Private-credit funds managed by Ares, Golub and KKR all reported increases this year in the number of borrowers on watch for deteriorating performance. For those funds, the lists are at their highest levels since 2022-23, when interest rates were rising.
Business investment in AI-related categories reached an annual rate of about $1.5 trillion, up from $1 trillion two years earlier. Bond issuance at five big hyperscalers and SpaceX will reach $285 billion this year, up from $109 billion last year.
The percentage of private, nonprofit colleges drawing down endowments at greater than 7%—considered a sign of financial instability—nearly doubled to 19.3% in 2025 from 9.7% in 2016.
Wealthy insiders are amassing giant tax-subsidized balances by purchasing cheap startup shares in their retirement accounts. More than 1,000 Americans held individual retirement accounts worth at least $25 million in 2024, more than double the number in 2019.
The net asset value of U.S. private-equity assets stuck in funds at least a decade old reached an all-time high of $348.5 billion at the end of 2025. That is 3.5 times the amount in 2015 and more than 100 times that of 2005. The net asset value in the seven-to-nine-year-old bucket reached $512.7 billion in 2025, more than two times that of 2015.
Last year, four in every five U.S. stock mutual funds couldn’t beat the S&P 500.
So far this year, companies have sold $344.7 billion of new shares to investors, exceeding the full-year totals for each year from 2022 to 2025. AI hyperscalers are selling shares and debt to fund capital expenditures, which are expected to rise from $450 billion last year to over $800 billion.
Companies making the largest AI investments grew employment by roughly 10% more than otherwise similar companies that hadn’t yet adopted AI.
Forward markets are currently pricing in roughly 1.5 rate hikes by the end of Q1 2027.
