Wilshire Associates, Inc. is an American independent
investment management firm that offers consulting services and analytical products and manages
fund of funds
A "fund of funds" (FOF) is an investment strategy of holding a portfolio of other investment funds rather than investing directly in stocks, bonds or other securities. This type of investing is often referred to as multi-manager investment. A f ...
investment vehicles for a global client base. Wilshire manages capital for more than 600 institutional investors globally representing more than $8 trillion of capital. Wilshire is also known for the creation of the
Wilshire 5000 stock index in 1974 and more recently the
Wilshire 4500 stock index.
Wilshire operates from four business units:
* Wilshire Analytics
* Wilshire Consulting
* Wilshire Funds Management
* Wilshire Private Markets
Wilshire is headquartered in
Santa Monica, California, with offices in the U.S. in New York, New Jersey, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Denver as well as internationally in London, Singapore, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Suzhou and Hong Kong.
History
Wilshire was founded in 1972 by
Dennis Tito
Dennis Anthony Tito (born August 8, 1940) is an American engineer and entrepreneur. In mid-2001, he became the first space tourist to fund his own trip into space, when he spent nearly eight days in orbit as a crew member of ISS EP-1, a visitin ...
, who was an early pioneer of applying computer-based technologies to investment applications. Since the early 1970s, the firm developed from a technology firm into an
investment management operation. In 1974, the firm created its signature
Wilshire 5000 Stock index, which is a widely used index of all stocks actively traded in the United States.
Wilshire established an early reputation by creating the first asset/liability model for
pension funds in the 1970s, ten years before actuarial and accounting firms began to adopt this technology. Wilshire was also among the first to produce investment management tools to create
index funds, optimize portfolios, construct bond portfolios and measure performance.
In 1981, Wilshire launched its investment consulting business to address the needs of the
plan sponsor community providing support for the pensions' investment professionals. Also in the early 1980s, Wilshire began to develop its own investment products. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Wilshire began to expand its investment activities into private market investments creating a series of
private equity and
venture capital product offerings.
In 2003, Wilshire was targeted by New York State Attorney General
Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Laurence Spitzer (born June 10, 1959) is an American politician and attorney. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 54th governor of New York from 2007 until his resignation in 2008.
Spitzer was born in New York City, attended Pr ...
in connection to its trading practices as part of a wide ranging
2003 investigation of mutual funds.
In January 2021, Wilshire Associates was bought by CC Capital and Motive Partners.
In 2021, the ''
Financial Times'' started publishing 10 Wilshire indexes for individual digital assets and three multi-asset indexes. The multi-asset indices were:
* a Top 5 Digital Assets Index made up of
Solana (23%),
Ethereum (20%),
Cardano (20%),
Polkadot (17%) and
Bitcoin
Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...
(17%), giving a sector coverage of 59.14%;
* Top 5 ex Bitcoin Digital Assets Index made up of Solana (22%), Ethereum (20%), Cardano (20%), Polkadot (19%) and
Dogecoin
Dogecoin ( or , Abbreviation: DOGE; sign: Ð) is a cryptocurrency created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a "joke", making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the ...
(19%), giving a sector coverage of 21.34%;
* and the Bitcoin & Ethereum Digital Asset Index, made up of Bitcoin (52%) and Ethereum (48%).
Business lines
Wilshire operates from four main business units.
Wilshire Analytics
Wilshire's Analytics Division provides the firm's investment technology products including desktop applications for investment managers. The Wilshire Quantum Series is Wilshire Analytics' family of software for investment accounting, performance measurement, performance attribution, risk management, portfolio optimization, trade order management, and other marketing and client servicing support for multi-currency portfolios.
Wilshire Consulting
Wilshire's Consulting division provides investment consulting services including asset allocation, investment structure, manager search and performance measurement to public and corporate
pension funds,
endowments,
foundations, and
insurance companies
Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...
. Wilshire provides consulting services to more than 125 clients with total assets in excess of $1 trillion.
Wilshire Funds Management
Wilshire Funds Management provides customized
hedge fund
A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as ...
of funds solutions for third-party intermediaries servicing retail and institutional investors. Wilshire supports its clients distribution of various white label investment products, acting as an investment advisor or sub-advisor and develops customized products for these clients. Wilshire also provides proprietary manager research capabilities. Among the white label investment products that Wilshire offers are:
* risk-based portfolios;
* target-maturity portfolios;
* multi-manager portfolios;
* global equity and fixed income portfolios; and
*
global tactical asset allocation Global Tactical Asset Allocation, or GTAA, is a top-down investment strategy that attempts to exploit short-term mis-pricings among a global set of assets. The strategy focuses on general movements in the market rather than on performance of individ ...
overlay portfolios.
Wilshire Private Markets
Wilshire's Private Markets division manages in excess of $6.5 billion across a range of fund of funds vehicles dedicated to private equity and venture capital funds. Wilshire often structures its investment mandates to meet specific objectives. Wilshire's attempts to select top quartile partnership
private equity managers using top-down research, a forward calendar to identify top-tier general partners, rigorous due diligence of
fund commitments and active portfolio monitoring.
See also
*
Buffett indicator
The Buffett indicator (or the Buffett metric, or the Market capitalization-to-GDP ratio) is a valuation multiple used to assess how expensive or cheap the aggregate stock market is at a given point in time. It was proposed as a metric by inve ...
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Financial services companies established in 1972
Companies based in Los Angeles
Private equity firms of the United States
Investment management companies of the United States
Dennis Tito
1972 establishments in California