58
Private equity wants a piece of your 401(k) — and hopes Trump can make it happen
(finance.yahoo.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
58 points (96.8% liked)
News
36000 readers
2248 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This isn't quite as bad as it sounds, but its still something I think should not happen.
Its not that private equity firms are going to reach into your 401k and take your money. What they want is for their private equity offerings to be offered right along side of the publicly traded stocks and mutual funds you have offered to you today.
They want you to have the choice to invest in their much riskier, less regulated, investments, but even if that choice happens, they can't force you to give them your money.
Because there are rules in place to protect investors in public companies. There are disclosure requirements that public companies have to do which adds transparency that private companies don't. Investments made in public stocks can be traded any time and you can exit an investment immediately if you're willing to take what the market will pay today. There is recourse public shareholders have against a company. They can sue. Not so for private investments which can lock up your money for whatever their rules say.
Besides all the reasons above, allowing private investment with 401k money is like letting people buy Bitcoin with their retirement savings. It a huge huge gamble, and that isn't what retirement savings is for. If you want to spend your non-retirement money on risky bets like private equity, Bitcoin, or "everything on red" in Vegas, that's what your non-retirement money is for.
Also, no individual investor is saying what this guy says. Folks that have enough money to invest in private equity are doing so outside of the their 401k.
Perfect example: you hear about Elon Musk getting sued by Tesla investors for his actions in the company. You never hear that about SpaceX, Boring Company, Neurolink, etc. Why? Of his companies only Tesla is publicly traded. All the others they aren't required to give any power to their stock holders.
Yeah I was terrified of the headline at first, but after reading the article came to the same basic conclusion as you.
At first I thought they were going to find a way to trade our 401(k)s without our consent like the mortgage-backed securities from pre-2008.