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TEF LIBRARY

The Library section lists all of TEF's written materials - including articles, speeches, and commentary - chronologically, dating back to 1994.  If you cannot use the roll over feature in the timeline above, you may wish to download Silverlight.


2011

Summaries of interviews, including Ken Hersh (NGP Energy Capital Management), David Dominik (Golden Gate Capital), Runa Alam (Development Partners International), Steve Mandel (Lone Pine Capital), Lee Ainslie (Maverick Capital Management).

2010

Interviews with Michael Eisenson (Charlesbank Capital Partners) and Josh Kopelman (First Round Capital) from the 2009 Endowment Management Seminar.

A great financial journalist of the 20th century gets remembered and honored by a new voice of the 21st.

2009

Interview with Stu Porter (Denham Capital Management) from the 2008 Endowment Management Seminar.

Interview with Seth Klarman (Baupost Group) from the 2008 Endowment Management Seminar.

Interviews with Arshad Zakaria (New Vernon Capital) and Jon Moulton (Alchemy Partners) from the 2008 Endowment Management Seminar.

Interviews with Ian Wace (Marshall Wace Asset Management), Jeremy Hosking (Marathon Asset Management), and Antoine van Agtmael (Emerging Markets Management) from the 2009 Endowment Management Seminar.

2008

Interviews with Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg (Strategic Investment Group) and Tom Steyer (Farallon Capital Management) from the 2007 Endowment Management Seminar.

Interview with Robert Bruner (University of Virginia Darden School of Business) from the 2008 Endowment Management Seminar

2007

An address entitled Endowment Management Circa 2007: Art, Science or Craft? by TIFF’s founding president David Salem at a gathering assembled by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO).

Interviews with Bevis Longstreth (Former SEC Commissioner), Joanne Hill (Goldman Sachs), and Marty Leibowitz (Morgan Stanley) from the 2007 Endowment Management Seminar.

2006

Interviews with Jim Garland (The Jeffrey Company), Charlie Ellis (Yale University’s investment committee), and Mark Kritzman (Windham Capital Management) from the 2005 Endowment Management Seminar.

A fictional investment committee deliberates the pros and cons of a novel approach to policy portfolio construction entailing a highly unconventional approach to risk budgeting.

Interviews with Harvey Dale (NYU School of Law), Mohamed El-Erian (Harvard Management Company), and Bill McCalpin (Rockefeller Brothers Fund) from the 2006 Endowment Management Seminar.

Interviews with Bill Helman (Greylock Partners) and Jeremy Grantham (GMO) from the 2006 Endowment Management Seminar.

2005

Thoughts on ways in which persons charged with stewarding endowment capital can do a more effective job discharging this solemn duty.

Discusses how most investment failures tend to be rooted in overly aggressive play.

Presentations by Jack Meyer (Harvard Management Company) and Steve Galbraith (Maverick Capital) from the 2005 Endowment Management Seminar.

2004

Discusses the fact that even if the Chinese economy keeps expanding at a rapid clip, this doesn’t necessarily mean that shareholders in the latter will pocket large profits

Discusses an ambitious initiative: to develop a truly integrated approach to investment policy formulation for endowed charities.

Focuses on a concise and internally consistent investment policy statement (IPS) for endowed charities.

Discusses the costs that endowed charities and other investors incur due to a misalignment of interests between owners or principals on the one hand and agents on the other.

Discusses the fact that even if the Chinese economy keeps expanding at a rapid clip, this doesn’t necessarily mean that shareholders in the latter will pocket large profits.

2003

Discusses – among other things – the fact that few investors can afford to “buy and hold” stocks on a truly permanent basis, perpetual life charities not excepted.

Discusses regulation, the money management industry, and hedge funds versus absolute-return-oriented investment partnerships.

A fictional investment committee debates long-term asset allocation and why relatively small money management shops have an edge investing in marketable stocks on a truly global basis.

Discusses – among other things – the fact that few investors can afford to “buy and hold” stocks on a truly permanent basis, perpetual life charities not excepted.

A fictional investment committee debates long-term asset allocation and why relatively small money management shops have an edge investing in marketable stocks on a truly global basis.

2002

By devising creative answers to familiar questions – or by asking questions that others lack the creativity or courage to pose – investors can gain a material edge over the competition.

The best means of preserving the non-profit sector’s vitally important independence is for those privileged to hold leadership positions within it to insist that the organizations they lead adhere to the highest possible standards of performance and fair dealing.

Because so many forms of investing have failed of late, the demand for certain types of managers is shrinking relative to available supply, making it easier on the margin for attentive investors to negotiate more client-friendly fees and terms.

A fictional investment committee debates a host of scintillating investment policy issues, including sensible policy changes, adding private investments into a policy, and foreign stocks.

By devising creative answers to familiar questions – or by asking questions that others lack the creativity or courage to pose – investors can gain a material edge over the competition.

Because so many forms of investing have failed of late, the demand for certain types of managers is shrinking relative to available supply, making it easier on the margin for attentive investors to negotiate more client-friendly fees and terms.

A fictional investment committee debates a host of scintillating investment policy issues, including sensible policy changes, adding private investments into a policy, and foreign stocks.

Focuses on the fact that there’s no such thing as an “ideal” asset mix or policy portfolio, even for endowed charities with identical spending rules.

Focuses on the fact that there’s no such thing as an “ideal” asset mix or policy portfolio, even for endowed charities with identical spending rules.

Asks the question: how can trustees of endowed charities deploy their assets in a manner that will give them a “fighting chance” of maintaining purchasing power while consuming 6% of endowment assets per annum?

2001

Keeping a diary of timeless truths about investing has helped at least one fiduciary avoid certain mistakes that investors tend to make on a recurring basis.

Boiled to their essence, all prescriptions for investment success have just two active ingredients: "think long term" and "control your emotions."

Asset allocation, like parenting, is such a universal and important challenge that laypersons assume "experts" have reduced it to an exact science. In fact, it’s nothing of the sort.

Keeping a diary of timeless truths about investing has helped at least one fiduciary avoid certain mistakes that investors tend to make on a recurring basis.

Boiled to their essence, all prescriptions for investment success have just two active ingredients: "think long term" and "control your emotions."

Discusses asset allocation, i.e., what types of assets endowed charities should hold and in what proportion.

2000

Financial markets were memorably unkind to most investors in 2000, and careful study of that year’s market action reveals several important lessons for investors.

America’s elementary and secondary schools (private as well as public) are manifestly failing to prepare students to compete effectively in a truly globalized economy.

Three broad categories are covered: (1) the Internet's impact on corporate strategy and tactics, (2) the Internet's impact on institutional investment strategy and tactics, and (3) the Internet's impact on public policy formulation and implementation.

Discusses Inflation Linked Bonds (ILBs) and the global ILB market.

Discusses the two main segments of the real estate market: the first includes those areas that cater to the technology industry (San Francisco area, Boston, New York City, west Los Angeles), and the second segment is everything else.

1999

There are more than a few parallels between what speakers had to say at a pension officers' conference in Cape Town and what wide-eyed tourists espied on the game reserve: there is safety in numbers, overconfidence is to be overcome, expect the unexpected, sloth is a virtue, risk is in the eyes of the beholder.

The lamentable fact is that computer-based approaches to asset allocation do not eliminate the need for fiduciaries (or their advisers) to make subjective judgments about future returns, volatilities, and correlations of the asset classes and subclasses being considered for purchase.

Comprises a series of observations about the state of American society and markets circa December 1999.

The S&P 500 comprises not the 500 largest US stocks but rather 500 issues that a committee of Standard & Poors employees deems representative of the broad US economy.

1998

Discusses the vital disciplinary role of fund-of-funds in the private equity marketplace.

1997

"Exogenous risk" is a fancy way of describing what most investors focus on when they ponder why securities move up or down in price.

One nice thing to be said about both the M² and Sharpe methods is that they are robust enough to accommodate multiple definitions of risk.

The only reason to hold bonds on a truly permanent basis is to hedge against a major deflation like the 1930s, and the only bonds worth owning in a major deflation are long-term, high quality, non-callable ones.

1996

Covers interesting facts and figures about emerging markets and discusses whether or not emerging markets is a distinct asset class.

Attempts to synthesize the chief arguments for and against the US Treasury’s proposal to issue inflation-indexed bonds — from both an investor's and a taxpayer's perspective.

Expands upon Inflation Linked Bonds and discusses new things learned about the US Treasury’s issuing of “Canadian-style” inflation-linked bonds.

Mark Twain was right: there's as much human nature in any of us as there is in all of us, and hence the only safe premise on which our investment behavior can be based is the assumption that our intuitions are likely to mislead us from time to time.

1995

The principles that underlie most successful attempts to diversify institutional funds beyond domestic stocks and bonds are in fact the same principles that animate successful investment programs that are confined to these two traditional asset classes.

The problem with the all-equity approach that a lot of colleges adopted in the early 1970s is not that the approach was wrong, but rather that they didn't have the discipline to stick with it.

1994

Many investors have been so conditioned to examine carefully the risks inherent in each investment that they make — to make sure that their downside is tolerable — that they ignore entirely or give short shrift to the important question of whether their upside is adequate.

There is no such thing as an “ideal” asset mix — even for foundations with identical spending policies.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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