Exactly how wealthy is Princeton? One measure is the endowment, which stood at $35.8 billion this October, higher than the GDPs of over a hundred countries. But the truly mind blowing number is the rate of return on investment: 11 percent per year on average over the last 20 years. The average real return for the market overall, approximated by the S&P market average, over the same time period was 7.93 percent per year. Just over three percentage points of difference may sound small, but since the rate compounds every year, the long term effect is huge.
