Victor Haghani on Why Wealth Doesn’t Last: Lessons From The Missing Billionaires
Victor Haghani, co‑founder of Long‑Term Capital Management, explains why most billionaire families lose their fortunes over generations. Drawing on his book "The Missing Billionaires," he highlights the challenges of intergenerational wealth planning, risk management, and tax‑efficient investing. He advocates low‑cost index funds and direct indexing as the simplest way to preserve family capital. The conversation offers practical guidance for family offices and high‑net‑worth individuals seeking to sustain wealth.
When a $10 Million Tax Break Isn’t Worth the Wait
A young founder holding $7.5 million of Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) in OpenAI faces a trade‑off between a $10 million federal tax exemption and the risk of a concentrated position. Using an expected‑utility framework that incorporates his human capital, risk aversion,...
Where’s My Lunch?
The article revisits Harry Markowitz’s classic claim that diversification is the only free lunch, arguing that the concept has been stretched beyond its original meaning. It shows that merely spreading investments across more assets—such as an equal‑weight S&P 500 versus a...
Vanguard’s World Stock Market ETF: Is the Whole Better than the Sum of the Parts?
Vanguard’s Total World Stock ETF (VT) offers a single‑fund, cap‑weighted exposure to the global equity market, but it carries a higher expense ratio and no foreign tax credit. Splitting VT into Vanguard’s Total US Stock Market ETF (VTI) and Total...
Mega-IPOs and Index Fund Mechanics: Much Ado About Nothing?
Index providers are tweaking rules to let large IPOs enter major US indexes faster, prompting worries as mega‑IPOs such as SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic and Stripe loom. The authors calculate that even a $280 billion IPO wave would represent only about 0.4%...
Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: A(nother) Look at Long/Short Direct Index Tax-Loss Harvesting
Leveraged long/short direct‑index tax‑loss harvesting (LSDI) lets investors swap a concentrated, high‑cost‑basis stock for a diversified basket without paying capital‑gains tax up front. The authors model a $10 million Shopify holding and find that manager fees—0.5% on the long side and...
Demystifying 351 ETF Exchanges
Section 351 of the U.S. tax code permits investors to contribute appreciated stocks, bonds or ETFs into a newly created ETF without triggering immediate capital‑gains tax, effectively seeding the fund at original cost basis. To qualify, no single security may exceed...