The Yale Model of endowment investing, pioneered in the 1980s by David Swenson and others, was originally a rational response to the 1970s stagflation crisis that destroyed both stock and bond returns, and it did generate outperformance through venture capital and private equity in early decades when these markets were underpenetrated and inefficient (PE traded at 40% discounts to public comps), but this advantage has disappeared as trillions of capital have flowed in.