Only 30% of the federal government’s $1.7 trillion student-loan portfolio is currently being repaid. Among the delinquent student borrowers, 38 percent now have an auto loan, up from 30 percent before the pandemic and the share with a mortgage has nearly doubled, rising from 8 percent in 2019 to 15 percent in 2025.

Year-over-year growth in earnings per share is expected to exceed 13% for the sixth quarter running. Sales are expected to rise more than in any quarter since the fall of 2022.

As sentiment toward private credit began to shift last year, shares of many publicly traded BDCs sold off, trading below their stated net asset value. But the price at which investors can enter or exit nontraded funds has changed very little, thanks to a difference in structure. Some investors are pulling their money from the nontraded BDCs after seeing that comparable public funds are trading at a steep discount.

Before the war, interest-rate futures suggested that traders saw a 79% chance that the Fed would cut rates at least twice this year. Now, that percentage has dropped to 11%. Traders view it roughly as a tossup whether the central bank cuts rates at all by the end of December.

Over the past 12 months, unemployment among college-educated workers 34 and under has converged—and now surpassed—the 4.1% rate for people with two-year associate degrees.

The monthly breakeven rate – the number of new jobs needed to keep the unemployment rate stable – was much higher in the 1970s at 185,000 jobs, as women and baby boomers poured into the labor force. It dropped to just 50,000 in late 2020 during the pandemic. This year, slower immigration means the breakeven pace could fall to nearly zero, requiring less than 10,000 new jobs per month in 2026.

Of the about $6 trillion in invested assets held by life and annuity companies, nearly $1 trillion is now in private-credit investments.

In March, more than $6 billion flowed out of high-yield bond funds. By contrast, almost $19 billion flowed into higher-rated, investment-grade bond funds.

Global corporate deals valued at $10 billion or more reached 22 transactions so far this year, a quarterly record. The total value of all deals so far this year jumped 29% year over year, but the overall number of transactions fell 17% due to slower smaller-deal activity.

Ten of the S&P 500’s 11 sectors were down 8.3% on average in March, with the energy sector being the lone exception.