Nearly 400 basis points above the median endowment. What drove Crewcial’s FY2025 OCIO results — and why the conditions that produced them are unlikely to reverse.
There is a species of pine whose cones are sealed with resin for years, sometimes decades. They don’t open in mild weather. They don’t open when conditions are merely favorable. They open in fire. The heat that looks, from the outside, like a threat is precisely the mechanism of activation. The tree was not waiting to survive. It was built so that only those conditions could release what it had been holding.
We think about FY2025 that way.
The Crewcial OCIO composite returned 14.6% in FY2025, ending June 30, 2025. Against the NACUBO universe — the peer group that matters most to endowments, foundations, and the advisors who serve them — the median one-year return was 10.9%. The top decile threshold was 13.2%. Our composite cleared it by more than a full percentage point.
We typically don’t lead with numbers as a rule. We’re leading with this one because it reflects something structural and symptomatic, and because understanding what drove it matters more than the figure itself.
The return was not broad-market beta in disguise. It was concentrated in the areas where our positioning has been most differentiated — and questioned — in recent years.
| Asset Class | Crewcial Return | Benchmark | vs. Benchmark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Non-US Developed Equity | 26.5% | 31.2%MSCI EAFE | Meaningful contribution vs. underweight peers |
| Emerging Markets Equity | 44.0% | 42.8%MSCI EM | +120 bps outperformance |
| US Large / Mid Cap Equity | 7.9% | 16.3%S&P 500 | Intentionally underweight concentration risk |
| Total Private Equity | 16.7% | 21.9%MSCI ACWI proxy | Long J-curve vintage; maturing |
| Total Fixed Income | 7.8% | 6.8%Blmbg US Agg | +100 bps outperformance |
Non-US developed and emerging market equity were the primary engines. These are allocations that most endowments, foundations, and long-horizon private portfolios have been reducing or avoiding — not because the fundamentals don’t support them, but because they require tolerating the kind of discomfort that generates career risk for investment committees and their advisors.
Our underweight to US large-cap concentration was a deliberate drag on relative performance for several years. In FY2025, it became an intentional advantage. The Mag-7 rotation, the resurgence of international value, the repricing of businesses that had been aggressively marked down on AI disruption concerns: these are the conditions we have been describing in our communications for the better part of three years. They are not surprises. They are the market regime the portfolio was built for.
The endowments and foundations that outperformed meaningfully in FY2025 were not the ones that tracked the median. They were the ones that had been willing to look wrong relative to it — for long enough to be correctly positioned when conditions changed.
The institutions that will find this most relevant are not a single type. They share a characteristic, not a category.
Investment committees that spent the past three years defending long-horizon, diversified positioning to boards that wanted to know why the portfolio wasn’t keeping pace with a US large-cap index.
Clients who understood intellectually that concentration risk was real, but felt the quarterly pressure of watching concentrated portfolios generate extraordinary short-term numbers.
Organizations who want to understand not just what a manager returned, but whether the return was built on a repeatable process or on favorable beta.
For all of these investors, FY2025 offers the same signal: the architecture matters more than the environment. Managers and portfolios built for complexity, discomfort, and asymmetric opportunity were structurally advantaged when the environment finally rewarded those qualities. The question worth asking is not whether conditions will stay favorable — it’s whether your portfolio was built to express itself when they are.
The serotinous cone doesn’t open because the weather improved. It opens because the heat arrived. The distinction is the entire point.
The Mag-7 are down. Small value is up. Non-US value is working. Leadership is rotating. Many of the structural features of today’s markets that once concerned us are now becoming meaningful advantages.
The LLM-driven disintermediation shock continues and expands almost daily. Entire business models are being questioned as artificial intelligence compresses margins and challenges traditional intermediaries. Panic periods are rarely kind to our approach; we favor managers who lean into informational complexity and invest in misunderstood businesses, and that edge can disappear when fear takes over and correlations go to one. But two things are becoming clear. Our managers are doing their jobs well: at the company level, their judgments remain sound, distinguishing between structural impairment and temporary repricing. And panics recede. They always do. When they do, markets reprice securities in a directionally rational way.
That second point matters. It suggests we are returning to a climate that fits our discipline exceptionally well. The best investments we can make have asymmetric outcomes — situations where the intermediate downside may be 20–30%, but the upside is 2–4x or more. Think venture-style payoff profiles, but in liquid markets and without venture-style capital risk. Today’s markets are offering an unusual number of these opportunities, and the structural instability driving them is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.
Carvana was one recent example. The short-term downside was obvious. The intermediate-term downside was limited relative to the long-term opportunity. The upside was substantial. It worked. But the real question is not whether one example worked — it is whether this is repeatable. Our job is not to produce rare victories. It is to compound capital at attractive rates over decades.
Most institutional investors refuse to meaningfully pursue asymmetric situations. Because almost everyone prefers comfort to discomfort. Asymmetric opportunities only exist for a reason: by definition, something looks broken or feels wrong. That is precisely why the pricing becomes attractive. They appear brilliant only in hindsight; in real time, they are unsettling.
Software and payments are current examples. Many high-quality businesses have been repriced aggressively amid concerns about AI disruption and competitive pressure. Expectations are low and valuations are compressed. The embedded optionality is significant. Businesses that are already attractively priced do not remain deeply discounted indefinitely; we saw that dynamic clearly when Carvana traded near $4. The coiled spring effect is real, and the investors positioned in these businesses before the rerating hold a structural advantage over those who wait.
In 2024, Egypt and Nigeria allowed their currencies to free float as part of broader reform efforts. Market reaction was immediate and negative. We spoke with managers, assessed the underlying reforms. Currency devaluation paired with structural reform improved the long-term investment case by enhancing capital formation, competitiveness, and the ability to attract foreign capital. Most investors saw volatility and sold. We saw volatility and added. That is the difference.
What makes today especially compelling is that market structure itself is generating opportunity. Fewer fundamental investors. More short-term trading, more performance anxiety, more preference for comfort and near-term outcomes. This is fertile ground for asymmetry, and because most investors will not lean into that discomfort, the field remains less crowded than it otherwise would be. We are generating solid returns while increasing exposure to future upside. For the first time in a while, what is happening in markets both makes sense and aligns with our approach.
This works in our clients’ favor.
We work with endowments, foundations, and long-horizon private portfolios. If you’re evaluating your current positioning — or your current advisor — we’d welcome the conversation.
Past performance is not indicative of future results. The Crewcial OCIO composite is GIPS compliant from inception (July 2018). NACUBO peer data sourced from the 2025 NACUBO-TIAA Study of Endowments (FY ending June 30, 2025). Asset class returns reflect the OCIO All Asset Classes composite as of January 31, 2026. Benchmark comparisons are provided for informational purposes. For composite construction methodology and full performance disclosure, contact your Crewcial relationship manager or visit crewcial.com.
This material is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or an offer to provide investment management services. Crewcial Partners is an SEC-registered investment adviser.