30 June 2026
Quiet markets and loud family meetings
Allocation memos earn their keep when prices are calm and governance is not. A note from recent private-wealth sessions.
Our busiest weeks are rarely the ones with dramatic candles. They are the weeks before a family council, a gift deed, or a liquidity window that was planned months earlier.
In those rooms, a long-term token allocation memo is useful when it is boring: ranges, constraints, custody notes, and a list of open questions for counsel. Dramatic language helps nobody who must sign next.
We have watched meetings go sideways when every participant brings a different spreadsheet with different unnamed assumptions. The desk’s job is to put one shared document on the table so disagreement can be about judgment, not about which export is newest.
If you are heading into such a meeting, schedule the review early enough that the memo can be read twice. Rushed desks produce rushed footnotes — and footnotes are where trust dies.