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Matthias Knab, Opalesque for New Managers: Investment research platform YCharts has significantly expanded its Alternatives Data offering, bringing private markets and alternative investments into the same environment that advisors and wholesalers already use to analyze portfolios and prepare client meetings.
The expansion builds on the Hamilton Lane private markets benchmarks that YCharts added in February. Alternatives Data now also covers private capital funds; semi-liquid vehicles such as business development companies (BDCs) and non-traded REITs; interval and tender offer funds; hedge fund strategies; and funds available through the iCapital marketplace. Advisors, wholesalers and research teams can research and compare these alternatives, hold them in a portfolio and evaluate them next to public holdings.
Interest is high, implementation lags
YCharts frames the launch as a response to a gap between advisor interest and day-to-day practice. In a survey of Registered Investment Advisors earlier this year, 95% said alternatives already appear in client portfolios and more than half plan to increase their use. Allocations nevertheless remain small: nearly half of the advisors using alternatives keep them below 10% of client portfolios.
The survey suggests the obstacles are practical rather than conceptual. Liquidity concerns were cited by 61% of advisors, while only 14% said alternatives have no role in a portfolio. In practice, working with alternatives has meant piecing together filings, manager portals and offline sources, or using a public fund as a proxy for a private exposure.
With the new coverage, wealth professionals can put the actual alternative fund into the portfolio and measure it against benchmarks designed for private markets. Wholesalers, in turn, can show where a private markets product fits within an advisor's broader portfolio using real fund and benchmark data instead of public stand-ins.
Caleb Eplett, Chief Product Officer at YCharts, said alternatives have so far largely sat outside the whole-portfolio view that advisors and wholesalers need. The goal, he said, is to let wealth professionals assess alternatives "with the same rigor and ease" they apply to any other holding.
What the coverage includes
- Hamilton Lane private markets benchmarks across private equity, private credit and private real assets, built from limited partner cash flow data
- Unlisted closed-end funds, meaning interval and tender offer funds, with look-through holdings
- Hedge fund strategy-level data, comparable against public and private holdings
- Semi-liquid funds, including BDCs and non-traded REITs
- Funds from the iCapital alternatives marketplace
- Private capital funds: fund-level coverage of drawdown vehicles in private equity, venture capital, private credit and real assets, spanning managers such as KKR, Blackstone, Carlyle and CVC, with a redesigned quote page
According to YCharts, the fund-level dataset includes more than 3,000 private capital funds, over 250 share classes of semi-liquid funds and more than 200 iCapital share classes.
The Hamilton Lane benchmarks, unlisted closed-end funds and hedge fund strategies come with a YCharts Professional license. Private capital, semi-liquid and iCapital fund coverage is offered as an add-on. YCharts said the expansion is the next phase of its alternatives data build-out and that more coverage will follow.
YCharts says it is used by more than 15,000 financial professionals. The platform combines portfolio analysis, risk, proposals and client communication with AI-enabled tools.
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