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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The DaRC Side of the J-Curve

It’s not a “J”, it’s an “S”!  Coming out from the DaRC Room, that’s what the picture is telling!