Yale Expands Stock Portfolio by More Than 300% in Rout
Yale Expands Stock Portfolio by More Than 300% in Market Plunge
(Bloomberg) -- Yale University’s publicly disclosed U.S. stock portfolio surged in value last quarter as the endowment added exchange-traded funds and technology shares during the coronavirus-fueled market plunge.
The endowment’s equities increased to $267.4 million as of the end of March from $62.8 million at the end of last year as the Ivy League school greatly expanded its holding in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF and established a new position in the Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF, according to a filing Wednesday.
“The ETFs are used to rebalance the endowment’s marketable asset classes to target and, as such, are generally small positions that can be either short or long,” David Swensen, the school’s longtime chief investment officer, said in an email.
The Yale endowment’s most recent public value was $30.3 billion as of last June, making it the second-richest private U.S. college. About 2.75% of assets are targeted for domestic equities and 13.75% for foreign stocks. The filing represents only a portion of the New Haven, Connecticut, school’s holdings.
Yale also showed a new stake in Slack Technologies Inc. and additional shares of Zoom Video Communications Inc., two stocks that have rallied this year as more people work from home because of the pandemic.
“Slack and Zoom are distributions of successful investments from Yale venture capital managers,” Swensen said. “Those positions will be sold in due course.”
The fund went the opposite way from some endowments and other big investors in the first quarter as U.S. stocks endured the worst rout since 2008. Harvard University’s public U.S.-traded stock holdings decreased in value by almost a third, according to a filing last week, reflecting both market changes and stock purchases and sales.
Money managers who oversee more than $100 million in equities in the U.S. must file a Form 13F within 45 days of each quarter’s end to list those stocks as well as options and convertible bonds. The filings don’t show non U.S. securities, holdings that aren’t publicly traded or cash.
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