The period represented Travis Shore's first full fiscal year as chief investment officer. He joined the foundation in April 2022 from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., where he served as deputy CIO in its investment office overseeing its $10.3 billion endowment.
In the webcast, Shore noted that since his arrival, "we have re-invested at this point roughly half of the endowment in a period of 16 to 18 months, about $1.2 billion of what was about a $2.4 billion starting value when I began."
Shore said he and the foundation's investment staff did an asset allocation review as part of incorporating a view on asset allocation through beta factors.
"We ultimately in conversation with the investment policy committee and the board of directors, we settled on a 70/30 benchmark," said Shore, "which is a fairly common sort of approach to the way you build a policy portfolio."
"For the last decade up until about 18 months ago, you know, many people ask 'Why do you bother with active management? Why even try to beat the market? You can't beat the market." And then suddenly you have interest rates increase from zero to roughly 5% which sent chaos through lots of different markets, and active management started to work pretty well."
According to the webcast, the foundation's long-term targets are now 61% equities, 14% credit, 6% each cash and real estate, 5% interest rates, 4% each commodities and hedged exposure.
As of June 30, 2022, the foundation had reported targets of 53% to public equities, 25% fixed income, 12% real assets and 10% private equity.
Actual allocation information as of June 30 was not provided, but Shore said that "our interest rate exposure is down a lot, our equity exposure is down a little bit, and we're carrying much more cash in the portfolio to keep a lower risk profile so we can be opportunistic as we have opportunities in the next year and a half."
Returns by asset class were not provided.
