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Comment by baccredited | Hacker News Reader

This is how a couple of university endowment funds do investing:

 	                Harvard	Yale
  Domestic Equity	15%	14% 
  Foreign Equity	15%	14% 
  Private Equity	13%	17% 
  Fixed Income (bonds)	27%	5%
  Real Assets	        23%	25% 
  hedge funds	        12%	25%

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Your Harvard column adds up to 105%.

How do you think they get good returns?

Corrections are welcome

According to http://www.frontierim.com/files/file/download/id/1220 the top 20 US Endowment funds allocate their assets like:

  Private Equity                   19%
  Domestic Equity                  13%
  Global Equity                     8%
  Emerging Equity                   8%
  Global Bonds                      9%
  Global Real Estate               10%
  Commodities/Natural Resources     8%
  Hedge Funds/Managed Futures      21%
  Cash                              4%

The problem is that you and I don't have access to the best hedge funds and the best private equity funds and even the best real estate deals. You need real money, or connections, or a long investment history with a specific VC/PE firm to get into the most lucrative opportunities.

Endowments have very different requirements than many investors. They need the money to last forever, and they need it not to dip too precipitously during the downswings.

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