As he shivers through the coldest New York winter in years, Flexstone Partners managing director Nitin Gupta has found one source of warmth: he doesn’t have to ride the ups and downs of the US sharemarket as it reacts to the latest policy pronouncement of the Trump administration.

Gupta, who oversees $US10 billion ($16 billion) worth of private equity investments for a global client base that includes Australian superannuation fund HostPlus, is happy to be sitting in the relative shelter of the mid-market part of the private equity sector, where deals are struck for between $US50 million and $US500 million.