↑ Read the latest from the desks · fresh intelligence, published daily✦Quiet reading✦No ads, ever✦Ad-free articles read by humans today …↑✦Boards engagement today … people · … AI✦Corporate brand & media services✦Made in Virginia Beach since 1997✦
Markets EdgePAPPY 23April 20, 20262 min readAd-free
Private Equity Secondaries Volume Hits $140B as IPO Drought Enters Year Three
Fund managers and limited partners turn to secondary markets for liquidity as traditional exit windows remain shut.
Markets Edge deskMarkets Edge · Huang GoodmanSource: J.P. Morgan ↗
In plain words
Private equity secondaries hit **$140B** volume as three-year IPO drought forces structural shift toward secondary liquidity mechanisms.
$140 billion
in volume through the first three quarters of 2024
38%
increase over the same period in 2023
$23 billion
in 2023
$142 billion
in 2021
The private equity secondaries market traded roughly $140 billion in volume through the first three quarters of 2024, according to data compiled by J.P. Morgan and Neuberger Berman, marking a 38% increase over the same period in 2023. The surge reflects a structural shift as portfolio companies that would have exited via public markets between 2021 and 2024 remain locked inside funds, forcing allocators to seek liquidity through secondary sales of LP stakes and direct company positions.
The mechanics are straightforward. U.S. IPO proceeds totaled $23 billion in 2023, down from $142 billion in 2021, per Renaissance Capital. That three-year window closure left an estimated $2.8 trillion in unrealized value sitting in private equity and venture funds, according to Preqin. With fund lives extending and distribution multiples compressing, limited partners—particularly insurance companies and public pensions with liquidity needs—began selling fund stakes at discounts ranging from 8% to 22% of net asset value. Simultaneously, GPs initiated continuation vehicles and structured secondaries to provide partial exits for LPs while retaining high-conviction assets. Neuberger Berman notes that GP-led transactions now represent 65% of secondaries volume, up from 42% in 2020.
This matters because the secondaries market is no longer a distressed-asset clearinghouse. It has become the primary liquidity mechanism for private capital. For family offices and fund-of-funds managers, this creates two distinct opportunities. First, purchasing LP stakes at discounts to NAV offers immediate mark-to-market gains if public markets reopen and distributions accelerate. Second, GP-led continuation funds allow selective co-investment in mature, cash-flowing assets without the J-curve drag of primary commitments. The American Investment Council's recent report highlights that secondaries buyers are now underwriting assets with 5-7 year hold periods and 12-15% net IRR targets, comparable to traditional buyout returns but with significantly shorter duration risk.
The shift also signals a maturation of private markets infrastructure. Firms like Lexington Partners, Coller Capital, and Ardian have raised dedicated secondaries funds exceeding $20 billion each, providing continuous bid-side liquidity. StepStone and Hamilton Lane have launched evergreen secondaries vehicles for wealth channel distribution, democratizing access previously limited to institutional allocators. Meanwhile, technology platforms including Nasdaq Private Market and Forge Global are facilitating price discovery for direct secondary transactions in high-growth privates, reducing information asymmetry that historically plagued the asset class.
Operators and allocators should monitor three developments over the next 12-18 months. First, whether the Fed's rate path allows a reopening of IPO windows in H2 2025, which would immediately compress secondaries discounts and shift volume back toward traditional exits. Second, the pricing dynamics of continuation vehicles as GPs face pressure to mark assets closer to realizable value rather than optimistic projections. Third, regulatory scrutiny from the SEC on secondaries transaction disclosures, particularly around conflicts of interest in GP-led deals where the same manager sits on both sides of the transaction.
The secondaries market is now a $140 billion annual liquidity engine because the front door closed. It stays open until something cheaper replaces it.
Branded by POPS4 · proof in 60 seconds
For the principal
Consider allocating 3-5% of private book to secondaries buyers offering NAV discounts while maintaining primary commitments for vintage diversification.
For the operator
Watch continuation vehicle pricing closely—GP-led deals at 1.1x NAV or higher signal overconfidence in marks versus realizable exit values.
For the house
Huang Goodman adding secondaries exposure through StepStone's evergreen vehicle and selective LP stake purchases at 12-18% discounts to NAV.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — your name imprinted on real authorized stock, your pick of 200+ brands and 70,000 products, shipped from one accountable house. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign.
200+authorized brands
70,000products · virtual proof on each
9 deskspublishing daily
1997one house, since
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
Built by the craft floor — apparel, media, packaging, and secure print.
This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori heritage press through approved vendors · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.