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Family Offices Discover Portfolios Can Include Regret


Investment firms of ultra-wealthy families aren't immune to FOMO.

  •   1 min read
Family Offices Discover Portfolios Can Include Regret

Ultra-wealthy families polled in a survey admit they're buying tech stocks because other ultra-wealthy families are buying tech stocks. This passes for investment strategy when you inherit money instead of earn it.

The term is FOMO. Fear of missing out. It used to describe teenagers at parties. Now it describes the people managing nine-figure fortunes. Progress.

Family offices exist because when you have enough money, you hire people whose only job is to not lose it. Apparently those people scroll Twitter like everyone else. See AI mentioned fourteen times before lunch. Panic. Buy anything with the letters A and I in the ticker. Call it diversification.

The survey suggests this is happening. Suggests. As if we needed a survey to confirm that rich people make emotional decisions with their money just like poor people do. The difference is when a retail trader buys NVIDIA at the top because his cousin won't shut up about it, he loses his down payment. When a family office does it, they lose enough money to buy Delaware.

These are the same firms that lecture pension funds about discipline. About long-term thinking. About ignoring market noise. Then ChatGPT gets popular and suddenly they're in a Zoom call asking their analysts if they're exposed to enough semiconductors. Exposed. Like it's radiation.

The beautiful part is they'll be fine either way. If AI works out, they'll claim vision. If it crashes, they'll blame the survey for peer-pressuring them into it. Either way, the guy who suggested buying at the peak keeps his job because his last name is on the building.

Retail traders get called dumb money for doing this exact thing, except they do it with Robinhood accounts and Reddit threads instead of Bloomberg terminals and wealth advisors. The strategy is identical. The only difference is the font on the brokerage statement.

Photo by Quilia on Unsplash

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