowments Earn Alpha?," Financial Analysts Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 69(5), pages 26-44, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yang, Fan & Havranek, Tomas & Irsova, Zuzana & Novak, Jiri, 2022. "Hedge Fund Performance: A Quantitative Survey," EconStor Preprints 260612, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    2. Agarwal, Vikas & Green, T. Clifton & Ren, Honglin, 2018. "Alpha or beta in the eye of the beholder: What drives hedge fund flows?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(3), pages 417-434.
    3. Yang, Fan & Havranek, Tomas & Irsova, Zuzana & Novak, Jiri, 2024. "Where Have All the Alphas Gone? A Meta-Analysis of Hedge Fund Performance," EconStor Preprints 289497, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    4. Ben-David, Itzhak & Birru, Justin & Rossi, Andrea, 2020. "The Performance of Hedge Fund Performance Fees," Working Paper Series 2020-14, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    5. Cici, Gjergji & Kempf, Alexander & Pütz, Alexander, 2010. "Caught in the act: How hedge funds manipulate their equity positions," CFR Working Papers 10-15, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    6. Massimo Guidolin & Alexei Orlov, 2020. "Are Unconventional Monetary Policies a Priced Risk Factor for Hedge Fund Strategies?," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 20146, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    7. Andrew Ang & Andrés Ayala & William N. Goetzmann, 2018. "Investment beliefs of endowments," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 24(1), pages 3-33, January.
    8. Agarwal, Vikas & Green, Tracy Clifton & Ren, Honglin, 2017. "Alpha or beta in the eye of the beholder: What drives hedge fund flows?," CFR Working Papers 15-08, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR), revised 2017.
    9. Chen, Yong & Kelly, Bryan & Wu, Wei, 2020. "Sophisticated investors and market efficiency: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(2), pages 316-341.
    10. Malakhov, Alexey & Riley, Timothy B. & Yan, Qing, 2024. "Do hedge funds bet against beta?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 93(PA), pages 1507-1525.
    11. Nucera, Federico & Valente, Giorgio, 2013. "Carry trades and the performance of currency hedge funds," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 407-425.
    12. Benoît Dewaele, 2013. "Leverage and Alpha: The Case of Funds of Hedge Funds," Working Papers CEB 13-033, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    13. Alexander Berglund & Massimo Guidolin & Manuela Pedio, 2020. "Monetary policy after the crisis: A threat to hedge funds' alphas?," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 21(3), pages 219-238, May.
    14. Sandeep Dahiya & David Yermack, 2018. "Investment Returns and Distribution Policies of Non-Profit Endowment Funds," NBER Working Papers 25323, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Shi, Zhen, 2017. "The impact of portfolio disclosure on hedge fund performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(1), pages 36-53.
    16. Ling, Yun & Satchell, Stephen & Yao, Juan, 2023. "Decreasing returns to scale and skill in hedge funds," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    17. Massimo Guidolin & Alexei G. Orlov, 2022. "Can Investors Benefit from Hedge Fund Strategies? Utility-Based, Out-of-Sample Evidence," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 12(03), pages 1-61, September.
    18. Nicolae Gârleanu & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2018. "Efficiently Inefficient Markets for Assets and Asset Management," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(4), pages 1663-1712, August.
    19. Paul Karehnke & Frans de Roon, 2020. "Spanning Tests for Assets with Option-Like Payoffs: The Case of Hedge Funds," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(12), pages 5969-5989, December.
    20. Almeida, Caio & Ardison, Kym & Garcia, René, 2020. "Nonparametric assessment of hedge fund performance," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 214(2), pages 349-378.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Allocation; Hedge funds; Institutional investing; Optimization; Endowments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:assmgt:v:25:y:2024:i:4:d:10.1057_s41260-023-00346-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.