As an adviser to high-net-worth investors and members of the mass affluent investor community, it’s sometimes wise to take a look at some of the challenges facing investors on the institutional side of the investment community.

For these investors — most of whom benchmark to the NCREIF Fund Index – Open-end Diversified Core Equity (NFI-ODCE) — exit queues for funds in the NFI-ODCE have been at all-time highs for several quarters now, higher even than during the global financial crisis, by a substantial margin.

A good friend in the industry once advised me that there’s no such thing as an exit queue in an open-end fund. There’s only price. What he meant was that if the assets in the funds are properly marked to market, the exit queues vanish.

The rationale, he explained, is pretty simple. Investors in these funds are fiduciaries. They’re mandated to place the financial interests of the investors they represent before all other considerations. If you