A Trillion Reasons to Give Thanks
Forty-five years ago, we set out to help people discover a better way to invest. It was an approach based on academic research and sensible ideas about how public markets really work.
The firm I launched from the spare bedroom of my Brooklyn brownstone apartment recently achieved a milestone I never would have dreamed possible back then: We crossed $1 trillion (USD) in global assets under management.
There are so many people to thank. I’m grateful to all the clients and investors who’ve put their faith in Dimensional over the years, who believe in the power of public markets, and who have entrusted us with their hard-earned investments. Many of our clients have worked alongside us for decades. I’m so thankful for the opportunity to be part of that journey.
I also want to thank our 1,600 employees around the world, the academics we’ve collaborated with over the decades, and the Independent Directors who’ve helped oversee the funds on behalf of investors.
For me, the entrepreneurial journey started at the University of Chicago, which provided a great foundation. When I applied to graduate school, I thought I wanted to become a professor. Gene Fama’s class opened my eyes to new possibilities.
Gene said his class was going to be the most practical one we took. He was right. I quickly realized how lucky I was to be at the center of a financial revolution. New ideas were emerging. Groundbreaking research was being published. Students and professors were working together, gathering market data that had never been collected, and using computers to learn from past performance what we might reasonably expect in the future.
I wanted to apply what we were learning, to see if we could capture in live portfolios all these big, bold ideas that were pointing to a better way to invest. The passion that a great teacher—and future Nobel laureate—sparked in me led directly to working on the first index funds and starting Dimensional.
A milestone is only meaningful for what it represents. And for me, it’s all about relationships and trust. We believed in what we were offering, but it was a new approach to investing. It was rooted in academic research and sensible ideas about how public markets really work. Our first year, we passed $10 million in AUM. A few years later we’d cross $1 billion. We continued to deliver what we said we were going to deliver. And clients stuck with us.
Over the past 45 years, we’ve been able to help a lot of people discover a better way to invest. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved. And we’re committed to helping many more investors in the years and decades to come.
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Eugene Fama is a member of the Board of Directors of the general partner of, and provides consulting services to, Dimensional Fund Advisors LP.
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