Why Does Private Equity Get to Play Make-Believe With Prices?

If you wanted to come up with the one-liner about investing most likely to make my head explode, you might try, “The way to choose investments is to just jump on whatever’s done the best over the past three to five years.” Or, getting more creative: “Hey, did you know Cathie Wood is still getting inflows?” Yet more creative: “The war in Ukraine was caused by stock buybacks.” But you couldn’t do much better than “Interim valuations don’t really matter,” as Christopher Schelling says in reference to private equity investing. If exploding my cranium was the goal, then well played, sir. Otherwise, oh, hell no. READ MORE