Return of Private Equity Funds

I cannot verify it, but this blog at Zen of Investing says that the top 25% private equity funds returned an averaged return of 44.5 in 1990s!

If you want to boost the performance of your portfolio, then consider private equity. From 1992-2002, the top 25% of U.S. private equity managers returned 44.5% annually while the second 25% of private equity managers only returned 14.3% (Source: Venture Economics, Morningstar Principia). The returns of top private equity firms have been so solid that even private institutional endowments like that of Yale University expects almost a third of their portfolio return to come from the 17.5 % it had invested in private equity (Source: Yale Endowment 2003 report).

Another blog worth reading is on the security of online trading accounts, which has become an issue after recent disclosures by E*Trade and AmeriTrade of their loss due to online trading theft.