Unexpectedly last week, I stumbled upon an S-Curve hidden between the lines of a study released by an established private equity funds of funds firm with a cautious introductory question: “do private equity funds sometimes just run out of steam?” Continue reading
Performance
Calpers, SEC and the Hawthorne Effect on PE
This morning a “must read” Pulse email caught my eye before my finger could enter the “default mode” and hit the delete key on my phone. The word science, spotted in the title, won my curiosity, sneaking in through my Galilean inclination. Continue reading
IRR Is Like Fish
IRR is like fish, when someone gets hold of it, it slips away. Hard to seize, hard to terminate – with incredible survival instinct, it tries to jump out of any bucket where it has been secluded. Continue reading
Is Benchmarking IRRs against an IRR Benchmark an Apples for Apples Comparison?
This question, posed in a recent comment to my Fooled by IRRs post, deserves an answer in the form of a post. It has made me realize that the inaugural post of my blog, The Quartiles’ Oxymoron, was not as self-explanatory as I thought it was. Continue reading
Coller’s IRR Card [More Subtly Fooled #2]
If there’s an iconic badge for private equity valuation this is probably Coller Capital’s IRR and compound interest “cheat sheet” Card. Continue reading
IRR Alpha Looks Bigger [More Subtly Fooled #1]
When a standard of measurement of returns allows close to 70% of investment managers (GPs) to claim their funds are first quartile performers (i.e. ranked in the top 25%) (1) – such as the case of the IRR – something is obviously wrong. Continue reading
Fooled by IRRs (Yale, Schwarzman’s Cases)
“Everyone loves an optical illusion, except when it comes to financial results (1)”. Yet the private markets are not immune from optical illusion risks. Continue reading
Putting the [α + β-Cen] Reports into Context
On monday night, earlier this week, Carlyle announced preliminary data regarding its funds’ first quarter valuations. Continue reading
Riding Private Markets’ S-Curves
As I write about interpreting and predicting private markets’ returns, for the readers who missed one of my previous posts, I confirm there is no misspelling in the headline, it’s an S. Continue reading
Use the DaRC Room, Ye Who Venture Here
A very interesting post from Dan McCrum on the FT Alphaville blog, attractively titled “Abandon all hope, ye who venture here” unearths some truths, (is misled by and) fosters some consolidated misperceptions while opening up for some comments – a couple of which I made at the bottom of the post. Continue reading
