Markets are constantly evolving, and portfolios must evolve with them. The purpose of our annual “whiteboard session” is not to make wholesale changes to the portfolio, but, rather, to ensure that we are continually improving – incrementally strengthening the portfolio’s resilience and adaptability.
Just as important, the Whiteboard Session is not a one-day exercise in isolation. It is an extension of the work we do throughout the year as we continuously monitor the portfolio, test our investment thesis, reassess risks, and rebalance thoughtfully when conditions warrant. The annual session gives us an opportunity to step back, challenge ourselves with fresh perspectives, and pressure test the entire portfolio in a focused and highly intentional way.
As always, a key priority remains the all-weather nature of our portfolio, or Verger’s ability to navigate a wide range of economic conditions and market environments. In order to capture upside when it is available, protect on the downside during rough periods, and continue to provide liquidity when necessary to fund our clients’ non-profit missions, we are continually focused on assessing, underwriting, and implementing investment opportunities, and incorporating processes that allow us to do this in increasingly innovative ways.
As a team, we value creative, out-of-the-box thinking and agility. As a result, each of our team members (across roles and departments) is constantly challenged to reimagine how we can bring value to the clients we serve as well as to one another. We do this on a daily, monthly, and quarterly basis – and once a year, our investment team zooms out and assesses the full portfolio from multiple angles, incorporating additional perspectives from across the firm and beyond.
Our whiteboard session was born out of our core values and Verger’s intentional investment philosophy. Every year, the Investment Team steps away from day-to-day activity to conduct a comprehensive review of Verger’s entire investment portfolio. The session also includes members of our Board, the Verger Investment Committee, and individuals from our Operations and Client Relations Teams, bringing additional governance and fresh perspectives.
This session is designed as a full re-underwriting of our work, where every asset segment, manager, and underlying thesis must re-earn its allocation. There are no “sacred cows” and all ideas and views are welcome. The objective is straightforward: challenge our assumptions, review and, if needed, refine portfolio positioning, and ultimately improve portfolio resilience and strengthen long-term risk-adjusted outcomes.
The importance of the session is not only in the conclusions it produces, but in the rigor of the process itself. It creates space for honest debate, intellectual accountability, and thoughtful dissent. It is one of the clearest expressions of our belief that good investment outcomes are built on a disciplined process, not on reacting impulsively to short term market narratives.
Given Verger’s unique approach to asset allocation, in which positions are allocated based on underlying exposure rather than asset class labels, we begin the whiteboard session with thorough asset segment reviews across Equity, Real Assets, Absolute Return, and Fixed Income. (Of note, we do not have a dedicated hedge fund bucket, and we consider private equity as part of equity.)
Our approach in evaluating segment risk and return exposure is largely forward-looking — with a view towards emerging risks, evolving opportunity sets, and structural changes in markets. However, at the same time, we believe it is essential to conduct both pre-mortems (“What did we expect to go wrong? What could go wrong in the future?”) and post-mortems (“What actually happened?”).
During the whiteboard session, we re-underwrite our allocations to each segment, considering both upside and downside scenarios. In these conversations, the cross-functional perspective and external challenge provided by members of our Board and additional colleagues are invaluable.
Top-down takeaways from this year’s session include:
Top cross-segment macroeconomic themes:
When re-underwriting the individual investment managers and how they contribute to each asset segment, the whiteboard session focuses on challenging the core assumptions behind every investment as well as identifying (and seeking to mitigate) any potential behavioral biases. Again, the cross-functional perspective and element of external challenge provided by our Board and Verger colleagues outside the investment team bring value and challenge our investment team to think differently.
Our discussion underscored the importance of manager discipline in adhering to stated investment processes. While manager results (in the form of risk and return measurements) are important, viewing them in a vacuum can often obscure the quality of the manager’s underlying decision-making. We believe that over a full market cycle, a disciplined and repeatable process is what truly drives results. Therefore, we are vigilant in evaluating whether recent manager outcomes are introducing bias and unduly influencing decisions.
Another important element is comparing our conviction in a manager with that manager’s position size within the overall portfolio. The whiteboard session is a great forum for ensuring consistency between manager conviction and sizing, and making any adjustments accordingly.
To ensure that our process remains innovative and continues to evolve, we continually focus on enhanced technology and implementing best practices in the following areas:
Toolkits for measuring and managing risk
Approaches to evaluating exposures from multiple perspectives
Honing our risk budgeting framework (for both absolute and relative risk measures) and strengthening how we translate our investment work into clear, useful communications for our clients.
As we move through 2026, the discussions and debates from the whiteboard session will continue to reverberate across Verger’s investment process, setting the stage for continued critical thinking and forward-looking analysis. We look forward to further sharing our views throughout the year in our Market Outlooks.
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Not all strategies are appropriate for all investors. There is no guarantee that any particular asset allocation or mix of strategies will meet your investment objectives. Diversification does not ensure a profit or protect against a loss.
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