Private Research Is the New Public Research
Also Goldman’s new career path, Trump Media’s Bitcoin treasury, Hess’s JV agreement, Polymarket’s derivatives exchange and Jane Street’s partner list.
The big differences between private companies and public companies are:
Those two things traditionally go together: Public companies can sell stock to anyone because they disclose information to everyone. But that is not an inevitable fact of nature; it is just a somewhat complicated consequence of US securities laws. And I get the sense that it is changing. Specifically, we seem to be getting closer to a world where anyone (or at least a lot of people) can buy shares in private companies (or at least some of the bigger ones), without those companies disclosing any financial information. We have talked about “tokenization,” which I interpret as a sort of Trojan horse for making private-company stocks freely tradable without disclosure. Or there are plans to allow private equity in 401(k) plans, and more generally to offer more private assets to regular investors.