Learning from Goldman Sachs's investment picks for the rich

Goldman Sachs Group (GS) makes executives wealthy when it handles their companies' initial public offerings or when it advises them on mergers and acquisitions. Then it often signs them up to manage that wealth. So the folks at Goldman have plenty of strategies for maximizing these clients' wealth. Yesterday I had lunch with a Goldman partner who explained six ideas for such well-to-do families. But you don't have to be rich to glean some useful insights from these ideas. In fact, the average investor can approximate three of them.

Before getting into the details of these investment ideas, I thought it was interesting that the partner spent time discussing the differences in how Goldman manages some internal operations and how it accounts for its balance sheet in comparison to some of its competitors.