I had a useful conference call with five other investors on the pros and cons of private equity investments (PE). The following is a list, in no particular order, of what we concluded were important elements to consider [with my personal comments in brackets]. As always, all errors and omissions are mine.
The question is: should you ever have sold out of this investment?
If you knew in 1980 what you know today you should have bought a lot of Apple stock. But there is something fascinating and yet very dangerous in the wonderful sense of security and misguided confidence an ex-post picture can give us.
A couple of months ago this article appeared in The New York Times.
My daily job is to convince people that investing is a little like watching grass grow without fiddling with it. It is not easy; it requires conviction, discipline and an unnatural ability to shut your amygdala e fire up your cortex at the same time.
Intelligence is what helped humans thrive over time and through adversity. It’s what distinguishes us from the rest of the living creatures on the planet. But while this may be so in general, I’m not sure it’s true in every field.
A couple of months ago this article appeared in The New York Times.
Exponential versus linear: why bother? See this wonderful BBC article, Exponential growth bias: The numerical error behind Covid-19.
Because, at the end of the day, it’s not just the size of returns and profits that matter but also who owns them.
The pricing of some financial strategies continues to remain obscure and extremely difficult to ascertain, despite regulators’ substantial efforts to improve transparency.
A real new normal: this article in The Guardian gives you lots to think about.
Proliferating asset classes can be the product of clever marketing more than of fundamental differences.
Recently a client asked me why alternative investments are often considered a different asset class. It’s something I have often asked myself.