Investment Planning

The Best Offense Is a Good Defense

A detailed discussion of how investors should protect their portfolios and allocate their assets during a bear market. Exhibits include cumulative wealth analyses, U.S. equity returns, price-earnings ratios, and global equity market valuations.

Rebalancing

While rebalancing may provide a slight enhancement in returns, its primary goal is to keep asset class weights at or near target allocations in order to control risk and reduce portfolio volatility. This report outlines characteristics of the most common rebalancing strategies and issues to consider when establishing and setting a rebalancing policy.

Global Inflation Hedging

This report examines inflation’s impact on investments and evaluates several inflation-hedging strategies with an emphasis on cross-border investments. Exhibits include the performance of various inflation hedges in high and low inflation periods.

Derivatives: An Introduction

An introduction to the sector of financial instruments whose value is based on that of some underlying security, such as a bond or a share of a stock. This primer covers the definitions, characteristics, and uses of the major types of derivatives as well as issues and guidelines for implementation.

Reversal of Fortune: The Effect of the Market Decline on the Budgets of Endowed Institutions

This paper describes the circumstances surrounding the accelerated rise of expenses at many institutions with large endowments during the unprecedented market rise of the 1990s, and the budgetary implications of the three-year decline in the equity markets, not seen since 1941. A section entitled “What to Do?” offers suggestions for dealing with the budgetary consequences…