The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 963 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 102 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Seides: Major private equity platforms will acquire deal teams within five years
“I'd be very surprised if you don't see one of the larger private equity players try to grow through acquiring teams. They are long capital and short origination or dealmaking capability relative to the capital they could command. So it does make sense that if …”
Arndt: Chance of US recession over three years is quite high
“So, we think the chance of a recession in the US is quite high over, say, a three-year time horizon, and it doesn't appear that markets are currently pricing that in.”
Sullivan: Retail private equity investors will face disappointing net returns
“There are going to be a lot of doctors and dentists who are pretty disappointed 10 years from now with the net returns that they're getting from their financial advisor plowing their capital into private equity. Gross returns might be fine, but between the fee…”
Sullivan: Private equity will struggle to drive alpha like the past 40 years
“It's going to be very difficult for private equity, broadly defined venture and buyout and related stuff to be the single defining alpha creating strategy for institutional investors the way that it's been over the last 3540 years.”
Sullivan: Systematically finding 20%+ returning VC funds will be very hard
“I'm sure there will be times in the future where we have venture booms again, but the odds of systematically finding firms that are Consistently producing 20% plus returns and the occasional 80% returning fund. It's going to be very, very hard for that to happ…”
Barth: Retail flows will swamp Ivy League endowment private market capital
“And notwithstanding the endowment headlines, we think a much bigger fund flow that's going to swamp that is the democratization. It's the retail flows. Almost everything we're doing in illiquids is either to get paid to access that, seed things that can take a…”
Barth: Multi-manager hedge funds will take the biggest hit if endowments face taxes
“The places where you're going to see bigger hits are on the multi-manager pod hedge funds, which are incredibly tax inefficient, but have been a good source of risk-adjusted returns for some of the larger tax-exempt allocators. That's where I think the bigger …”
MacArthur: The private equity liquidity deficit will take 5+ years to resolve
“So we're talking about a five plus year problem as the GFC was in order to process all of this liquidity. This is not going to go away in 20, 25 or 20, 26. It's going to be continued pressure on the institutional LPs for liquidity over the course of the next s…”
MacArthur: Institutional PE allocations will increasingly become a zero-sum game
“They're going to continue to write checks and invest in private equity, but it's going to be much more of a zero sum game. If I'm going to get an allocation from a certain LP, somebody else is probably going to lose their allocation from that LP.”
Breach: GenAI Can Push Software Companies to Rule of 50–70
“As we think about incorporating generative AI into the actual operations of the software business, we can see companies getting to rule of 50, rule of 60, rule of 70, and being significantly more profitable over the next few years as these solutions get better…”
Breach: Long-tail generative AI opportunity lies in software applications
“The generative AI opportunity, whether it's chips and hardware, whether it's infrastructure, whether it's energy, we think the long tail of opportunity is going to be in the application side, which is what it's historically been.”
Madorsky: Retail capital will force secondaries into customer service businesses
“I think some of those reporting mechanisms are probably going to be expected by a lot of our limited partners, especially the retail community will push that idea in a pretty acute way. So it's going to move to a business of customer service. As much as invest…”
Direct lending returns will likely fall 200 basis points as banks re-enter
“As that market continues to evolve, and as the banks start to get back into some of these areas, we do think returns are going to come down. Probably by about 200 basis points on average.”
Mogelof: Over 80% of Private Wealth Flows Will Target Evergreens
“If you ask me, I think the drawdown vehicles serve a very important purpose for institutional investors. But over time, I would expect 80 plus percent of all wealth flows to go into these evergreen investment solutions.”
Forman: Stablecoin Market Will Grow 10x to 100x Within Ten Years
“This is a market that I think will experience 10 to a hundred X growth over the next five to 10 years.”
Forman: Sports Betting Books Cannot Compete With Prediction Markets at Scale
“But I think that it's going to be very difficult for traditional sports betting platforms to compete with prediction markets at scale.”
Forman: Tokenized Fiat Currencies Will Eventually Exceed Traditional Fiat
“Eventually, my view is the stablecoin market or tokenized fiat currencies will exceed Traditional fiat currencies.”
Gave: Non-US growth will outperform US growth as the dollar weakens
“I think we're living through the end of the year of US exceptionalism. After a 15 year standing run, the US dollar is now rolled over. I think most people's portfolio is on position for a world of weaker dollar, and one where growth outside of the US is going …”
Aitken: Expect two horrible quarters of global growth, crushing US equities
“The reality is that we're going to have two quarters of global growth that are going to be absolutely horrible. And in that context, the market clearing price of earnings, and therefore the market clearing price of equities in general, in the US in particular,…”
Papic: US Will Struggle to Bring 10-Year Yield Substantially Below 4%
“They're gonna struggle to bring the tenure substantively below four percent. I think three and a half is the best they could hope for, and that's just not enough, really, to restart some sort of re-leveraging of the private sector because American households d…”
Gave: Pension Funds and Endowments Will Relentlessly Rebalance Away From Privates
“They've outperformed so much that the rebalancing that you're going to see in every pension fund, in every endowment, away from these strategies back towards listed equities or back towards, frankly, just bonds, it should be relentless.”
Gave: Emerging Markets and Listed Equities Are the 10-Year Trade as Capital Flows In
“Today, if you're a young aspiring money manager, you should be launching an equity fund, you should be launching an EM fund, and even if you're doing it with very little money, that's the trade for the next 10 years. That's where the capital is going to go, be…”
Aitken: Private market funds will face redemption pressures and stock declines
“During this transition, however long it is, we'd be more surprised if we didn't start to read more stories about private something being under pressure. More stories about people who didn't read the prospectus and tried to get the money out and they couldn't a…”
Papic: Trump will reach China deal, but US assets won't outperform
“I think if he gets a deal with China, which I think he will, I don't think that's good for US assets relative to the rest of the world.”
Papic: US stock market probably bottomed at 4800
“That's why I think we probably reached the bottom at 4800.”
Gave: Foreign Appetite for US Corporate Debt Rollovers Will Be Limited
“The second half of this year and the first half of next year, the rollovers are gargantuan. At its time, when the appetite of foreigners for US dollar assets It's going to be very, very limited. Selling bonds in a weakening currency is very hard. Spreads are a…”
Marks: The post-2022 higher interest rate regime is structural and long-lasting
“I wrote a memo in December, 22, called The Sea Change, and it talked about the change in the interest rate climate, which I think is structural and long-lasting.”
Reynolds: Institutional LPs will abandon mega venture funds for smaller managers
“You will see The institutional investors that have historically loved venture and participated in those big pools move down market, just like they did in buyout. All the ENFs left the mega funds between 2008 and 2012 for the most part. I think the same thing w…”
Reynolds: Thousands of Zombie VC Funds Will Never Raise Again
“There's thousands of zombie funds. In the market that will never raise another fund because their track record does not justify it, and because people will realize that venture is not a get-rich-quick scheme, that not everyone and their mother deserves to have…”
O'Leary: Forced liquidity will drive down private market marks
“I don't know that that's going to be the reality that gets experienced, and at a certain point, you're going to have to create liquidity. And it may mean that you're going to see marks coming down. It may mean that you see folks willing to show their hand on w…”
Barth: Private equity returns will drop over the next 25 years
“Private equity returns will be lower over the next 25 years than they've been over the past 25 years.”
Choe: 2021 leverage excesses will cause restructurings over coming years
“We think a lot of the leverage excesses of 21 are likely to result in first liability management exercises, LMEs, that will then involve some amount of restructuring over the next few years or so.”
Charles: Private equity faces a massive maturity wall in 2025 and 2026
“There is a maturity wall coming in 25 and 26 for a ton of firms who've been able to bootstrap it and scrape through the last three or four years.”
Charles: High-performing PE firms will miss fundraising targets in coming years
“There is tremendous unrealized value and unrealized gain Managed by really talented people and the firms that they're a part of are going to come to market in the next 12 to 24 months, and they will not achieve the fundraising target that they need to feed all…”
Pompliano predicts Series A and later venture returns will compress to 15%
“Now, what we've seen over the last decade or so is so much capital coming to the market. Maybe there's been an incremental increase in the number of good companies created every year, but it's not kept pace with the amount of capital. And so my thought process…”
Peters: Blockchain Integration Will Put Digital Wallets on Every Phone
“This is where global financial markets get rewired onto blockchain based rails. And when that happens, it means that every single person in the world, when that's fully complete, will have a digital wallet on their phone.”
Peters: Markets Face a 15-Year Breakdown of Historical Asset Correlations
“COVID, I believe, propelled us into this new regime. And whether most big investors believe that that's true or not, they have to at least acknowledge that it might be true, that nothing's permanent, but we might be in for a 10 or 15 year period where the reli…”
McCusker: Pure institutional, RIA, and retail channels will vanish within 20 years
“I would say, 20 years from now, there's not many purely institutional, or purely RIA, or purely retail players. Everything is blended together, whether it's asset managers, advisors, or the end participants, even.”
Bessent: A Bretton Woods-scale realignment is coming to global trade
“I also felt very strongly that we're in the midst of a great realignment and of a Bretton Woods realignments coming in terms of global policy, global trade.”
Seides Predicts 14 of 15 Yale Prospect Fellows Will Not Graduate
“The TRS data implies that one of Yale's lucky fellows will graduate to its core portfolio every three cohorts. In other words, 14 of 15 won't make it.”
Miller: U.S. Shale Will Deplete, Forcing Reliance on Unstable Oil Regimes
“One is I think oil's off to the races. And I do say this to CIOs with a, Hey, think with your inflation hat on this thing is the input to almost every product and humanity. And the reason why is largely the world has lulled itself into a soft slumber on the ba…”
Miller: Carbon Will Rival Oil and Gas in Commodity Scope and Scale
“Carbon will be a commodity that rivals oil and gas in scope and scale, and you need to be ready for that.”
Miller: Carbon capture will reach coal and gas plants within a decade
“We are gonna get to coal plants and natural gas plants, a hundred percent certain in the next decade.”
Miller: SEC emissions reporting rules will eventually lead to carbon taxes
“When the government's asking you to measure something, I got news for you. That thing's going to be taxed. That thing is going to be taxed at some point in time, which is a whole different revenue source for the energy transition over time.”
Gleich predicts alternative investments will drive the next ETF growth chapter
“The next chapter of growth for the industry, I think is going to be alternatives. And I think we are in the early innings of that beginning to happen right now.”
Nesbitt: Private debt will maintain a 3% to 5% illiquidity premium
“I can go back to the eighties and tell you that everybody thought the private equity premium would go away. And it's really been pretty consistent at three to five percent. I expect the same on the private debt side.”
Moodgal: Private fund payouts will rotate into public rather than private managers
“What's going to happen, and I think you've very elegantly said it as well in one of your recent pieces, is as these private managers start to pay out
I think a lot of that money will start going into public managers, not into private managers, like people thin…”