Keeping Score, Fast and Slow (Hint: It’s Not Just About the Game of Golf)

Most of the times ideas come up from unusual sources, often unexpectedly mixed. This is what has happened with this post, in which I am writing about how score keeping in the game of golf and decision making psychology can provide insights about the valuation of investment performance.

Asset Managers Are from Mars, Investors Are from Venus (Part 1)

I feel I have been thinking about this for a long time and hinted to at least part of it here and there…. But I realize I have never spelled it clearly, or not in a language that would have been easy to understand for everyone.

Yale and the Wolf, a Venture Capital Performance Tale

Every year, the press coverage about the release of the annual financial reports of one of the most prestigious investment offices in the world, often referred as the benchmark for long term investing, reminds me of a classical tale. And it’s not the first time I write about it, but reiteration deserves an encore.

Can I Teach Your Money the Duration Trick?

Even the most sophisticated among us, when a magic trick is performed well, can’t resist its fascination. Let’s admit that. As small kids we thought there was some special power in the hands of the magician. Growing up, we all know that is an illusion, misdirectional cheating. But we keep asking HOW it’s done.

A Challenging Validation, “a contrario”

Over the past two weeks, the conversation and the exchange of emails with a highly reputable and quant skilled professional in the private equity industry have posed an interesting intellectual challenge and created a very useful opportunity for testing “a contrario” the DaRC methodology and for discussing the relation between duration and time horizon.

The Neglected Weight of Time (in Private Equity History and Valuation)

There are instances, you would agree, when putting time in perspective can make a real difference.

Hey Hey My My, Private Equity Can Never Die

One of the likely most memorable achievements of David Rubenstein will be not about private equity, in the strict sense – it will be the rap he sang in the Carlyle’s 2014 Holiday message to investors. Musical license for musical license, he might as well have come up with a rock song to introduce his recent predictions about the evolution private equity industry. Neil Young would forgive that it is me instead to “use” the song for a few related comments.

Stranded Capital, Fire Sales Or….

I wrote in my previous post that actual durations of PE funds are longer than those that are the perceived industry standards. The 14-year number reported in the headline of an article of a recognised magazine is a different thing, but it ties well and allows some reasoning about LP extensions, fire sales and the possible rational alternatives for investors.

PE Duration Disambiguated (Smooth Capital)

Getting responses to questionnaires is an art and I can’t say I master it. Nevertheless, I had a few especially kind readers of my previous post who contributed their opinion (thanks!) to the embedded polls. Their results make it more interesting and “independent” to define “surprising” certain different data available in the industry.

The PE S-Curve, Dug Out

There are a couple of concepts that qualify a discovery – even if just stumbled upon: novelty and usefulness. With respect to private equity, the S-Curve adds the notion of decreasing marginal returns to improve the mainstream J-Curve notion, and this clears novelty. What’s left now is to dig out its usefulness.