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In a September 30 article, James Van Bramer examines how SpaceX gains boosted university endowment returns while leaving some funds with large positions to manage. MPI CEO Michael Markov discusses the risk on both sides of the comparison: a fund that missed SpaceX may have taken less risk, while one that benefited now faces a concentration decision. As he tells P&I, “The return alone doesn’t tell us which CIO made the better decision.”

Read the Pensions & Investments article

The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Zweig cites MPI CEO and co-founder Michael Markov in an Intelligent Investor column Don’t Fall for Bond Funds That Say They’re Beating the Market – WSJ examining why bond-fund outperformance can reflect risks that aren’t captured by the benchmark. Markov cautions that investors can mistake “unknown risk” with “known skill” when evaluating funds against benchmarks that fail to reflect their underlying exposures.

Related analyses in MPI Stylus Pro:
Challenges in Analyzing PIMCO Total Return
The PIMCO Income Puzzle
Western Asset / Leech: What Return-Based Surveillance Could See

Bloomberg’s Lu Wang features MPI research on AI exposure among the largest U.S. public pension systems. At Bloomberg’s request, MPI used Stylus Pro to investigate the economic exposure to AI across roughly 50 large public pensions, including exposures that may not be visible from reported holdings alone. The analysis found little excess AI exposure on average beyond what is already embedded in broad markets, while highlighting important differences among individual systems. CalPERS stood out in part because of AI-related exposure embedded in its private-fund investments.

Institutional Investor features MPI research examining how concentrated SpaceX exposure helped drive the wide dispersion in FY2026 endowment returns. MPI’s analysis estimates that for institutions entering the year with several percentage points of SpaceX exposure, the company’s roughly 280% appreciation could have added 8–11 percentage points to annual performance. Michael Markov cautions that the outsized impact of a single investment on one year’s results should not be confused with evidence for a different long-term asset allocation.

SpaceX Boosts Returns of Endowments That Invested Early | Institutional Investor

Top1000funds’ Darcy Song features MPI research estimating that early SpaceX investments contributed as much as 10.6 percentage points to annual returns at some U.S. university endowments. The article quotes MPI founder and CEO Michael Markov on the resulting concentration risk and highlights how precise analysis of top-level returns can reveal the economic exposures driving total-portfolio performance—even when conventional asset-allocation reporting does not.

US endowment returns rocket on SpaceX windfall – Top1000funds.com

FundFire features MPI research using MPI Stylus Pro to show how Princeton’s unusually low U.S. equity exposure contributed to its recent underperformance, raising broader questions about private-market-heavy endowment portfolios.

FundFire – Princeton’s Return Slowdown Adds Fuel to Endowments’ Alts Concerns (subscription required)

CoinDesk quotes MPI CEO Michael Markov on how rising volatility can increase the risk contribution of digital assets within institutional portfolios, potentially triggering rebalancing rather than a strategic shift. Read article here.

The Wall Street Journal cited MPI’s comparative analysis of Ivy and peer endowment performance and linked to MPI’s Transparency Lab in a December 2, 2025 article, “Harvard’s Big Wager on Bitcoin Came Right Before the Bust,” which examined Harvard’s recent bitcoin investments and how its returns stack up against other leading universities.

In a December 1, 2025 feature titled “Crypto Is the Secret Sauce University Endowments Don’t Want to Talk About,” Institutional Investor’s Leah McGrath Goodman highlights MPI’s latest returns-based analysis of elite university endowments. Drawing on MPI’s work, the article reports that digital asset and AI bets boosted fiscal 2025 results at leading institutions such as Michigan, MIT, and Stanford by an estimated 200–300 basis points, helping drive average returns of roughly 11–12 percent for large Ivy and peer endowments. It also underscores MPI CEO and co-founder Michael Markov’s view that, despite crypto’s growing contribution to performance, many endowments remain reluctant to speak publicly about these exposures due to political and governance sensitivities