The Shadow Banker’s Secrets: Investment Banking for Alternatives is the #1 international betseller by Benjamin D. Summers that contemplates how to generate above-market returns while protecting your portfolio from market crises, create capital and become your own bank.
This Substack account picks up where the book leaves off. Cut through the noise of tribalistic investing with the objective, merit-based perspective provided by the avant-garde in quantitative finance…
The financial class—those with over $100 million in cash—live in a world where everything is bespoke: private jets, private islands, private medical care, designer drugs, and designer financial products.
Are you familiar with Blue Owl? There aren’t many $100 billion plus firms that no one has heard of. They’re a partnership between Dyal Capital and Owl Rock. They invest in and own the companies that own the companies that you invest in… in other words, three levels above you.
Why are we talking about this? There is a big lie, and it’s hiding in plain sight.
The lie is that if you invest in an asset class and the financial class invests in the same asset class, everyone shares the same risk.
The truth is that the financial system is an extraordinarily complex risk dump on the public. The financial class doesn’t lose no matter how much the markets contract.
The Shadow Banker’s Secrets unveils the highly guarded answers to the most fundamental questions in finance—the answers that created the financial class:
What is money, and how is it created?
What causes market crises?
What does the Federal Reserve really do?
What about gold?
How is politics used to protect the financial class?
What’s the difference between smart money and dumb money?
What is investment risk, how is it measured, and why is it important?
What’s the best asset class: stocks, real estate, or something else?
How good is the typical financial advisor?
How are investments that push risk to others designed?
How can you legally create unlimited capital like the banking system?
How can you establish expansive, compliant securities distribution to monetize financial assets at-scale?
How can financial advisors quickly scale their AUM to 10-figures and beyond?
How can alternative asset managers quickly and compliantly raise their first $100 million and scale past $1 billion?
What are investment clubs?
What about cryptocurrencies?
What will the next financial crisis look like, and how should you prepare without forfeiting growth?
Centuries of financial evolution have culminated in the financialization of everything. The bulge bracket banks (e.g. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, Blackstone, etc.) have risen to own and run almost everything, from the economy and politics to media and entertainment.
This account pulls back the curtain and teaches you how to use the esoteric financial skills developed and mastered by these firms to become truly financially independent and achieve wealth you previously thought unimaginable.
Author Ben Summers is the founder and managing director of Adagio Group, a boutique investment bank that engages in a full complement of financial services: quantitative risk analytics, private structured product engineering, institutional-grade fund management, and capital financing services to the entire alternatives space.
The Shadow Banker’s Secrets is for everyone who is simply smart, financially curious, and independently-minded. It will refine the perspective of the most seasoned financial professionals while setting first-time investors on the objectively best path.
Whoever has the gold understands money makes the rules.
If you are ready to join the financial class both in terms of knowledge and bank account, welcome.
