Hello and welcome. You are listening to Patrick Boyle on Finance, a podcast exploring ideas from quantitative finance, examining events occurring in markets right now and financial history to see what lessons can be taken away, including interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world of finance. To learn more about the podcast, visit onfinance.org.

2020 has not been a great year for real estate investments. The S&P US READ index, which

tracks publicly traded real estate investment trusts, is down

around 23% year to date, which is a lot worse than the S&P 500, which is only down 15% over

the same period.

But not all REITs are down, non-traded real estate investment trusts seem to be doing just fine.

The Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust is up around 9% year-to-date as of last month.

Look at that, it's the only one that's up.

So let's do a little Googling to see what it is that they're doing that's so right.

Oh, it seems there's a bit of a problem.

There's a headline here.

Blackstone limits withdrawals at $125 billion property fund as investors rush to exit.

Well, why would people want their money back?

Blackstone have managed to buy the only properties that are not down this year and people want their money back. Blackstone have managed to buy the only properties that are not down this

year and people want their money back. There's just no satisfying some people. There's even a

quote from a Blackstone spokesman in the article. Our business is built on performance, not fund

flows and performance is rock solid. In truth, I'm not sure that up 9%

is actually rock solid. Rocks aren't up 9%. I mean, the nature of being rock solid is that you

don't move around very much. These Blackstone guys possibly need to hire some of the laid-off

crypto marketers.

A better line might be, we reached out to Blackstone for comment and a spokesman replied

with an emoji of a rocket and the moon.

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