That's a nice way of saying that during recent years the Harvard Management Company, the university's investment subsidiary, diverted large portions of the university's endowment assets out of safe but poky low-yield securities (as of last June fixed-income investments accounted for only 16% of Harvard's portfolio) and into what this Forbes story describes as "exotic financial instruments": derivatives, hedge funds, private equity partnerships, commodities and emerging-market equities.

FORBES: How Harvard Should Handle Its Endowment

For example, if one had shifted assets out of the U.S. into a broad array of investible high yield countries with favorable freedom dynamics four years ago (slightly before the global credit crisis), he would have strongly outperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

FORBES: Shaking The Nations

The embrace of risky assets drove investors out of U.S. Treasurys, which tumbled, pushing the yield on the benchmark 10-year note up to 1.958%.

WSJ: Dow Reaches 4-Year High