Episode summary
How Family Offices Think About Illiquidity, Taxes, and Compounding
How I Invest With David Weisburd
· · 42 min · Hosts: David Weisburd · Guests: Jeffrey Fulk
Summary
Jeffrey Fulk traces his path from golf professional to hedge funds, saying his break into finance came through a chance connection at Signet Capital Management. He uses the Long-Term Capital Management collapse as a framework for how dislocations create opportunity, arguing that when leverage unwound in the late 1990s it opened up wide spreads, merger arbitrage, and a broad run of hedge fund strategies.
He says AlTi Global’s current focus is shaped by tax efficiency, especially for wealth clients. Fulk argues that long-short structures can generate losses even in a rising market, making them useful for tax loss harvesting, and he says the market now cares far more about after-tax outcomes than it did five years ago. He also highlights private credit secondaries as attractive because they can be bought at discounts to earlier loan levels while still being tied to underlying cash flows.
On private markets more broadly, Fulk says evergreen vehicles are especially useful in private credit and increasingly compelling in private equity because they reduce capital-call friction and periodic liquidity stress. He expects 401(k)s, target-date funds, continuation vehicles, and AI-enabled buyouts to expand access and shape the next phase of private investing, while warning that investors still need trusted managers rather than relying on structure alone.
Key takeaways
- Fulk says tax-aware long-short strategies can generate losses in up markets and help offset gains, making them attractive for wealthy clients with concentrated positions.
- He argues private credit secondaries are compelling because they can be bought at discounts to loan marks while still collecting interest and benefiting from underlying sponsor support.
- Fulk says evergreen funds fit private credit best, and private equity too, because they solve capital-call timing and periodic liquidity problems for wealth clients.
- He expects 401(k) target-date funds to be the first major channel for private assets, with more private credit and private equity exposure coming through new structures.
- Fulk says continuation vehicles and AI-driven value creation are two of the most interesting pockets in private equity today.
Notable quotes
“when long-term capital management collapsed, it created this incredible opportunity in the market”
“the first bucket is around taxaware strategies. And since we're a wealth management platform, this idea of part participating in investment opportunities in a more tax advantaged way is really compelling”
“Several of these strategies will throw off a 100% capital loss in the first year”
“Most of the models we see are between five and 10 years uh in terms of be being able to do that”
“We love it in private credit because there's a fixed date when the principal gets paid back and you're getting interest payments along the way”
How the episode opens
So Jeff, you've had a prolific career starting with being a top PM at Guggenheim Partners to your time at High Tower to today you're at Alti Global which has roughly hundred billion dollars in AUM. But I want to go back to 2006 early stages of career when you were at Signet Capital Management. Tell me about that that experience.
Yeah, it was really serendipitous. So, you know, even before my whole finance career, I started as a golf professional. So, I came out of undergrad and and taught golf for a couple years.
And my entryway into finance was really postgrad school. I ran into one of the members of the golf course that I used to work for and he worked for Signet Capital and this was a burgeoning fund of funds business at one of the best times to be a fund of funds investor and they were growing assets quite quickly. They were largely a European firm and they were looking to grow in the US.
And so they brought this gentleman into the business originally as a consultant and then tasked him with the responsibility of building out the US business. And because the job was initially going to be from his basement, he wanted somebody that knew his family and he was comfortable having in his house. And this was kind of back before the area era where people were working from home or it was common to work from home.
And so that's what got me my shot in this industry. I got a six-month contract with with Signet and basically it was off to the races. The market was really attractive for opportunities in hedge funds.
Everyone was looking to allocate to hedge funds because they were exciting and they were at the forefront of finance.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- tax-aware investing
- private credit and secondaries
- evergreen fund structures
- long-short tax loss harvesting
- private assets in 401(k)s
Companies and tickers mentioned
- AlTi Global
- Guggenheim Partners
- Hightower
- AlphaSense
Watch the episode
Watch “How Family Offices Think About Illiquidity, Taxes, and Compounding” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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