Performance
Benchmarking
Comparing fund performance to relevant peers (typically same vintage and strategy) and to public market equivalents.
Standard benchmarks include Cambridge Associates, Burgiss/MSCI, PitchBook, and Preqin. Each has methodology differences worth understanding.
PME (Public Market Equivalent) analysis tests whether a private fund's cash flows beat what the same cash flows would have earned in a public index. It is the cleanest test of whether private market premiums are real.