In The News
Princeton will not have to pay any net investment income tax on returns from its $36.4 billion endowment, a University investment official said at a private event in January, after a recent expansion of its undergraduate financial aid program left the University below a 3,000 tuition-paying student threshold to qualify for taxation.
Officials from Yale University’s endowment, which manages over 65 trillion won ($44 billion) in assets, are set to visit Korea to discuss investments with domestic asset managers. As expectations for a re-rating of Korean equities grow on the back of the government’s corporate value-up initiative and expanding shareholder returns, even global university endowments are now scouting investment opportunities in the country.
Princeton needs to transition from growth to focus because long-term rates of return are steadily declining across university endowments. This decline has been hard to see because returns have been volatile. In other words, returns have not been a steady 8 percent or 10 percent; instead, they have been all over the map.
Cynosure Capital Management, its new outsourced chief investment officer, is founded by members of one of the state’s richest families.
Data from the annual Higher Education Price Index® (HEPI) show that inflation for U.S. colleges and universities rose 3.6 percent in fiscal year 2025, surpassing the 3.4 percent inflation reported in fiscal year 2024.
The Ivy League institution’s tax bill starting next year will be higher than what it spends on student aid, university officials said.
Wallace reflects on the lessons of rebalancing the portfolio amidst collapsing markets during March 2020, the challenge of scaling alternative strategies at $50 billion, and why the rise of passive investing may paradoxically create opportunities for fundamental investors. He draws on wisdom from his mentor David Swensen’s emphasis on first-principles thinking, the importance of relationships as well as rigorous quantitative work, and the courage required to stand alone when your analysis demands it.
Nearly a decade after promising to withdraw millions in fossil fuel investments, the University of Massachusetts has stalled on its clean energy transition. What happened?
A crucial economic indicator flashes green, yet few take heed. Convinced it outlived its usefulness, they shun this bullish signal or dismiss it outright. What is it? “Yield curves” – and understanding their sneaky global power gives you an advantage. Let me show you why this antiquated economic gauge has renewed energy – and what it says for stocks’ future.
The internet’s most profitable business model has always been simple: running search ads on monetizable queries. When you search “how many protons are in a cesium atom,” Google makes no money. When you search “best tennis racket,” it prints cash.
This asymmetry defines the entire search economy–some queries are pure curiosity, and others have direct purchase intent. It’s part of why Google (where people often search for products) is a $2T company and Wikipedia (where people search for knowledge or fun facts) is a non-profit.
