Endowment up 4.5 percent
The University’s Investments Office said Thursday that the Yale endowment earned a 4.5 percent return in the fiscal year ending June 30, outperforming market benchmarks but trailing Harvard in overall performance.
The endowment now stands at $22.9 billion, up from $22.5 billion last year.
While 4.5 percent might not seem like much following years of double-digit gains, including last year’s 28 percent haul, it still is likely to stand as among the highest returns reported by universities nationwide this year, given the sagging economy. The S&P 500, a popular benchmark for...
Maybe I'm just completely BSing, but my guess is that they earned a 4.5 percent return but some of that was spent so the endowment gain is not equivalent to the full fiscal year returns.
The "return on investment" was 4.5%, but the net of expenditures over contributiond was such that the actual increase in the endowment at the end of the fiscal year was about $400 million .... from $22.5 billion to $22.9 billion.
Thank you for the clarification. Cheers to the investment team!
That seems to under-perform Harvard endowment, but still very good given the market turmoil.
Here there is a comparison of Harvard and Yale endowments over the years - http://investmentscientist.com/2008/09/21/all-weather-portfolio-investing-like-yale-harvard-endowments/
I don't understand the math. Did the endowment grow to $23.5B as of June 30, then lose $600M during the summer?