Bloomberg Open Interest 04/25/2025
Mixed messages on trade weigh on markets as consumer sentiment slides. Investing legend Rob Arnott talks about where he sees market opportunities in the midst of tariffs, earnings and volatility. Ducati North America CEO joins the C-Suite on how tariffs are affecting the motorcycle business. And we analyze the ultra-bullish signal from the Zweig Breadth Thrust Indicator. (Source: Bloomberg)
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
As Harvard's and Yale's private equity holdings go on sale, buyers can use this technique for 1,000% windfalls. ‘It makes your brain melt'
The secondary market for private equity stakes is booming as buyers are eager to snap up assets being shed by investors. There's reason to believe Harvard, Yale, and other elite institutions might be getting a good deal, even as they sell their holdings at a discount to current valuations. Some of the country's most elite institutions are offloading parts of their private equity portfolios. As funds take longer to return money to investors, Harvard and Yale are selling at a discount with endowments looking for more liquidity and flexibility amid economic turbulence. But both sides of such deals can make surprising gains. This portfolio maintenance doesn't appear linked to President Donald Trump's attack on university finances, including a possible tax hike on endowments. Industry skeptics think these sales, however, highlight growing concerns that returns in the opaque world of private equity aren't always all they're cracked up to be. 'With elite universities' private equity investments on the auction block, the big reveal is coming,' Nir Kaissar, founder of asset management firm Unison Advisors, wrote in a Bloomberg opinion column on Thursday. University endowments typically make for ideal investors in alternative assets—with virtually infinite investment horizons, they can ride out wild gyrations in the public markets by locking up billions of dollars over several years. On its face, that move has been a no-brainer. As Kaissar noted, Bloomberg's weighted index of U.S. PE funds returned 9.4% year over year from 2007 to 2024. The index's annualized standard deviation, a common measure of volatility, was just 7.2%. The S&P 500 gained 10.5% in that span with a standard deviation of 16.8%, a much worse return on a risk-adjusted basis. These numbers, however, may not reflect the underlying picture. Unlike stocks trading on public exchanges, the prices of private assets don't change based on the whims of investors day-to-day. Instead, valuations of most private companies, real estate properties, and other assets PE firms hold are typically based on subjective assumptions that don't fluctuate like public equity markets do, Tim McGlinn, an investment veteran and former adjunct finance professor at Seton Hall, told Fortune. 'There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that,' said McGlinn, who blogs about the alternatives industry at But when investors or prospective investors believe the holdings can actually be sold at those prices, 'that's when things become problematic.' Ultimately, private equity firms make money for investors by exiting their investments, when they attempt to turn notional valuations on paper into cash. Therefore, there must be some correlation between the performance of public and private assets, said Jason Reed, a finance professor at the University of Notre Dame. 'If the market's doing really well broadly, well then you're going to have lots of opportunities for businesses to buy your company, other private equity companies to buy your company, to take them public and IPO them,' he told Fortune. 'But if the economy is not doing great, businesses are struggling, then you're not going to have as many opportunities overall to sell.' Billionaire hedge fund owner Bill Ackman, a Harvard alumnus, has claimed his alma mater's $53 billion endowment, almost 40% of which is allocated to private equity, is significantly overstated. 'I believe that a substantial part of the reason why many private assets remain private despite the stock market near all-time highs is that the public market will value private assets at lower values than they are being carried at privately,' Ackman, the CEO of Pershing Square Capital, wrote in a social media post last month. The Harvard Management Company, which oversees the university's endowment, declined to comment. It recently agreed to sell roughly $1 billion of its PE stakes, following a similar move in the summer of 2021. That came at a time of 'significant ebullience,' the university noted in its 2022 financial report, allowing the school to avoid discounts the funds would have faced just over a year later. Yale, meanwhile, is negotiating a nearly $3 billion sale of private equity holdings at a discount of less than 10%, a spokesperson for the Yale Investments Office told the school's newspaper. The university pioneered the institutional push into alternative assets, with 95% of its $41 billion endowment allocated to growth-oriented assets like PE, venture capital, real assets, and global equities. 'Following a months-long review, the University is in process to sell select private equity fund interests,' Yale said in a statement to Fortune. 'Private equity remains a core element of our investment strategy, and we continue to commit significant capital to our existing world-class partners, while pursuing new private equity opportunities to support the long-term growth of the Endowment.' This doesn't appear to be a distressed sale, McGlinn said, but the deal is otherwise hard to evaluate. More mature funds trade very differently than newer ones, and various positions are typically packaged together in these types of transactions. 'Yale being Yale, you can assume they're getting the best price they can,' McGlinn said. Still, investors in PE funds, known as 'limited partners,' sold their stakes at an average discount of 11% compared to the net asset value, or NAV, of these holdings on their balance sheets, according to Jeffries. It may seem odd that universities are looking to sell when valuations are likely down across the board this year as borrowing costs remain elevated. But demand in the secondary market is booming. Secondary sales increased 45% to $162 billion last year, per Jeffries. As a result, Yale, Harvard, and other universities could take much less of a haircut than they might have feared while also booking gains on their initial stakes. That's because there is reason to believe many buyers are willing to overpay, McGlinn said. Regardless of what secondary funds dish out to acquire these stakes, he explained, they are allowed to then mark these investments up to the old net asset value. McGlinn calls this process 'NAV squeezing.' As The Wall Street Journal reported last year, it can result in one-day windfalls of 1,000% or more, gains that McGlinn said secondary funds report as real returns. 'It makes your brain melt,' he said. Comparing NAV squeezing to a Ponzi scheme might go too far, said Jeffrey Hooke, a senior lecturer in finance at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and a longtime critic of PE. But he agrees it looks quite shaky, even if the technique is permissible according to generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. 'It's almost like a full wash and rinse cycle,' said Hooke, formerly the principal investment officer of the World Bank's International Finance Corporation. Universities, of course, get to be on the other side of these deals. Even though they are selling their PE stakes at a discount to NAV, they could be getting more than the capital they had committed to those investments up until this point. In other words, endowments might still be escaping with a profit. This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Bill Gates Shares a Lesson From Warren Buffett He Wished He Learned Sooner (It Can Help You Too)
There's an interesting assumption many people make about productivity. It's the idea that busy equals productive and really busy equals really productive. But, perhaps counterintuitively, that's not always the case. And it's a lesson that even the uber-successful and wealthy Bill Gates learned late in life. In a Bloomberg interview, Gates recalled a day when Buffet showed him his calendar. Gates was shocked at how empty it was, with some days having nothing scheduled at all. It showed Gates that 'business isn't a proxy for seriousness.' Check Out: Read Next: 'I can buy anything I want, basically, but I can't buy time,' Buffett added. The lesson? A stacked calendar doesn't necessarily mean increased productivity. It's a lesson Gates — not exactly a slouch when it comes to accomplishments — took to heart and as recently as last year wrote in a Threads post. Below is a look at Buffett's simple, yet effective approach. You, like most people, have probably experienced a day in which you were crazy busy every second of it, missing lunch, running from meeting to meeting, task to task, only to get to the end of the day feeling like you got nothing accomplished. Or at least nothing important. Your calendar was packed, you checked everything off, you made every meeting — but now you feel like you better get up early tomorrow to get the real work done. To avoid that issue, Gates eventually adopted a system in which he divided his working hours into four buckets, each bucket representing a different focus of his business, according to Each area represented approximately 25% of his time, so if one bucket got too full, he could immediately see it in his calendar and adjust. Discover Next: This is a way to fight off what New York Times best seller and self-discipline strategist Rory Vaden has labeled priority dilution in one of his podcast episodes. This phenomenon is a form of procrastination — a well-disguised one. It takes the form of being constantly distracted by less important, but potentially more urgent, tasks and therefore never getting to the productive stuff that leads to success. So, essentially, you're busy, busy, busy all day long putting out fires and chasing a full calendar, but with no clear, goal-focused plan. It's a terrible plan for success, but a great way to burn out. If buckets aren't your thing, another effective way to avoid priority dilution and ensure your work day is balanced is color coding your calendar. According to Clockwise, when it comes to color psychology, colors are highly effective at conveying information and influencing moods and behaviors. Moods and behavioral influences aside, a color-coded calendar does have one huge benefit: you can immediately see if your day or week is out of balance. That red bleeding all over the week? Might mean that green tasks are being neglected. You can also choose colors that convey added meaning for certain parts of your day or work. According to Dan Silvestre, who is a productivity coach, red commands attention, so you might use this color to label tasks or meetings of the highest urgency or importance. Or those that relate to the most important goals of your business; the ones that must get done. Blue, on the other hand, conveys calm, so you could use it to balance out those high-adrenaline red tasks. One strategy might be to make blue a color for personal time or enjoyable light tasks. Then make sure there are adequate blue slots between the reds. Of course, whether you choose buckets, colors or devise your own system, it's hard not to listen when two of the most successful men in business speak. So it might be time to get out your calendar and schedule some time to free up more time. More From GOBankingRates Mark Cuban Warns of 'Red Rural Recession' -- 4 States That Could Get Hit Hard 5 Cities You Need To Consider If You're Retiring in 2025 How Far $750K Plus Social Security Goes in Retirement in Every US Region This article originally appeared on Bill Gates Shares a Lesson From Warren Buffett He Wished He Learned Sooner (It Can Help You Too)
Bloomberg
6 hours ago
- Bloomberg
How Ohio Design Firm Moody Nolan Remembers Founder Curtis Moody
Moody Nolan CEO Jonathan Moody remembers his father, Curtis Moody, and how he built the largest Black-owned design firm in the US. Hello and welcome to Bloomberg's weekly design digest. I'm Kriston Capps, staff writer for Bloomberg CityLab and your guide to the world of architecture and the people who build things. Sign up to keep up: Subscribe to get the Design Edition newsletter every Sunday.
