Over the years, I have had the opportunity to participate in numerous North American private equity and public equity investment projects, working closely with management teams across a wide range of portfolio companies. Most recently, earlier this month, I spent four hours in a face-to-face discussion with the CEO of ThredUp. While much of that conversation remains confidential, it reinforced a thought that has stayed with me ever since.
One of the harsh realities of investing is that most investors never have access to the people whose decisions ultimately determine the value of the assets they own.
Whether you graduated from a top target school, work at institutions such as Bridgewater, Blackstone, or JPMorgan, or spend your days building models as an analyst or quant at firms like Two Sigma, Citadel, or Picton Mahoney, the vast majority of professionals in finance are still not part of the capital allocation process itself. Most serve as highly skilled specialists within an enormous financial system. Their ideas are often intelligent and technically sound, but they rarely represent the complete decision-making framework used by those who actually allocate billions of dollars.
Financial content creators generally fall into two categories. The first consists of practitioners who invest their own capital and share their personal investment process. While often insightful, their perspectives are naturally constrained by their own experience and portfolio size. The second consists of educators who explain financial concepts, market terminology, and investment mechanics. Their content is valuable for building foundational knowledge, particularly for younger investors, but much of it focuses on information that has already been widely absorbed by the market. As a result, it often provides little practical guidance for making real investment decisions.
Neither approach is inherently wrong. However, neither fully addresses what investors are truly seeking. Most investors are not looking to master financial jargon or understand every valuation methodology. Their ultimate objective is to improve the long-term performance of their existing assets. Yet the people making the most important investment decisions remain largely inaccessible.
For high-net-worth investors, there are still ways to narrow this information gap. The key lies in elevating the quality of your information sources. That means studying long-form interviews, podcasts, books, and research from the world’s leading portfolio managers and investment firms—a process that takes years, and one that I am still committed to myself. It also means following a small number of thoughtful wealth management professionals whose work extends beyond stock recommendations or superficial market commentary, focusing instead on capital allocation, long-term wealth preservation, and investment philosophy. Finally, nothing replaces direct access to institutional investment managers through personalized wealth management relationships, where conversations with portfolio managers and senior decision-makers provide insights that standardized bank research reports and mainstream financial media simply cannot.
Over the coming months, I plan to host a series of small private luncheons with senior executives and portfolio managers from some of North America’s leading public equity investment firms. My goal is simple: to help members of the Chinese community who genuinely care about their wealth gain greater access to world-class investment thinking, institutional perspectives, and resources that are rarely available to individual investors.
