It might be sound strategy for an endowment to give up upside in the most raging of bull markets that we’ve ever seen in exchange for lower drawdown in down markets. A low beta portfolio underperformed (by definition) in 2009-2019.
I’m a staunch proponent of passive index investing so I suspect we largely agree on philosophy, but the mere fact that someone underperformed in the somewhat historically anomalous market we’ve enjoyed for the last decade is not conclusive that they clowned it, IMO. If they outperformed 2005-2008 or outperform in the next bear market, that would be evidence again full clown performance.
That article states they outperformed when measured over a 10, 15, 20, and 25 year period and underperformed over a 5 year period. (See the table. The longer periods include the more recent periods meaning they had strong outperformance early that more than made up for the recent under.)
Is that evidence that they’re dramatically underperforming? It seems the story is mixed and you could argue either way depending on whether you think the last 5 years are more important than the prior 20 or not. (It might be, if you argue that something fundamental changed. That would fall into the “this time it’s different” which is generally falsified eventually.)
The endowements averaged the market over the last 25 years. There will always be some funds that will outperform the market. In the majority of the cases this will be luck. (Except for exposure to known risk factors like size or value)
I’m a staunch proponent of passive index investing so I suspect we largely agree on philosophy, but the mere fact that someone underperformed in the somewhat historically anomalous market we’ve enjoyed for the last decade is not conclusive that they clowned it, IMO. If they outperformed 2005-2008 or outperform in the next bear market, that would be evidence again full clown performance.