Is there anything that makes you excited about PE in 2026?

Look I am an overly analytical (some would say 'overthinker') type of person, especially when making personal life/job-decisions. 

I reflected over and over about the PE industry and for the vast majority only found negative-datapoints re the outlook of this industry in the mid-/long-term. 

What annoys me most is that you have to drink the kool-aid pretty hard in order to believe that what we are doing in the industry is generating significant alpha anymore.

How do you handle/deal with this all shenanigans? I mean for instance tweaking some models for the gazillionst of times, as if this would have any amount of predictive power whatsoever. Talking up the most random/shitty deals just because you are desparate to deploy capital? At this point in time I really start to believe that LPs would be much better off just investing in some liquid public-markets ETFs to generate higher returns with lower fees and equal (if not lower) volatility. It is absurd to me that we spend 1000's of hours overanalyzing companies and working people close to physical collapse just to receive equal/worse returns then LPs would have got by pressing the buy button on some public market ETF (please don't now drift off in a discussion on how asset allocation works, I just want to over-dramatize a bit to make my point).

Also, knowing that at a certain size, everybody looks at the same deals, has the same advisors, the same people .. it just feels so meaningless to me, like what value am I bringing to the table in this industry in 2026?