One of the finance and investing books generating a lot of online buzz recently has been The Ivy Portfolio: How to Invest Like the Top Endowments and Avoid Bear Markets -- a comprehensive primer by Eric Richardson and Mebane Faber on how individual investors can create investment portfolios that resemble those created by institutions like Harvard and Yale. (Methinks the part of the title about "avoiding bear markets" was tacked on by an enterprising publisher hopeful of future book sales). Yale has been at the forefront of creating diversified, market-beating portfolios through the effective deployment of alternative asset classes, and there are certainly lessons there for the individual investor trying to replicate the same type of strategy.As dshort.com points out in a glowing review, the book (published at the end of March) is divided into three key parts. The first part of the book provides an overview of the strategy of the Yale and Harvard endowments; the second part of the book looks at private equity and hedge funds; and the third and most important part of the book examines active portfolio management.
For more on the Ivy Portfolio, check out (what else?) the official website of the book. Or, check out the five-star Amazon reviews. There's also a review over at CXO Advisory.
[image: The Ivy Portfolio]
