48 hours out: three private advisor rooms with Rayliant + a top-tier Asia institutional partner
Boston Wednesday (lunch and dinner). New York Thursday. The doors close on RSVPs end of day tomorrow.
I want to put something on your radar that I have been quietly building for months and that is now 48 hours away from happening. If you are an advisor who has been waiting for a real conversation about Asia exposure — one that does not start with a VIE disclaimer, a wholesaler script, or another regional ETF that secretly tracks the same handful of US-listed names — keep reading.
This week I am hosting three private, off-the-record gatherings with Lawrence Lo and Jason Hsu of Rayliant Global Advisors, in from Hong Kong, alongside the senior team from a major Asia-Pacific institutional partner. Two of those rooms are in Boston on Wednesday. The third is in New York on Thursday. Each one is intentionally small. Each one is invitation-only. And there are a handful of seats still open at each.
Why this room, why this week
Most of the cross-border conversations US advisors have access to are either marketing theater or stale. Either a wholesaler walks you through a deck, or you read a sell-side note that is six weeks behind the actual flows. What is sitting in front of you Wednesday and Thursday is different — the people in the room are the ones building the institutional vehicles, not selling you the retail wrapper after the fact.
Rayliant runs serious quantitative work across Asia for institutional clients — sovereign wealth, pension, large family office. Their public-facing launch this season is CNQQ, a China internet ETF that is structurally not VIE — which alone is a conversation most advisors have not been able to have honestly with clients for years. But the larger story is what they do behind the scenes for institutions, and what their Asia-Pacific partner — one of the most consequential allocators in the region — is currently thinking about US RIA distribution.
If you have a $20M, $50M, $200M practice and you have been trying to figure out where Asia fits without resorting to the same tired three or four ETFs, this is the room. If you do not need that conversation, this is not the email for you and that is completely fine — but please pass it along to someone in your network who does.
The three rooms
Boston · Wednesday May 13 · Lunch
Davio’s Northern Italian Steakhouse, 447 Boylston Street in Back Bay, 12:30pm start. Lighter format — roughly two hours over a plated lunch. This is the right room if your Wednesday evening is already locked but you can grab a midday window. Smaller table, more direct back-and-forth with Lawrence and Jason. No presentation, no deck — just the conversation.
Boston · Wednesday May 13 · Dinner
Davio’s Back Bay, 6:30pm. Same room, longer-form version of the lunch — same principals, same Asia-Pacific partner, more time for the deeper conversation about institutional positioning, regime divergence, and what Rayliant is seeing in flows that has not made the headlines yet. Cap is ten advisors.
New York · Thursday May 14 · Dinner
Sparks Steak House, 210 East 46th Street between 2nd and 3rd, 6:30pm. This is the night that has been the most heavily requested — if you are in or near the city, or you can come down from Westchester, Connecticut, or in from New Jersey for an evening, reply quickly. Cap is twelve advisors.
Who I am trying to put in these rooms
I am being deliberate about the guest list. The people I want at the table are advisors who are honest about how the last three years actually went, not the version where everything worked out. Specifically:
• Independent RIAs and breakaway advisors who custody at Fidelity or Schwab — these are the platforms Rayliant is structurally built around
• Advisors actively questioning whether 60/40 still hedges anything in a regime where stocks and bonds correlate positively
• Anyone who has been sidelined on China by VIE-structure concerns and wants a serious, non-marketing-deck alternative
• Allocators looking for actual international exposure — not another vehicle that closet-tracks the same US-listed mega-caps
• Advisors who are quietly tired of the standard wholesaler script and are looking for substance instead of a steak knife
How to claim a seat
Reply directly to this email, or write me at michaelgayed@leadlagreport.com, with which event works — Boston lunch, Boston dinner, or NYC dinner. RSVPs close at end of day Tuesday. Seats go in the order they come in. If you have a peer, partner, or colleague who belongs in one of these rooms more than you do, forward this freely — I would rather have the right person in the seat than the first person to reply.
And if you are reading this and a Wednesday/Thursday in May is impossible — that is fine. There will be more of these. Reply anyway and tell me what city, what format, and what topic would get you in the room next time. That is how I build the next one.
Looking forward to filling the last few seats over the next twenty-four hours.
— Michael
Michael A. Gayed, CFA is the Publisher of The Lead-Lag Report and Founder of Lead-Lag Media. The Lead-Lag Report is a market intelligence publication followed by tens of thousands of advisors, allocators, and institutional investors. This is not solicitation. Nothing in this post is investment advice.