300mph

Performance for Harvard, Yale Endowments in 2008

Let me make this very simple. With no accounting of how the stated returns were generated the numbers are meaningless. This isn't the first time that the Yale performance has been touted as some kind of superior investing genius, but as those above have stated, it's not verifiable and questionable accounting is suspected.

I personally found a very glaring example of this a few years ago when examining a year-end report published by a very large public employee retirement fund. They were also claiming some very large returns. It turns out that they were adding new contributions to the fund in the gain calculation. Outrageous.

Wednesday Outlook: The Bear Comes Out of Hibernation

Do you realize how annoying that little stick figure animation in the upper right corner is?