How Wall Street Picks 2026 March Madness Brackets for Charity
Goldman's Solomon bets on gut, Blackstone's Gray outsourced: The diverse approaches to picking NCAA winner
March Madness has more random outcomes than trying to pick a startup company to invest millions into, so filling out brackets takes more than just a bet on probability. The best minds in finance have very different approaches when it comes to picking the winners of the NCAA basketball tournament.
Some rely on pure luck and find it fun whether they end up on the bottom or not; some are really dedicated to their alma mater and pick them blindly no matter the seed; and some choose to outsource their bracket “like any good PE manager, I just try to find the best talent to get the job done,” said Jonathan Gray, Blackstone’s president and chief operating officer.