Don't Copy Yale

Research

Morgan Stanley - 100x AI Cultures (20 pages)

Morgan Stanley updates its AI beneficiaries research with a new metric that compares growth in revenue per tech employee against growth in tech salaries. Companies where productivity outpaced pay saw a 6.2% average forward return edge over the median, suggesting adaptability may be an advantage.

Bryan Kelly - Infinite Factor Structure in Conditional Asset Pricing (42 pages)

Bryan Kelly challenges the common view that stock returns are driven by a few dominant factors. He shows that estimating risk across changing market conditions creates countless priced factors, so trimming returns to a few principal components may discard compensated risk.

Ashby Monk - Institutional Investor Excellence: Role Models and the Role of 'Models' (31 pages)

Ashby Monk explores why asset owners describe their strategies through role models like the Yale, Canadian and Norway Models. He argues that copying a famous model often transfers visible practices without the capabilities behind them, producing uneven results.

Man Group - Beyond Stock Selection: A Systematic Approach to EM Country Timing (10 pages)

Man Group explores how systematic emerging market managers can pair stock selection with a country timing layer. The authors compare a valuation and momentum approach with a macro model blending economic logic and machine learning, using South Korea as a case study.

PIMCO - Is AI Crowding Out the Rest of the Economy? (4 pages)

PIMCO examines whether the AI investment boom is adding to U.S. growth or crowding out the rest of the economy. Roughly 90% of high-tech equipment is imported, easing some pressure, while housing, small businesses and labor absorb the rest.

Dimensional Fund Advisors - Profit Growth and Expected Stock Returns (44 pages)

DFA explores whether recent profit growth helps forecast near-term profitability and stock returns. The paper finds profit growth and price momentum carry complementary signals, offering a valuation-based explanation for why momentum works and why its predictive power fades quickly.

Bonus Content

MPI compares Harvard with its peers and examines how concentration, long-term performance and portfolio risk change the picture of this year’s winners. Link

Aswath Damodaran previews Anthropic’s IPO pricing and explains why ARR is today’s version of eyeballs. Link

Citadel shares an update on tokenomics. Link

Elroy Dimson and others estimate a positive emotion yield for 24 of 30 collectibles analyzed, with an annualized mean (median) of 2.64% (2.53%). Link

CIO Greg Jensen discusses how AI and modern mercantilism are increasingly feeding each other, concentrating power and accelerating the pace of change. (28 minutes). Link

Podcasts

Meb’s Corner

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