Wednesday, November 04, 2015

Who Knows What Unicorns Are Worth?

Andrew Ross Sorkin was right about the difficulty of pinning market values on the tech startups known as unicorns. "Millions of Americans own a piece of the hottest private technology companies through their mutual funds," writes Kristen Grind in the WSJ. "But no one knows what those investments are actually worth."

For example, last June 30 various mutual fund managers valued unicorn superstar Uber at prices ranging from over $40 a share to less than $34. As of the same date, a T. Rowe Price fund manager guessed the software startup Cloudera was worth almost twice the price estimated by another fund manager.
 As money that once might have parked in CDs and money market funds continues the desperate search for real returns elsewhere, uncertainty and market turbulence increase. Unicorns are one more reason for investors to seek professional, unbiased assistance.

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