Press

“In general, one might expect that the size of CalPERS’ portfolio will make it harder to generate excess returns in almost any asset class as they are actually moving markets,” MPI President Jeff Schwartz tells CIO’s Randy Diamond in his article about the system’s active investment risk-taking review. “As such, they really need to pick their battles when it comes to identifying areas to pursue excess returns, especially on a risk-adjusted basis, given that less-efficient market segments tend to hold more risks.” Read full article here.

“Rather than seek alpha from an outstanding hedge fund or private equity manager, target-date investors would be better off embracing diversification by adding more asset classes,” explains Jeff Schwartz, president at MPI. “Those benefits could probably be accessed at lower cost from the liquid alternative universe, or in ETFs that replicate hedge fund strategies.” Read the full article here.

“Unconstrained funds are a recent addition to the fixed-income category lineup,” writes Daren Fonda, of Barron’s, in his article looking at the state of bond investing in 2018. “These funds have few restraints—some even own common or preferred stocks—and may actively bet against rates by selling Treasury futures or using other derivatives. Many unconstrained funds teed up for rising rates in 2010—way too early—and posted weak returns until 2015. But low duration and exposure to floating-rate is helping many funds stay ahead of the U.S. market average, according to data from Markov Processes International.” Read the full article here. (subscription required)

“Between 2010 and 2015, many investors could have dismissed non-traditional bond funds as a high-priced gimmick, delivering no benefit over traditional core bond funds. As the economy recovered and interest rates rose, however, these funds look to have been well positioned to benefit, helping them to outperform since 2015,” says MPI’s Sean Ryan in this article looking at the performance of the unconstrained bond funds by Institutional Investor‘s Julie Segal.

“(MPI), a New Jersey quantitative research and analytics provider, has constructed indices that track the performance of elite hedge funds which can be replicated by low-cost exchange traded funds,” explains Chris Flood of the Financial Times. “Its newest benchmark, the MPI Barclay Elite Systematic Traders index, aims to capture the returns of the 20 largest quantitative hedge fund managers.” (subscription required to read article) Learn more about MPI Hedge Fund Indices.

“MPI has evaluated endowment returns using its patented process, called “Dynamic Style Analysis,” which was designed to model the behavior of otherwise secretive investments such as hedge funds or university portfolios,” explains Julie Segal of Institutional Investor. “The annual results of Yale and the Ivy League colleges and universities, which have huge commitments to private investments, are closely watched by the industry.” Read the full article here.

“Even Harvard and Yale, which have expert teams of academics and Wall Street managers overseeing their multibillion endowments, have been unable to do much better over time than a simple blend of index funds,” says Ian McGugan of The Globe and Mail. “In fact, an utterly standard index fund blend of 60% stocks and 40% bonds would have outpaced the returns most Ivy League endowments have achieved over the past decade…according to a recent report by Markov Processes International, an investment research firm (subscription required to read article). Read the MPI report here.

“MPI’s new effort is an attempt to create an alternative to existing hedge fund benchmarks that follow the entire market and whose composition can fluctuate as smaller funds fail to report their holdings or close altogether,” explains Julie Segal in her coverage of the MPI Hedge Fund Indices launch. “MPI will instead include only the returns of the largest firms, which it believes are more stable and give a true picture of performance.” Read the full article here.

“We’re talking about true believers in the value of alternatives,” MPI President, Jeff Schwartz, tells the New York Times Columnist James B. Stewart. “It’s hard to take an embedded belief system like that and say, just because we’ve had an outstanding bull market, that you should move to 60-40.” Read our full 2017 Ivy League endowment performance report.

“Selection/non-reporting bias, survivorship bias, and backfill or instant history bias can all serve to artificially inflate index returns, which are often higher for non-investable than for investable hedge fund indices,” explains Hamlin Lovell, in his feature article on the launch of MPI’s Hedge Fund Indices business. “According to MPI, these biases can be overcome by building a representative index comprised of a selective group of the largest funds.” Read the article here.