Creating portfolios that are customized to a family’s unique investment goals and risk tolerance requires ingenuity and flexible thinking. However, the execution of risk management should be more systematic. Ultimately, the effective investors employ a risk management framework that accounts for potential risk at every stage of the investment process—one that considers four crucial components: strategic risk, implementation risk, portfolio monitoring, and communication.
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The Senate Bill 54 (the “SB 54”) was signed into law in California and will take effect March 1, 2025 for all investments made during calendar year 2024. The law will require “covered entities” to report the demographic information of “founding team members” of all companies in which the covered entity has invested. The law is meant to address the lack of venture capital funding flowing to diverse founders and is the first of its kind.
Several years on from the pandemic, the global economy is still wrestling with the repercussions. While investors will hope for the best in 2024, macro analyst Richard de Chazal examines the resiliency of the markets against a crowded backdrop of Fed policy uncertainty, inflation, bond market and economic dynamics, and other factors each of which will test the limits of the market’s endurance.
Rising global rates, a strong U.S. dollar, and tightening liquidity conditions have weighed on sentiment in emerging markets (EMs). But EMs may be regaining their footing as easier monetary conditions could drive growth in 2024 for both equities and debt alike. Any recovery, however, is unlikely to be uniform. As a new cycle unfolds, we expect the heterogeneous dynamics and secular trends that drove performance in 2023 to continue to shape market terrain in 2024.
Having observed private investors at work over many years, authors Jonny Lach and Sara Hamilton see some clear patterns separating the most successful family investors from others. They offer some of the lessons learned, including the advantages and challenges that family investors face.
Private investors including family offices can be great investors, but many are not. They have some big competitive advantages over institutional investors which live with significant constraints imposed by law, stakeholders, media and regulators. Private investors are usually less constrained, but often fail to recognize and exploit their competitive advantages. The advantages should be seized upon; fortune favors the bold.
At Family Office Exchange (FOX), we have seen significant growth of interest in—and execution of—direct investments in operating businesses and real estate by FOX member families. In a 2018 FOX survey, more than 80% of respondents reported that they allocate capital directly to investments, bypassing external management, in order to get exposure on their own or through co-investment with other families.
The FOX Global Investment Survey is designed to aid wealth owners and family office executives in their review of the family's allocation decisions and investment performance each year. This report highlights critical areas as to how families structure their investment decision-making, allocate across their portfolios, staff their investment teams, and in-source vs. outsource investment advice, all relative to 104 family office peers.
The 2019 FOX Survey on Values-Aligned Investing was completed alongside our annual Global Investment Survey.
One of the greatest direct investing struggles is how to manage deal flow once opportunities start to come in. It sounds simple enough, but it is quite actually complex – in ways that might surprise you. Mainly, once word gets out you’re looking to invest, you’ll be inundated with opportunities. So before you work with your network to surface deals, be sure to proactively build your deal architecture and guidelines.