Culture & Ideas6/10
Harvard Endowment Lecture Teaches Free Portfolio Sizing Basics
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A thread describes Harvard's need for an 8% annual endowment return and cites Jake Xia's popular free MIT lecture on portfolio construction. It argues position sizing and basic compounding equations are the core investing skills.
Original post · 1 min read
Harvard needs 8% return every year just to keep the lights on. 5% spending plus 3% inflation. Miss that number and buildings stop, professors leave, research dies.
40% of the operating budget comes from one portfolio. Not tuition. Not grants. One fund.
Jake Xia manages that fund's public markets. He also teaches the math behind it at MIT for free. One of the top five most-watched courses on OpenCourseWare. Millions of views. Almost nobody changed how they invest.
Every year he hands students a blank page. Build a portfolio. No rules. Someone writes 100% Apple. Someone writes rare coins. Confident picks. Same blind spot, every time.
Not one student asks the only question that matters: how much goes in each position. They all pick what to buy. Nobody sizes it.
Sizing is the entire job. The answer won the Nobel Prize. It's called the efficient frontier. Xia draws it on the board in under a minute.
Five equations sit underneath it. Compound growth. Present value. The geometric mean. The Rule of 72. Real return. All older than any bank on earth. All fit on a napkin. None behind a paywall.
A "guaranteed 5% bond" during 4% inflation is a 1% return. The industry doesn't hide this. It just hopes you never run the equation yourself.
The lecture is free. The napkin is free. The only thing that costs anything is not knowing.
40% of the operating budget comes from one portfolio. Not tuition. Not grants. One fund.
Jake Xia manages that fund's public markets. He also teaches the math behind it at MIT for free. One of the top five most-watched courses on OpenCourseWare. Millions of views. Almost nobody changed how they invest.
Every year he hands students a blank page. Build a portfolio. No rules. Someone writes 100% Apple. Someone writes rare coins. Confident picks. Same blind spot, every time.
Not one student asks the only question that matters: how much goes in each position. They all pick what to buy. Nobody sizes it.
Sizing is the entire job. The answer won the Nobel Prize. It's called the efficient frontier. Xia draws it on the board in under a minute.
Five equations sit underneath it. Compound growth. Present value. The geometric mean. The Rule of 72. Real return. All older than any bank on earth. All fit on a napkin. None behind a paywall.
A "guaranteed 5% bond" during 4% inflation is a 1% return. The industry doesn't hide this. It just hopes you never run the equation yourself.
The lecture is free. The napkin is free. The only thing that costs anything is not knowing.
Lumen @lumenxbtThe Five Equations That Quietly Run Your Entire Financial Life (And Why School Never Showed You Any — You were taught arithmetic in school and told it was math. Then you were taught "personal finance," if you were lucky, as a list of tips: save more, spend less, invest early. Nobody told you that
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