Jason M. Lemkin argues that loading 401(k)s with private equity is like a casino because retail investors don't understand the deals, see no transparent financials, and can't spot markups. The real problem isn't that PE is bad, but that the best deals go to sophisticated investors while retail gets what's left over.
Stuffing retail investors 401ks with PE casino issue with PE investments. They don't even understand. They have no financials for no don't know what the markups are. Is that at the edge of a crying in a casino?
I understand what you're saying, which is, is that it's the more unsophisticated the investor and the more complex the instrument, the more likely it is that the investor will lose and the promoter will win. It's one of those life rules, you know, it's why even IPOs there's complex things and you kind of go whenever it's complex. Your rule of thumb should be whenever a banker is explaining something complex, you're losing money. Right? So I don't think it's as bad as quote the casino because I think on aggregate, I mean because stepping back the casino comment is this in the casino, the median expected return is negative because the house takes a take and the median is a loss. Even pe. Look, the long term returns in PE aren't. The long term returns in venture are good. So in theory, allowing individual investors to access those returns might have meant some individual investors would have got the databricks exposure that Andreessen got. So it's not a bad idea. But to your point, Jason, the problem is often the more complex the instruments are, the more likely it is to go wrong. The more likely it is to be adverse selection, the more likely it is that the good parts of the PE and venture value chain don't get allocated to the retail investors.
