High-Net-Worth Insights

David Stein spent a decade allocating billions for endowments. His verdict on the standard balanced portfolio: once you have enough, 60/40 is too risky. Here is his asset garden alternative, and what 233 investors averaging $17M net worth hold instead of bonds.

Semi-liquid funds give individual investors private markets access without capital calls, K-1s, or decade-long lockups, in exchange for capped liquidity and a modest return give-up. A StepStone partner who runs evergreen strategies explains what the structure fixes, where it gets misunderstood, and how to evaluate one.

Peterson Search Partners' Max Artz explains what a search fund is: a model where investors back an entrepreneur to find, buy, and run one small business. He breaks down the two-stage structure, why Stanford's data shows mid-30% IRRs across four decades, the unglamorous businesses searchers target, and the two questions that separate a strong search-fund manager from a careless one.

Lead Edge Capital's Emila Damjanovic and Evan Skorpen explain what growth equity is, where it sits between venture capital and buyout private equity, and why LPs now judge managers on DPI rather than paper IRR. They also break down the great software repricing (6x revenue to 3.5x) and a framework for which SaaS businesses survive AI: engine versus interface.

Fund manager Jay Hatfield argues that sustained inflation comes down to two variables: the money supply and the price of oil. Everything else (deficits, unemployment, "unanchored expectations") is a symptom or a distraction. Here is his contrarian monetarist framework, the mainstream case against it, and the durable investing discipline underneath.

Jason Bertoldi has worked in litigation finance as a plaintiff's attorney, a litigation investor at D.E. Shaw, and now a litigation insurance broker at Alliant. He breaks down how litigation funding works as an investment, what the return profile looks like across single-case and portfolio structures, why it is structurally uncorrelated to public markets, and how litigation insurance is changing who can participate in the asset class.

Anil Gupta spent eight years on Meta's IR team and led Coinbase through its 2021 direct listing. He breaks down what investor relations does, why a first-day IPO pop is a wealth transfer rather than a success signal, how a direct listing differs from a traditional IPO, and what retail investors should know about the information edge institutions do and do not have.

Blake London co-founded Formentera with $3 billion raised across five funds and nearly 4,000 producing wells. He breaks down the three private oil and gas investment segments, what shale well economics look like in real numbers, why the industry stopped responding to price spikes with new rigs, and why private operators give investors more direct commodity exposure than public energy stocks.

Private credit returns are down and redemption gates are making headlines. Katie Fowler of Blue Owl Capital explains why falling yields reflect rate mechanics rather than loan deterioration, how BDC redemption gates work, and what forward-looking signals investors should watch to evaluate their private credit exposure.