More Non-Risk Taking Investing

It’s been a long while since I posted, mostly because every time I think of a markets-oriented topic to discuss, it’s too damn depressing to write about: the head of BLS being fired, Bessent talking nonsense about tariffs, Bessent talking nonsense about where rates should be, the US government seeking 15% “commission” of Nvidia’s sales…and the Bloomberg just reports it like everything is normal.

So I’ll just post a link to the latest garbage about PE: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-13/private-equity-continuation-vehicles-become-cv-squared-after-growth - sorry, it’s on Bloomberg so it might be paywalled. The short story is that PE continues to do more “Continuation Vehicles”, which involve selling pieces of their existing investments to their existing investors. They give them the name “CV-Squared”, which any of us who lived through CDO-squareds should blanch at. It’s the same story: the PE fund has these investments, the LPs thought they would be able to cash out by now, but exits are few, especially into the IPO lane. So the PE fund decides to raise money from mostly the same investors, to buy out the original investors’ holdings, but those original investors frequently are…as I mentioned, the same as the ‘new’ investors. Come on everyone, just taking the hit and act like the capitalists you keep telling us you are.