The loudest voice belongs to Apollo Global Management, but this is not a one-firm campaign. The same message is coming from Blackstone, KKR & Co., Morgan Stanley, and BlackRock. Everyone suddenly wants retail investors in private markets, and coincidentally they all discovered this at the exact same time.

Here’s what’s really happening behind the curtain that never makes its way into the glossy pitch deck. The financial services industry invents hundreds of new products every year, but only maybe one product per decade is truly an “innovation”. Everything else is packaging, wrappers, new share classes, and better branding. “Alternatives” are not some technological leap forward. They are the most profitable wrapper Wall Street has found in a while. Private equity, private credit, real estate, infrastructure, different labels, but the same core features show up again and again: higher fees, more complicated risk, and limited liquidity. Limited liquidity is just polite industry language for, “if you change your mind, you may not be able to get your money back when you want it.”