Watch the video of this panel on Gamma Prime’s YouTube channel:
Panel talk by Shawn O’Keefe (Founder at Summit Wealth Strategies), Antoine Palmer (Co-Founder & Director at Sparrow Capital), Michael Rosmer (Co-Founder at Gamma Prime), Jake Claver (CEO at DAGFamilyOffice) and Evan Szu (CEO at Gamma Prime)
Evan Szu (CEO at Gamma Prime):
So you guys are the interface — you are where the investor meets the products, right? How do you think about alternative assets? What are some of the factors or considerations when deciding, “Okay, securities, structured products, that sort of thing,” or whether you should reach into this other bucket — hedge funds, private equity, and so on? Maybe we’ll start with you.
Jake Claver (CEO at DAG Family Office):
So we currently don’t do anything traditional. It’s completely digital-asset focused with a hedge fund, and we do make allocations to other private investments.
On the other side of the business, we have a syndication platform where we do end-to-end management for SPVs. So again, all alternative investments — whether that’s real estate, private equity, M&A transactions, debt, bonds, warrants, or private credit.
I think that if you’re looking for asymmetric bets, then that’s the avenue you should go down. It should definitely be a portion of people’s portfolios, but if you look at wealth management holistically, it’s probably not the lion’s share if you’re focused on long-term wealth preservation. You’ll likely have a significant allocation to traditional equities, bonds, and stocks.
But we see most of the family offices we consult with allocating somewhere between 20% and 40% of their portfolio to alternatives.
Evan Szu:
That’s quite a bit — larger than I would have said. What would you say the other 40% or 60% is in?
Jake Claver:
Treasuries, mutual funds — things that are more of a bedrock, stable-income, cash-flowing. And then that other 40% will include real estate as well. When I say “alts,” I’m including real estate, and that’s hot.
Antoine Palmer (Co-Founder & Director at Sparrow Capital):
Yeah. Everything we’re invested in is also alternative investments. For us, yield on our investments is table stakes for whatever we’re building, but what we’re really focused on is community-coordinated economic development.
Everything we invest in is local. It’s connected to community. We accept multiple layers of complexity in the ecosystem.
We find that when we have silos of functions in our portfolio — when we’re dependent on third parties — we often don’t get the quality we’re looking for to invest in our community. And then we’re really, really close to our investments. These integrated functions allow us to add value and curate a community of competence in our region.
Evan Szu:
And when you say “community,” do you mean geographic community?
Antoine Palmer:
Yeah, for the most part. We do have stakeholders and investors from other regions, but about 75–80% of our investors are actually from Edmonton. They invest with us because they understand the impact of these investments in our community.
They’re aware of the leaders in our community, what they’re doing, and how they mutually benefit each other. So yes, our community is largely connected by geographic proximity.
Evan Szu:
And Shawn?
Shawn O’Keefe (Founder at Summit Wealth Strategies):
Yeah. I’ve been in the wealth management business for about 40 years — a little over 40 years — and I’ve never been so excited about the opportunities in the market as I am right now.
In 2017, I was introduced to this thing called Bitcoin, and I was very skeptical, as everybody is initially. But I kept looking at it, studying it, and realized I needed to get in.
The problem with traditional finance was that I couldn’t offer it to my clients — the regulatory clarity around investing in blockchain and crypto just wasn’t there.
Thankfully, now that we’ve gotten rid of Gary Gensler, there’s a lot more regulatory clarity around the industry. I think they were suppressing the opportunities that were out there.
We need regulatory clarity to move forward and really advance blockchain, Web3, and crypto — all of it.
I’ve been allocating a portion of my clients’ assets into blockchain, emerging technology, and various things related to Web3 for about a year and a half now.
Evan Szu:
Thank God. Gary Gensler was famously asked, “Do you think we need more regulatory clarity?” and his response was, “We have regulatory clarity. We just do enforcement.”
Okay — so it’s whatever’s in your brain.
Michael, any thoughts?
Michael Rosmer (Co-Founder at Gamma Prime):
For people who aren’t familiar, “alternative assets” is a pretty broad category of things that most people are not exposed to.
One interesting example is the Yale endowment fund — probably the most successful endowment fund — averaging over 20% for multiple decades. He famously kept putting more and more money into alternative assets.
There’s a lot of groupthink where people follow along, which may or may not be ideal, but it offers an alternative approach given the volatility of other assets.
For me, I invest in a lot of stuff — stocks, crypto, etc. I think to myself, “Markets are at all-time highs… do I want to keep money there?” It’s concerning. And do I want to hold cash? Not loving that either.
But if I have some alternative that offers high yield and stability, that’s really attractive. For my portfolio, it’s very important.
The issue, though, is that this is a super-fractured market. I’ll tell people, “Oh, we’re investing in hard-money lending,” and they ask, “Where do I find these deals?” Well… you have to go look for them.
That’s a big problem. Bringing these assets together in a way that’s easily accessible — I think there are a ton of people who are interested. Friends, clients, co-investors — they want to invest in these things. But locating deals is the big challenge.
Evan Szu:
It’s a super fractured market. I mean, how many people here would know where to go to find a half-dozen hedge funds if you suddenly decided, “I’m going to invest”?
Is it a good idea? I don’t even know where to go. There’s no place for it. It’s often word of mouth from friends — “Oh, this one’s doing pretty well” — but there’s no real market for it.
