The Private Investment Secret Wall Street Doesn't Want You to Know
While retail investors are stuck riding the volatility of public stocks and bonds, the wealthiest American families have spent the last twenty years quietly compounding their fortunes in a parallel market most people have no access to. We're changing that.
Open the portfolio of any Forbes 400 family office and you will see something that almost never appears in a retail brokerage account: private investments. Private credit. Private real estate. Pre-IPO equity. Secondary funds. The public markets simply can't compete with what private capital delivers. And until recently, that was by design.
Why public markets are no longer enough
The data is now overwhelming. Private credit reliably delivers 12-18% annual returns, with lower volatility than the S&P 500 because the underlying loans are not marked to market every day. Pre-IPO equity has compounded at multiples that public-market growth investing cannot touch, because by the time a company hits the public markets, the asymmetric returns have already been captured by the private investors who got in early.
The high-net-worth families that have been quietly outperforming the indices for the last two decades have done so by allocating 30–50% of their net worth to private investments. The 60/40 portfolio your retail broker is still pushing? It is a relic.
Why Meridian clients have an edge
Through our institutional relationships and our dedicated alternatives team, Meridian can get you into the same private credit, real estate, and pre-IPO funds the Forbes 400 invest in. These funds are not available on E*Trade or Schwab. They are not advertised. Most are hard-capped at billions in assets and oversubscribed by waitlist. We have the relationships to get you a seat at the table.
Our most recent private credit allocation closed earlier this year — and based on the underlying loan book, we project IRRs of 22% over the next decade, materially in excess of what a comparable bond portfolio can deliver in the current rate environment.
How to get started
Every Meridian client should have a meaningful allocation to private investments. The question is simply how much, and into which strategies. Schedule a private allocation review with our team and we'll walk you through the funds we currently have capacity in — and the returns you can expect from each.