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Buying second-hand can be a good idea, not only for vintage cars and watches. Accessing opportunities in private markets without betting the bank on a few concentrated positions or being crushed by fees can be challenging for smaller investors, given high minimum tickets, limited transparency, and administrative burdens. Our article explores so-called LP Led Secondaries, investments in well-diversified portfolios of pre-owned funds, typically purchased at significant discounts, especially this year.

Sell-side analysts working for investment banks routinely issue forward-looking price targets for the stocks they cover. Data providers like Bloomberg aggregate the target prices published by sell-side analysts to derive a marketwide consensus price target. We have asked ourselves whether the return outlook given by analysts on aggregate (consensus estimate) does provide information about future market performance. The answer is simple and disappointing but yields some intriguing insights into the sell-side analyst’s reaction function.

As the private equity industry has grown and captured an increasing share of investors' portfolios, it has become increasingly common for managers to set up so-called continuation funds. Market observers have criticized the practice as potentially allowing General Partners to avoid testing their assets' valuations in the public realm. At the same time, GP Leds can be viewed as a rational development in a maturing ecosystem and an attractive addition to private market portfolios.

Central Banks worldwide have taken decisive action against inflation and thus put the handbrakes on the economy, making it highly likely that we will face a recession in the near term. However, as we have highlighted previously, the economic cycle and the stock market are seldom completely aligned. Our article takes a closer look at the market environment during the early 90s and finds stunning similarities.