The latest news in investment offerings, financial products and other services relevant to wealth advisors and their clients.

Nasdaq
Nasdaq has launched Nasdaq Private Capital™ Indexes, a suite of benchmarks.

The indices are constructed from more than 14,000 institutional private market funds that represent more than $11.4 trillion in global AuM sourced from Nasdaq eVestment’s LP reported dataset. 

The new offerings are designed to help institutional investors and consultants benchmark performance, analyze exposures, and navigate private capital markets, Nasdaq said. The launch comes at a time when wealth managers, private banks and family offices continue to be regaled about the diversification advantages of the space, although a few skeptical voices have emerged. (See a recent article here about views on the sector.)

Nasdaq said the index suite launch is the next phase in the evolution of Nasdaq Private Capital Solutions, designed to deliver transparent benchmarking, institutional-quality data, and analytics. The platform unifies Nasdaq Private Capital Indexes, Nasdaq eVestment Fund and Deal Benchmarking, the Nasdaq eVestment Private Fund Universe and the Nasdaq eVestment TopQ+ Analytics platform.

“Private markets are at a pivotal moment, growing rapidly in both importance and complexity. Yet the ecosystem remains highly fragmented, with data trapped in silos, inconsistent benchmarks, and limited interoperability,” Oliver Albers, chief product officer, capital access platforms, Nasdaq, said. “The Nasdaq Private Capital™ Indexes change that.”

Other firms have sought to capture the private markets share. In 2024, for example, MSCI launched MSCI Private Capital Indexes. Comparing returns from listed equities, which can be traded in seconds on electronic exchanges, with those from venture capital, where time horizons tend to be measured, carries difficulties. Plenty of caveats are needed when comparing stocks’ returns with the internal rates of return (IRR) measures that go with private assets. That said, some yardsticks are better than none, and the sophistication of the investment world is evolving fast. Firms such as Preqin (owned by BlackRock) also issue indices for private markets.