21-07-2025
Private Research Is the New Public Research
The big differences between private companies and public companies are:
Those two things traditionally go together: Public companies can sell stock to anyone because they disclose information to everyone. But that is not an inevitable fact of nature; it is just a somewhat complicated consequence of US securities laws. And I get the sense that it is changing. Specifically, we seem to be getting closer to a world where anyone (or at least a lot of people) can buy shares in private companies (or at least some of the bigger ones), without those companies disclosing any financial information. We have talked about 'tokenization,' which I interpret as a sort of Trojan horse for making private-company stocks freely tradable without disclosure. Or there are plans to allow private equity in 401(k) plans, and more generally to offer more private assets to regular investors.
