The CEO of an alternative trading platform wants to revolutionize the private equity space to help ease the stagnation of the initial public offering market.
So Kelly Rodriquez of Forge Global partnered with Accuidity to launch the Forge Accuidity Private Market Index this spring.
The ultimate goal: to give more investors easier access to unicorns.
“This is a major financial innovation that’s happening now,” Rodriquez said this week on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.” “There is a future… where index products and other financial innovations make participation possible for every investor.”
The Forge Accuidity Private Market Index includes 60 private companies, including SpaceX, Stripe and Epic Games, according to the Forge Global website. But at the moment, access to ordinary investors is still closed.
“The rules today are that you need to have a minimum net worth to meet the accreditation threshold,” Rodriquez said.
This means that even with Forge’s new initiative, only institutional investors and high net worth individuals can buy shares. But anyone, accredited or not, can sell their private company shares on the platform. However, the same companies still have the right to refuse transactions on the platform.
Rodriguez hopes that as interest in private equity grows, these rules will change.
“Very soon we will see a world where non-accredited investors can go into a basket of index stocks and bet on 60 to 70 names and themes, just like you do in the public market, and that will really open up opportunities.” He said.
Denial of responsibility