Public Pensions Outperform Other Institutional Investors in 1st Quarter of 2015

U.S. public pension funds outperformed their institutional investor peers – and the broader market – in the first quarter of 2015, according to data released by Wilshire on Wednesday.

From Reuters via Business Insider:

U.S. public pension funds returned a median 2.19 percent in the first quarter of 2015, outperforming the 1.61 percent returns for the larger asset classes of institutional investment plans and real estate, according to a report to be released on Wednesday.

The results this year are above the first quarter of last year, when public pensions returned a median of 1.87 percent.

The annual median return for public funds also remains high, at 7.15 percent, after the first quarter of 2015, according to data from the Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service.

[…]

By comparison, the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index returned 1.61 percent in the first quarter and 12.24 percent during the trailing 12-month period, while the Barclays U.S. Aggregate Index also returned 1.61 percent for the quarter and 5.72 percent for the previous year.

Most public pension plans need to see a return of 1.82 percent every quarter to meet the median assumed rate of return of 7.5 percent.

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