Zephyr Perspective

The oil shock unfolding across the Strait of Hormuz this weekend has produced a plentiful supply of anxiety and phone calls, especially since most investment accounts won't update their values until Monday.  The correct response to a surging oil price and a closed shipping lane is not to redesign a multi-generational portfolio in a week.  Geopolitical risk for a family office belongs to the domain of strategic allocation and governance. It is rarely well served by reactive trading.  The right question is whether the portfolio that existed last Friday was genuinely built to withstand the scenarios it now faces.  If it was, the oil shock's portfolio impact should be uncomfortable but contained. If it was not, the appropriate timetable for adjustment is measured in quarters, not in headlines. The value of the present moment lies mostly in what it reveals: whether an investment policy statement functions when tested, or was merely an attractive document on the boardroom ...

Small business owners spent most of 2025 treating tariff tables like weather reports, checking them before breakfast and hoping they had not moved overnight. On 20 February 2026, the front finally came through. In Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump , the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorise the president to impose tariffs, dismantling the legal scaffolding behind the sweeping duties imposed since "Liberation Day" last April. The tariff impact on small business just pivoted in three directions at once. Import costs drop sharply, as the effective US tariff rate falls from a peak near 21% to roughly 11% overnight. Refunds become possible on $135 billion to $160 billion already paid, with interest accruing at about $650 million a month while the mechanics get sorted. A temporary replacement regime under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 runs on a 150-day clock, expiring 24 July 2026 unless Congress acts. The immediat...

Every culture has a proverb about wealth not surviving three generations. The Mandarin version, "Wealth rarely lasts beyond three generations," is the one quoted at UHNW conferences, presumably because it sounds more dignified than "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves." The Italian version adds livestock for texture. The cross-cultural unanimity is suspicious: either a universal truth about human nature, or proof that dinner-party clichés travel faster than capital. Either way, family office next-gen engagement is now backed by actual data, and the data does not flatter anyone involved. Roughly 70% of intergenerational wealth transfers fail by the second generation, and around 85% of those failures come down to communication breakdowns and unprepared heirs, not tax or legal errors. Most families still spend the bulk of their planning budget on the 5% problem while leaving the 85% one largely unattended. Preparing heirs to become competent stewards, rather than reluctant...

Software stocks spent most of the last decade being called "the new defensives." Over 48 hours last week, about $285 billion in market value politely declined that title. The SaaSpocalypse, as a trader on Jefferies' equity desk reportedly coined it, has given family offices a broad test of portfolio discipline. The answer, for most principals, is less dramatic than the headlines suggest: a short list of exposures worth pressure-testing, a shorter list of actions worth taking, and an even shorter list of temptations worth resisting. Yesterday's companion commentary  addressed the business owner view on AI disruption and SaaS procurement; this piece looks at what the software selloff means for UHNW portfolios, particularly those carrying meaningful allocations to private credit and late-stage venture. The short version: your multi-generational investment framework was built for weeks like this, assuming you actually built one . If it holds, no heroics are required. I...

The people who spent fifteen years insisting that software was eating the world have gone conspicuously quiet this week. Between February 3 and 5, roughly $300 billion in market value vanished from software stocks in what the financial press has already branded the "SaaSpocalypse." Microsoft alone shed $360 billion in a single trading day. For a small business owner watching from the sidelines, the reasonable question is whether any of this actually matters to a firm with five employees and a Xero subscription. The short answer is that AI disruption for small business has stopped being just a future-tense proposition. What Wall Street spent the week pricing in was the dawning recognition that AI agents can now handle workflows previously requiring four or five separate software seats. That recognition changes what a sensible small business software strategy looks like over the next twelve months. It does not mean cancelling every subscription on Monday morning. What act...

Setting up a family office is widely treated as a rite of passage for serious wealth. Running one, it turns out, is rather more like discovering that the rite comes with a standing monthly invoice. The cost of running a family office has surged between 2022 and 2026, driven by a ferocious talent market, mandatory cybersecurity spend, and an ever-expanding compliance perimeter. For principals in the $10 million to $100 million emerging segment, that invoice often looks worse than the returns it was meant to protect. The honest math, across North American benchmarks, runs roughly like this. A traditional single-family office typically consumes 0.5% to 1.5% of assets under management annually, and many arrangements cross 2.0% once external manager fees and bespoke family services are aggregated. At $25 million in assets, a 1.5% drag equals $375,000 per year, which quietly cancels a fair chunk of standard portfolio yield. At $1 billion, the same structure compresses to roughly 35 basis ...