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Terminology: Private Equity

An alternative investment class consisting of capital that is not listed on a public exchange, often used to buy out mature companies.

Street Wall St.'s Definition:

It’s flipping houses, but instead of a house, it’s a multi-million dollar corporation. Buy it, gut the ugly parts, slap on some new paint, and sell it for a premium.

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Real-World Example:

Firms that buy entire established companies, usually take on massive debt to do it, fire a bunch of people to make the company look more profitable, and then sell it.

What exactly is Private Equity? An alternative investment class consisting of capital that is not listed on a public exchange, often used to buy out mature companies. How is it Used on the Street? 🏙️ Firms that buy entire established companies, usually take on massive debt to do it, fire a bunch of people to make the company look more profitable, and then sell it. When Do You Actually Use This? ⏱️ When you need to look under the hood of a company to see if they are actually legit. Stop buying shares just because a company's CEO posts good memes on Twitter. You use this to find out if the business is actually printing cash or if it's just burning through investor money. By checking balance sheets, cash flow, and debt levels, you can spot the difference between a fundamentally solid powerhouse and a hype-driven house of cards that's one bad quarter away from bankruptcy. The StreetWallStreet Pro Tip 🔥 Difficulty Level - Advanced: Handle with extreme care. This is high-level Wall Street wizardry where the big boys play. If you don't fully respect the mechanics of this, you can easily lose more money than you even started with. Keep your position sizes tiny until you have backtested this and proven to yourself that you actually know what you're doing. Leave your ego at the door, or the market will humble you instantly.

See more:

Wash Sale

An IRS rule that prohibits a taxpayer from claiming a loss on the sale or trade of a security if they repurchase the same or a ‘substantially identical’ security within 30 days.

Liquidity

The ease and speed with which an asset can be converted into physical cash without tanking its current market price.

NASDAQ

A global electronic marketplace for buying and selling securities, heavily famous for hosting the world’s biggest tech titans.

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