Alternative Asset Manager Solutions Symposium: This Year’s Conference Focus Revolved Around on Debunking Headlines, Diagnosing Secondaries, and Defining the Next Stage of Growth in Retail

Research evidence excerpt

J P M O R G A N

North America Equity Research

18 August 2026

Alternative Asset Manager

Solutions Symposium

This Year’s Conference Focus Revolved Around on

Debunking Headlines, Diagnosing Secondaries, and

Defining the Next Stage of Growth in Retail

We hosted our fourth annual J.P. Morgan Alternative Solutions and Specialists

Symposium in New York highlighting the management teams of some of the

smaller alternative asset managers (or subdivisions of larger managers), including

Hamilton Lane (HLNE), StepStone (STEP), GCM Grosvenor (GCMG),

Ridgepost Capital (RPC), and Carlyle / AlpInvest (CG). For reference, the write

up corresponding to last year’s conference can be found here. We include some key

takeaways from our large group meeting below. Please reach out directly if you are

interested in takeaways from our small group sessions.

Brokers, Asset Managers &

Exchanges

(1-212) 622-3619

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC

Health of secondaries market — still a great part of the alternative

ecosystem. The secondaries market remains a particularly attractive part of the

alternatives market. One can see this through the relationship between dry

power and capital formation. Secondaries continue to run at one year or less of

dry powder relative to other parts of private markets where dry powder is

running closer to two years. Investment opportunities continue to be ample and

fundraising is just keeping pace with deployment. Secondaries market activity

continues to rise with Carlyle’s AlpInvest indicating another strong year for

activity, with secondaries market is on track for ~$240bn in volume in 2026 (vs.

$210bn last year). Pricing generally remains stable, with changes by StepStone

more catching up to larger peers (in hopes of driving much bigger fund sizes)

rather than driving new pricing pricing schemes.

Negative industry headlines weighed on solution stocks, but fundamentals

stablizing/rebounding. Negative private markets industry headlines on

private credit and secondary markups have weighed on wealth product sales

and stock prices in recent months. But firms like GCMG are seeing

differentiated returns and improving sales in credit — here it emphasized

…