Fix Private Markets Before Small Investors Are Invited In

Wall Street’s latest push into private markets may give individual investors and their 401(k) accounts access to shares of unicorns like SpaceX and OpenAI. It may also allow them to add billions of additional dollars to the liquidity trap currently plaguing more sophisticated investors.

Private markets have suffered from illiquidity, not lack of capital. Money goes in but rarely comes out. There is $3.7 trillion locked in venture-backed unicorns alone. Investors in the 12 months ending Sept. 30 got back just $307 billion from initial public offerings, mergers and acquisitions and secondary market sales, according to PitchBook.