And the average holding time for equity investment, whether by individuals or institutions, has relentlessly fallen: from four years in 1945 to eight months in 2000, two months in 2008 and (with the rise of high-frequency trading) twenty-two seconds by 2011 in the US.20 Average PE holding times jumped to almost six years when stock markets froze in the wake of the 2008 global financial crash, but were on a firm downward course again by 2015.
