Mark Gilbert , Columnist

It’s Official. Wall Street Is Bad For Your Financial Health

The worst thing for U.S. endowment funds’ returns isn’t being too small. It’s being far too close to one of America’s financial centers 

Stay away. 

Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
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It’s almost 80 years since Fred Schwed’s book “Where are the Customers’ Yachts?” lifted the lid on Wall Street’s propensity to enrich itself at the expense of its clients. A new study suggests that the most lucrative investment a fund could make would be paying to relocate its operations as far away from the financiers as possible.

In a paper just published by the European Corporate Governance Institute, finance professors Sandeep Dahiya of Georgetown University and David Yermack of New York University studied the tax returns of more than 28,000 U.S. nonprofit organizations filed with the Internal Revenue Service between 2009 and 2016. The results make for grim reading.