The Secondaries Growth Cycle: Peak, Slump, and Record

Introduction

A growth rate says as much about its starting year as about the market. Measured against 2024, the $226 billion of 2025 secondary volume in Evercore's count looks like a boom, up 41% in a year. Measured against the 2021 peak of $134 billion, it works out to about 14% a year, with a sharp fall along the way. Measured from 2016's $37 billion, the market grew about sixfold, roughly 22% a year compounded. The one-year change reflects the distribution drought and the buyer capital of a particular moment; the long-run slope reflects whether limited partners (LPs) and general partners (GPs) have adopted the secondary market as a permanent tool. Separating the cyclical part of the growth from the structural part is what lets a seller or an advisor read the latest figures correctly.

Evercore's series, extended to half-years in its first-half 2026 secondary market review, counts transaction volume on one basis (purchase price plus unfunded commitments assumed), so it shows the whole arc cleanly.

The base years belonged to LP portfolio sales: LP-led volume roughly doubled between 2016 and 2019, typically an institution selling fund interests it no longer wanted to dedicated buyers. GP-led deals grew faster but stayed about a third of the market.

The 2020 Detour and the 2021 Surge

The pandemic broke the pattern. LP-led volume nearly halved to $28 billion while GP-led volume rose to $32 billion, the first year in Evercore's series with GP-led deals ahead. Then 2021 more than doubled the total. The 2021 peak was also a high-price year: Jefferies' average LP portfolio pricing in 2022 ended 1,100 basis points below its 2021 level.

The three longest series all record the fall, but the slump magnitude depends on the counter.

They agree on the direction and timing, a fall of about a fifth, and differ by up to five points on its size and 16 points on how far 2025 sits above the peak, because each firm samples different transactions.

A Denominator Effect That Could Not Clear

Volume fell while LPs had more reason to sell. Falling public markets pushed private equity allocations over target, the denominator effect, and Jefferies' January 2023 review found overallocation behind 48% of LP selling. But LP pricing fell to 81% of net asset value (NAV) on a growing disconnect between public and private valuations, and a widening bid-ask spread kept many sellers on the sidelines. GP-leds fell hardest in Evercore's count, down 29% against 17% for LP sales.

The Trough Came in the First Half of 2023

Half-year data locate the bottom. Evercore and Jefferies both show the second half of 2022 below the first ($49 billion against $54 billion, and $51 billion against $57 billion) and put the weakest half in the first half of 2023, at $42 billion and $43 billion. Jefferies' second half of 2023 was 60% larger than its first, so a 4% annual gain hid a sharp turn.

Averages blur differences by strategy and fund age, which LP-led pricing trends by strategy breaks out.

By 2024 all three series had passed the old peak, and 2025 set a record at Evercore ($226 billion), Jefferies ($240 billion), Lazard ($233 billion), Campbell Lutyens ($225 billion) and William Blair ($220 billion). The useful question is which forces behind the climb would reverse if conditions changed.

Structural Growth (Secondaries)

Growth in secondary volume from lasting changes in how the market is used, such as sponsors adopting continuation vehicles as a standard exit route or permanent buyer capital, rather than from temporary conditions such as scarce distributions. Cyclical growth fades with its trigger; structural growth does not.

From Overallocation Selling to Liquidity Selling

The seller's motive changed first. Jefferies' January 2024 review found that the desire to generate liquidity or de-risk replaced overallocation as the primary driver of sales in 2023, as public markets recovered and LP pricing rose to 85%. That motive persists: Jefferies' first-half 2026 review puts the annual distribution yield on LP portfolios near 10%, below 20% since early 2023, against a 25% average since 2001. The same pressure on sponsors to return cash, set out in why LPs and GPs need liquidity, is a cyclical driver: it exists because exits have been scarce.

Buyer Capital That Kept Growing Through the Slump

Capital did not follow volume down. Evercore's start-of-year dry powder rose from $65 billion in 2016 to $105 billion in 2022 and $216 billion in 2025, and it kept rising through 2022, so the slump was a pricing problem, not a capital shortage. Jefferies found 2023 secondaries fundraising exceeded 2021 and 2022 combined, the refill traced in the capital wall. The newest layer is evergreen capital: 53% of buyers in Evercore's first-half 2026 survey run an evergreen vehicle. That money has its own cycle, with Jefferies reporting elevated redemptions and 5% NAV gates at some semi-liquid vehicles in 2026.

Continuation Vehicles as Standard Sponsor Practice

The most structural change is sponsor adoption. Evercore's GP-led volume went from $11 billion in 2016 to $106 billion in 2025, and by Jefferies' count only 18 of the 100 largest sponsors have yet to execute a continuation vehicle (CV). Evercore found sponsors still using CVs for liquidity even as exit markets improved in the first half of 2026, the behavior of a standard route rather than a fallback, as the GP-led market and the single-asset CV shift shows. Adoption is spreading beyond buyout too, tracked in credit, infrastructure, and venture secondaries trends.

Four Counts of the First Half of 2026

Every survey reported growth, and three of the four called it a first-half record: Evercore $121 billion against $102 billion a year earlier (up 19%), Jefferies $118 billion against $103 billion (up 15%), Lazard $124 billion against $97 billion (up 28%) and Campbell Lutyens $120 billion against $110 billion (up 9%). GP-led volume drove it, up 35% at Evercore and a majority of Jefferies' total for the first time since 2021, while LP-led volume rose 4% at Evercore, was flat at Jefferies and fell 8% at Campbell Lutyens. The survey-by-survey snapshot is in where the secondaries market stands, and the sellers behind it in the changing seller base.

Trailing-Twelve-Month (TTM) Volume

Transaction volume over the most recent twelve months, for example July 2025 to June 2026. It smooths the seasonality of half-year figures, since second halves are usually busier, and compares the latest period with full calendar years.

The Lazard interim 2026 secondary market report puts TTM volume through June 2026 at about $260 billion. Indexed to 2021, that stands at 207 against 104 for M&A volume and 54 for IPO proceeds, and Lazard reads secondaries as serving both cyclical liquidity needs and a durable portfolio-management role.

Reading Today's Numbers as a Seller or an Advisor

The LP-led supply that exists because distributions are thin depends on that scarcity, so a seller should treat deep buyer demand as a condition of the moment, not a permanent right. Buyer capital kept growing through 2022, and sponsor adoption of CVs has broadened since. The first half of 2026 offered a partial test: with M&A back above its 2021 level in Lazard's index, GP-led volume grew while LP-led volume stalled.

Forecasts belong to the secondaries market outlook. What the history adds is a way to check them: the structural reading holds only if LP-led volume survives a period when distributions return toward their long-run average, and no survey has recorded one since the market reached its current scale. Until then, the record describes a structurally larger market still running on a cyclical shortage of cash.