University of Texas invests $1 billion in gold bullion

Parent Cafe
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<p>April 16 (Bloomberg) – The University of Texas Investment Management Co., the second-largest U.S. academic endowment, took delivery of almost $1 billion in gold bullion and is storing the bars in a New York vault, according to the fund’s board.</p>

<p>The fund, whose $19.9 billion in assets ranked it behind Harvard University’s endowment as of August, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers, added about $500 million in gold investments to an existing stake last year, said Bruce Zimmerman, the endowment’s chief executive officer. The holdings are worth about $987 million, based on yesterday’s closing price of $1,486 an ounce for Comex futures.</p>

<p>[Texas</a> University Endowment Storing About $1 Billion in Gold Bars - Businessweek](<a href=“Businessweek - Bloomberg”>Businessweek - Bloomberg)</p>

<p>I’ve been bullish on gold since 2000. I made my major bullion investments between 2000 and 2002. It’s amazing that a university system is putting so much $$$ in the same area.</p>

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<p>They’ve got to do something. Rick Perry is cutting funding left and right. Hope this doesn’t backfire.</p>

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<p>I guess they should have done it in 2002 too. It would have been worth something by now.</p>

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[quote]
Rick Perry is cutting funding left and right.<a href=“If%20I’m%20reading%20the%20posts%20correctly”>/quote</a> Maybe they should be cutting funding if the U has $20B in endowment funds. Just how much higher do they think the endowment should be?</p>

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<p>they still only have a book entry.
Having physical possession is different from having it stored. </p>

<p>They trust the FRB-NY to hold their gold?
When Oil collapses, so will gold.
They also think that Congress is going to screw up.
I personally would have advocated purchasing more APL.</p>

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<p>The article says that it’s an HSBC vault.</p>

<p>I guess that there are multiple vaults in NYC. Besides the FRB-NY, I believe that ScotiaBank has a vault in NY (a friend told me his gold is stored there). I think that holding it in a vault is safer than holding a ticket with the COMEX as they have a rule that they can “deliver” your bullion in FRN equivalents.</p>

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<p>Still, that’s only 5% of the total endowment which seems to be a reasonable asset allocation strategy. Just imagine if UT had had 5% of its endowment in gold when gold was at $800. They’d have been selling gold all the way up if they’d wanted to maintain a constant percent of assets.</p>