I read a good article recently on how to construct an Ivy League fund [1] using exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
The original article was for American investors. Here’s how British readers can do the same thing.
But why would you want an Ivy League style fund?
Well, the endowment funds of Ivy League universities like Yale and Harvard have historically achieved excellent returns, with less volatility than an index tracker [2].
Their success is partly because of special opportunities we can’t easily replicate, such as access to good hedge funds.
But they’ve also done well because of asset allocation [3], which we can copy with ETFs.
The model we’ll be following is that of David Swensen, who is Yale’s fund manager. (I’ve previously sung the praises of Swensen’s book Unconventional Success, which is well worth reading).
Swensen had posted an average return of 16% a year for 21 years, as of 2006. This makes him the best university endowment manager in the world.
Swensen’s Ivy League portfolio via UK ETFs
In place of the U.S. ETFs, I’ve selected from the Barclays iShares range of London-listed exchange-trade funds.
Each ETF’s stock market ticker is given in brackets.
The Swensen model portfolio
- Domestic Equity (30%): FTSE 100 / FTSE 250 (ISF / MIDD)
- Emerging Market Equity (5%): MSCI Emerging Market Equity (IEEM)
- Foreign Developed Equity (15%): FTSE Developed World (IWXU)
- Property (REITs) (20%): FTSE EPRA/NAREIT UK Property (IUKP)
- U.K. Government Bonds (15%): FTSE UK All Stocks Gilt (IGLT)
- U.K. Inflation-Linked Bonds (15%): £ Index-Linked Gilts (INXG)
A few thoughts on this ETF portfolio
The Ivy League ETF portfolio has some clear advantages to UK investors:
- Well-diversified
- Cheap to run
- Liquid [4]
- Very simple to set-up
- Easy to rebalance [5]
Would I put my money into it right now? Well, I haven’t done so, which answers the question.
Partly that’s because I’m foolish, and do risky things like invest in small caps [6].
But also I think equities look really good value [7] at the moment, whereas I suspect Government bonds are still expensive [8], although maybe not in a bubble anymore.
The whole point of asset allocation is you ignore these sorts of hunches, however, so that’s something to keep in mind.
As the original ETF Database article says:
Several Ivy League endowment managers have consistently beat the market by a large margin, with billions of dollars at stake. Of course, this is made possible partly because many investing instruments are available to larger institutional investors that retail investors cannot access. But according to these managers, the trick for individual investors isn’t active trading: it’s better asset allocation.
As a simple asset allocation goal to aim towards over the next few years, I think the Ivy League endowment portfolio via ETFs has much to recommend it.
Update August 2010: I’ve now written a second article on the Ivy League portfolio [9], modifying it in light of its past performance and some further comments by David Swensen.
Remember to take professional advice if you need it before making any investments.