Yale's $8 billion man (2005 )

这是，关于耶鲁投资名人David Swensen的文章。

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摘录几段：

Swensen's critique of the for-profit mutual fund industry is devastating. He argues persuasively that most mutual funds and their managers benefit from high fees, sales commissions, portfolio turnover, and, above all, amassing more assets. Those actions all run counter to the interests of individual investors. Moreover, most funds fail even to achieve their basic goal of beating market returns. They are charging a lot of money for lousy results. "Overwhelming evidence," writes Swensen, "proves the failure of the for-profit mutual-fund industry." 

Consider just one problem he identifies -- the so-called 12b-1 fees, which mutual funds charge to their investors to pay for marketing and distribution costs. The fees pay for, among other things, those full-page ads touting the latest hot funds that appear in newspapers and magazines. Their purpose, of course, is to bring in new investors, who make the fund company more profitable. But as funds grow bigger, managers inevitably find it difficult to buy bigger stakes in their existing investments without driving up the cost. "There's an inverse relationship between size and performance. Period," Swensen says. The SEC has permitted 12b-1 fees even though they are clearly not in the interests of investors. Swensen writes: "Shame on the SEC for allowing 12b-1 fees, shame on the [fund] directors for approving them, and shame on the mutual funds for assessing them." Brokers, who charge sales commissions for the mutual funds they offer, only stack the deck further against their unsophisticated clients. "Sensible investors avoid the brokerage community," he writes.

None of this will win Swensen friends on Wall Street. Several Yale Corporation members and members of its investment committee have close ties to the fund and brokerage businesses. So be it, Swensen says. "I don't want to make people feel badly about what they do, but I just think that the entire mutual fund industry has failed," he says. "The clients lost, and the people who run the mutual funds made a lot of money. That's scandalous. It's a failure of the system. I know at times that I sound intemperate, but I feel so passionately about this."

 

https://web.invest.yale.edu/dave-media/Swensen_YAM..htm