According to the third annual Alternatives Watch (AW) Research Investor Compendium commissioned by Vidrio Financial, there was a strong uptick in the amount of alternative investment mandate activity across some of the largest institutional investors. In 2021, AW's second annual compendium tracked a total of $130 billion in new capital across more than 900 individual institutional investor mandates from 50 of the top alternative allocators. That figure jumped to $144 billion in 2022, an increase of over 10%, across more than 1,000 individual mandates. There was also an increase in investor interest across infrastructure and real asset strategies to $6.9 billion and $4.9 billion, respectively, as those strategies act as inflation hedges. Other key findings include a muted slowdown in private equity assets, while there was a pick-up in activity in hedge funds as large institutional players sought to purchase risk-mitigating assets throughout the year. In addition, total private equity and venture capital mandates accounted for over half the mandates in the compendium and were spread out across the world, as investors embraced life sciences and technology sectors. Mazen Jabban, Chairman and CEO, of Vidrio Financial, stated, "As we saw in this year's Compendium performance data, Vidrio Financial continues to observe alternative asset classes growing in importance for institutional investment teams who work to take advantage of illiquidity premiums in the private markets while also seeking greater transparency into these types of investments."

Finsum:According to the third annual Alternatives Watch Research Investor Compendium, there was a 10% uptick in the amount of alternative investment mandate activity across some of the largest institutional investors.

LPL Financial scoops up three Wells Fargo Advisors teams who are partnering up in Charlotte, North Carolina, to create a single $1.45 billion practice. The three teams, which generated $10.5 million in revenue at Wells, moved on March 2 and joined LPL’s Strategic Wealth Services channel, which launched almost three years ago and is aimed at attracting teams from full-service firms. The new practice, Carnegie Private Wealth, is led by Angie Ostendarp, Jordan Raniszeski, and Mary Sherrill Ware, whose team at Wells had $1.1 billion in assets. Ostendarp started her career at Wells’ Wachovia predecessor in 1994. Raniszeski spent all 16 years of his career at Wells, aside from a short stint at Deloitte & Touche Investment Advisors in 2004. Ware was at Wells for her whole 16-year career. Mitch Mayfield, who has nearly 30 years of experience, all at Wells and its predecessors, is partnering with Ostendarp’s team. He had known Ostendarp from the training program at Wachovia. Jeff Vandiver, who has been friends with the other advisors for 20 years and has thirty years of experience, rounds out the new practice. He started his career at Wells predecessor First Union Brokerage Services in 1993. Raniszeski said the following in a statement, “The opportunity to create our own firm at LPL with a culture that prioritizes clients’ needs and interests above everything else just felt like the right way forward.”

Finsum:LPL recruited three separate Wells Fargo teams, who are joining together to form a new combined practice at LPL as they believe its culture prioritizes clients’ needs and interests above everything else.

In a recent article for the Wall Street Journal, author Mark Hulbert defends the use of ETFs in opposition to people who say direct indexing is a superior method of investing. Many brokerage firms that have created direct-indexing platforms say direct indexing is better as it allows investors to create a customized index without stocks that they don't want and also can strategically harvest tax losses. However, Hubert believes that most of direct indexing’s supposed advantages can be duplicated by ETFs at a lower cost. For instance, customizing an index can be duplicated. According to Lawrence Tint, the former U.S. CEO of BGI, the organization that created iShares, now part of BlackRock, anybody could achieve the same result by buying a generic index ETF and then selling short the stocks that we want to avoid. Tint also doubts that direct indexing’s ability to harvest tax losses outweighs the cost savings of investing in a low-cost ETF. He stated that, over time, an investor who sells his losers from his direct-index portfolio will increasingly be left with a portfolio of mostly unrealized gains. So, the benefit of being able to decide when to take tax losses will fall over time. An investor will also have to pay higher fees each year to maintain the direct index. In addition, he also noted that tax-loss harvesting is only applicable to taxable accounts.

Finsum:In an article for the Wall Street Journal, author Mark Hulbert defends the use of ETFs against direct indexing as its ability to harvest tax losses outweighs the cost savings of a low-cost ETF, while customization can be replicated by buying an index and shorting the stocks you don’t want.