Miguel I. Puertas

Using a novel dataset of private foundation returns and security-level holdings, we show that size and alternative-asset tilt generate no alpha once return smoothing is accounted for. Alpha is concentrated among foundations founded by hedge fund (HF) principals. Consistent with insider advantage rather than transferable skill, HF-affiliated foundations’ outperformance arises primarily from highly concentrated portfolios; across HF- and private-equity-affiliated foun- dations, holdings concealed from regulators predict alpha more strongly than disclosed ones, related investments predict alpha whereas unrelated investments do not, and alpha persists after founders retire. These findings challenge the view that alternative alpha is available to investors with sufficient capital and patience.

Full-service brokers manage more than $10 trillion of retail assets while charging substantially higher fees than many alternative brokerage options. Although these fees are increasingly transparent, disclosures typically present fees in annual terms. We investigate whether investors struggle to process the cumulative effects of annual fees on long-term wealth. Using survey experiments with full-service brokerage clients, we document that investors are poorly calibrated about fee levels, become more fee-sensitive when cumulative wealth effects are made explicit, and increasingly misjudge fees as horizons lengthen. Our results suggest investors underestimate how annual fees translate to lifetime costs.

We analyze a comprehensive set of mergers and acquisitions identified from SDC data spanning 1992 to 2025. Our dataset includes many mergers typically excluded from large-scale analyses due to factors such as the private status of the target or acquirer and the size of the transaction. After reviewing the impact of sample selection criteria on the analysis of merger characteristics, we use our extended sample to examine the differential returns to acquirers of public and private targets and, specifically, to analyze transactions involving public and private acquisition of subsidiary targets. We first consider the importance of synergy between acquirer and target parent and the target subsidiary itself, finding that the party with more knowledge about the subsidiary industry tends to have greater wealth gains. However, we also note the impact of data restrictions on our analysis. Further analysis of subsidiary transactions reveals that both financial-industry target parents and acquirers are underrepresented in the data-limited sample. Our continuing research focuses on identifying additional means to evaluate the importance of synergy in these transactions.

Prevalent measures of information asymmetry in finance either quantify causes of asymmetry between corporate insiders and outsiders, or proxy for asymmetry using market outcomes. In contrast, we introduce a novel measure, the InfoGap, to quantify the asymmetry between outside investors, distinct from the traditional information asymmetry between insiders and outsiders. Using social media data, we develop a methodology to directly extract information asymmetry signals. We show that when the InfoGap is high, uninformed investors incorporate less hard-to-process information into their beliefs, consistent with increased investor-level information asymmetry. Finally, we show that higher investor-level information asymmetry is associated with a deterioration in market quality, consistent with sophisticated investors attempting to capitalize on their superior information. In contrast, the market deterioration associated with traditional measures of firm-level asymmetry is largely driven by market withdrawal, consistent with sophisticated investors avoiding markets where they are at an informational disadvantage.