Wealth Enhancement strategist warns AI can cause false diversification in alternatives

Ayako Yoshioka, senior investment strategist at Wealth Enhancement, warned on a Goldman Sachs Asset Management webinar that AI can give private-market investors a false sense of diversification. “I think for us the biggest risk is just having a false sense of diversification,” she said, according to InvestmentNews, which reported the remarks on Oct. 13.

Her concern is that AI is no longer only a public-equity theme. It now runs through public fixed income, venture, private equity, private credit vehicles financing data centers, and real estate, so a portfolio spread across those asset classes can still be one bet on continued demand for compute.

Yoshioka described Wealth Enhancement as the seventh-largest RIA in the country, with about $160 billion in assets under management and a place among the industry's top acquirers.

GSAM's second annual Alternatives Investor Survey polled 1,000 U.S. high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth investors. Sixty-three percent of surveyed investors call alternatives high or very high risk, up from 56% a year earlier, while 93% of current holders say they are happy with their investments. Ninety-seven percent say results met or beat expectations, and 38% plan to increase allocations over the next two years. This publication covered those survey figures earlier this month.

The ratings may capture only the risks itemized in a private-placement memorandum — lockups, fees, thin marks. The risk Yoshioka describes does not appear there, because it belongs to the portfolio rather than to any one fund.

Roughly 92% of millennials in the survey already own alternatives, and investors familiar with the asset class were nearly five times more likely to make a new alternatives investment. If the 38% follows through over two years, the shared driver gets more weight in more portfolios, not less.

The private-markets gateway — platforms, custodians and fund managers putting alternatives inside the advisor's workflow — has centered on access. Yoshioka's warning is about the step after the subscription clears.