More investors want public and private assets in their portfolio. Now there's a benchmark to track this combo

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With the desire to have private market exposure alongside publicly traded stocks gaining traction among investors, Morningstar has developed a benchmark to reflect the trend.

The Morningstar PitchBook US Modern Market 100 Index, or the Modern Market 100, is the first to combine public and private equity exposure in one index, the investment research company announced Wednesday. The benchmark is meant to capture the performance of 100 of the largest U.S. companies, broken down to 90 public firms and 10 venture-backed companies, the firm said.

The 90/10 skew is designed to reflect what Morningstar considers the modern asset universe, which is one where opportunities are expanding in the private markets and companies such as OpenAI and Stripe are able to stay private for longer.

“Companies don’t feel the urge to go public because they can raise a lot of capital,” Sanjay Arya, head of innovation, index products, at Morningstar. “So, to ignore them, I think you’re missing out on some of the fastest, most dynamic companies out there.”