
Our Philosophy
Our Philosophy
Investment strategies are developed and implemented to address the philosophy, goals, and objectives of the Endowment. The Endowment is invested across a broad array of strategies designed to create a diversified portfolio that pursues long-term capital growth while providing a stable stream of income despite fluctuations in the financial markets so that the Endowment may endure volatility events and market cycles. TCU Investment Management exploits investment opportunities categorized as follows:
CONSISTENCY
The requirement for an annual payout of approximately 5% each year necessitates that strategies be employed to mitigate the more volatile return streams. The Consistency portfolio may include Absolute Return and Fixed Income strategies. Absolute Return incorporates alternative partnerships including co-investments designed to be positive in any given year with a relatively low correlation to the broad equity market. Private credit and absolute return-oriented marketable alternatives are the core strategies.
INFLATION HEDGE
Strategies may be employed that have the specific purpose of offsetting the effects of inflation rather than seeking return for a given level of risk. Such strategies may include but are not limited to a variety of real assets such as real estate, commodities, and energy private equity. The University’s directly held mineral assets are not included in the capital markets portfolio except for purposes of separate monitoring and cash flow tracking. The Inflation Hedge portfolio seeks a total real return of 5% or higher over a full market cycle to satisfy the long-term objectives of the Endowment, correlated with inflation while uncorrelated with other Endowment strategies.
ENHANCED
Endowment cash, externally managed trusts, and the tactical exposure management account are included in this strategy. Endowment cash is distinctive from other short-term assets managed by TCU Investment Management. As such, it may be used as a liquidity and/or risk management tool to opportunistically hedge market risks or for other risk management approaches. TCU Investment Management utilizes the tactical exposure management account as a portfolio risk management tool to hold ETF shares to control portfolio exposure for geography, sector, size, style, and other risk factors that require affirmative management and where index futures are unavailable or impractical. The wide variety of ETF applications provides many benefits for addressing risk management including unanticipated distributions of capital.