Managers of the world’s largest endowment and foundation portfolios have long made substantial allocations to alternative investments. With stellar returns and alternatives allocations as large as 60% of assets, the endowment model has attracted admirers and imitators. What is the source of the returns earned by these successful endowments? Can emulating the alternative investment exposure of large endowments lead to similarly high returns? How has the perception and practice of the endowment model changed after the large drawdowns experienced in 2008?
About Our Speaker:
Keith Black, Ph.D., CFA, CAIA
Managing Director of Curriculum and Exams
CAIA Association
Keith Black has over twenty-five years of financial market experience, serving approximately half of that time as an academic and half as a trader and consultant to institutional investors. He currently serves as Managing Director of Curriculum and Exams for the CAIA Association. During his most recent role at Ennis Knupp + Associates, Keith advised foundations, endowments and pension funds on their asset allocation and manager selection strategies in hedge funds, commodities, and managed futures. Prior experience includes commodities derivatives trading, stock options research and CBOE floor trading, and building quantitative stock selection models for mutual funds and hedge funds. Dr. Black previously served as an assistant professor and senior lecturer at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
He contributes regularly to The CFA Digest, and has published in The Journal of Wealth Management, The Journal of Trading, The Journal of Investing, and The Journal of Alternative Investments, among others. He is the author of the book “Managing a Hedge Fund,” as well as the co-author of the 2012 and 2015/2016 second and third editions of the CAIA Level I and Level II textbooks. Dr. Black was named to the Institutional Investor magazine’s list of “Rising Stars of Hedge Funds” in 2010.
Dr. Black earned a BA from Whittier College, an MBA for Carnegie Mellon University, and a PhD from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He has earned the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and was a member of the inaugural class of the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) candidates.