The business began not with a market opportunity, but a personal one. Founder Robert Boucai realized his best after-tax returns came from real estate, but no existing general partners offered the tax-efficient, long-hold, high-alignment structure he wanted for his own capital. He built the firm to be the optimal solution for himself first.

The optimal level of diversification is the maximum you can achieve at a very low cost. Investors should stop diversifying when the marginal benefit is outweighed by significantly higher fees, such as moving from broad market ETFs (3bps) to private equity (400bps).

For high earners, strategic tax mitigation is a primary wealth-building tool, not just a way to save money. The capital saved from taxes represents a guaranteed, passive investment return. This reframes tax planning from a compliance chore to a core financial growth strategy.

The primary decision-makers for mass-market 401(k) plans are often HR or finance teams, not investors. To shield their companies from employee lawsuits, they have historically prioritized funds with the lowest fees, creating a massive structural barrier for higher-fee alternative investments to gain traction.

The most under-discussed lesson from the LTCM collapse was not firm-level leverage, but the personal failure of its partners to apply a robust risk framework (like expected utility) when deciding how much of their own wealth to invest in their fund.

Adrian Melli argues that moving from a high-fee hedge fund to a lower-fee long-only firm created an arbitrage opportunity. By applying the same rigorous research to a structure with a lower cost of capital, his team could generate superior net returns for clients, a non-consensus bet that paid off.

Vanguard's first index fund had a ~2% expense ratio (180 bps), far from today's near-zero fees. This historical fact shows that for innovative financial products, low costs are an outcome of achieving massive scale, not a viable starting point. Early fees must be high enough to build a sustainable business.

The financial industry systematically funnels average investors into index funds not just for efficiency, but from a belief that 'mom and pop savers are considered too stupid to handle their own money.' This creates a system where the wealthy receive personalized stock advice and white-glove treatment, while smaller investors get a generic, low-effort solution that limits their potential wealth.

Contrary to the belief that indexing creates market inefficiencies, Michael Mauboussin argues the opposite. Indexing removes the weakest, 'closet indexing' players from the active pool, increasing the average skill level of the remaining competition and making it harder to find an edge.