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As with all phases of the capital markets cycle, there are the pioneers, the fast followers, mainstream practitioners and the laggards with each group bigger than the one before it. The issue here is that with 19k PE firms, this asset class is firmly in the “laggard” bucket. The only thing that can correct this is distributions. But with few IPOs and without new capital coming into PE, there are less opportunities to sell to other PE firms…creating a big negatively reflexive cycle downwards. Some big LP will soon call it and cut their allocation to PE making it ok for others to fast follow and do the same. And then the cycle of PE LPs cutting allocations will start and follow the cycle above…