It does not make sense to compare the returns of a $26b fund to that of the S&P 500. You are thinking like a small-time investor who can simply buy and ETF or i

It does not make sense to compare the returns of a $26b fund to that of the S&P 500. You are thinking like a small-time investor who can simply buy and ETF or index fund. When you have $26bn to manage, you need to do a lot of work to diversify it and spread it across tons of different assets in different markets (not just US equities). Yale's target for 2016 is to hold only 4.0% in domestic equity.[1] A good comparison would be to another fund of a similar size. According to this Citi report [2] (most recent numbers I could find by AUM size), the average fund with >$10B in AUM in 2013 returned 13%. Note - there were only 18 hedge funds in the world that fell into that bracket. That average is lower in 2015 - how much? I'm not sure. But probably under the 11.5% net return reported by Yale in 2015. [1] http://news.yale.edu/2015/09/24/investment-return-115-brings-yale-endowment-value-256-billion http://news.yale.edu/2015/09/24/investment-return-115-brings... [2] https://www.citibank.com/mss/sa/conference/aslf/2015/docs/citi_benchmark_2015_us_nc.pdf https://www.citibank.com/mss/sa/conference/aslf/2015/docs/ci...