— Insights
Quarterly letters, market notes, and policy briefs prepared by the firm's investment, legal, and family-office partners. Written for the families and counsel we serve, and circulated more broadly when the subject warrants it.
— Browse by category
Commodities
14 April 2026 · Jonathan Okonkwo, Head of Real Assets
Industrial metals are pricing a slow, structural shift toward electrification and grid build-out. We look at the supply backwardation in copper, the bifurcation of the lithium curve, and where multi-decade owners should source duration in the cycle.
Read · 9 min
Real Estate
31 March 2026 · Jonathan Okonkwo
Office values are still distressed; logistics and multifamily have re-rated from peak; trophy hospitality is quietly recovering. We argue that the right time to buy real estate is when the people who run it can no longer pretend it's easy — which is now.
Read · 11 min
Private Markets
18 March 2026 · Theodore Westcott, Head of Private Markets
Direct ownership has structural advantages over commingled vehicles for families that can underwrite in-house: alignment, fee economics, and most importantly, the ability to hold through a cycle without a manager calling time. We outline the playbook the firm uses across two-dozen direct positions.
Read · 12 min
Family Office
04 March 2026 · Augusto Ribeiro, Head of Family Governance
Drawing on conversations with 47 single-family offices and our own engagement book, we report on what families are actually doing — not what they say at conferences. Allocation shifts, governance practices, and the quiet rise of the next generation as decision-makers.
Read · 18 min
Geopolitical
17 February 2026 · Margaret Ashford
Sovereign risk is not a peripheral-markets phenomenon any longer. We examine how the new strategic geometry — between the United States, the European Union, China, and a more autonomous Gulf — is reshaping where capital can sit safely for thirty years.
Read · 14 min
Currencies
05 February 2026 · Sofia Marchetti, Head of Public Markets
The dollar is not at risk of replacement. It is, however, at risk of repricing. We discuss why the safety premium long enjoyed by US assets has thinned, where the marginal saver is moving, and what a 5–10% structural reweighting away from the dollar would mean for a multi-currency family balance sheet.
Read · 10 min
Credit
22 January 2026 · Sofia Marchetti
Private credit has crossed $2 trillion in assets under management and is now larger than the high-yield bond market. We look at where the discipline still holds — senior secured, sponsor-aligned, downside-priced — and where it has begun to look uncomfortably like 2007 mezzanine.
Read · 13 min
Tax & Policy
08 January 2026 · Eleanor Pemberton, Director, Estate & Tax
The United Kingdom, France, South Korea, Brazil, and the United States are all moving on the taxation of multigenerational wealth — in different directions, on different timetables, and with different second-order effects. A practitioner's map of what is coming, and what to do about it now.
Read · 15 min
Stewardship
20 December 2025 · Naomi Inoue, Head of Philanthropy
"ESG" has collapsed into a category that tells you almost nothing about what a portfolio actually does. We propose returning to two cleaner ideas — stewardship of capital, and impact of capital — and why families have always understood the difference better than markets have.
Read · 8 min
Commodities · Real Assets
05 December 2025 · Sofia Marchetti
Gold does not pay a coupon. It does, however, pay an option on the failure of every other instrument we hold. For families with hundred-year horizons, the question is not whether gold belongs in the portfolio but how — physical, allocated, jurisdictionally diversified, and in what proportion to other reserves.
Read · 11 min
Tax & Policy
18 November 2025 · Eleanor Pemberton
An estimated $84 trillion will move from one generation to the next over the coming twenty-five years in the United States alone. We discuss what that means for trust law, philanthropy, and the institutional infrastructure that has not been built to absorb it.
Read · 16 min
Real Assets
01 November 2025 · Jonathan Okonkwo
US row-crop land is at its highest real valuation in a generation, while permanent crops outside the United States have lagged. We look at the rotation we have begun making across our agricultural holdings and the underwriting we will not bend on, regardless of price.
Read · 12 min
Family Office · Governance
14 October 2025 · Augusto Ribeiro
Family constitutions are easy to write and difficult to enforce. We compare a dozen we have helped draft against a dozen that survived a generational handover — and find that the difference is rarely in the document itself, but in the ritual surrounding it.
Read · 14 min
Macro & Markets
29 September 2025 · Margaret Ashford
Implied volatility on equity, fixed income, and currency is, by historical standards, cheap relative to the realised volatility of the past five years. We discuss when the firm pays for tail insurance, when it self-insures, and why the worst trade in the book is the one that is "almost" hedged.
Read · 9 min
Private Markets
12 September 2025 · Theodore Westcott
Family capital is an unusually good match for the search-fund model — patient, governance-friendly, and willing to underwrite the searcher rather than only the deal. We share our framework for backing searchers, the failure modes we have seen, and the disciplines a multi-generational allocator needs to bring.
Read · 13 min
Family Office
28 August 2025 · Catherine Holloway, COO
Families ask the firm a version of the same question every year: should we build it ourselves, hire a firm to do it for us, or let a fiduciary hold the seat? A practitioner's view of the trade-offs — costs, control, recruiting, succession — and what we see actually working at different scales.
Read · 17 min
Letters and notes are circulated to clients and counsel of the firm. Selected pieces are made available publicly on a delay. To request a piece not listed here, write to research@finnegan.capital.
— The Quarterly
Our quarterly letter is sent four times a year to clients, named counsel, and a small group of trusted readers. It is not marketed and there is no archive online. Written introductions are welcome.