There are about 430,000 U.S. households worth $30 million or more. Within that, there are about 74,000 worth $100 million or more. Over the past few decades, the growth in the number of very rich households has surpassed general population growth.

Software debt accounts for around 30% of all private-credit loans outstanding, while bank-originated debts hover around 10%.

Traders now see a 47% chance of a rate cut by December, down from 74% before the Iran war began last month.

The private-credit default rate rose to 9.2% in 2025, up from 8.1% in 2024 and the highest ever for a full year.

U.S. bank loans to non-depository financial institutions that include private credit reached $1.2 trillion as of mid-last year. That was nearly triple the share from a decade ago.

Breit’s assets under management went from over $68 billion at the end of the fourth quarter of 2022 to about $54 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to Blackstone quarterly reports. Bcred, meanwhile, grew from under $59 billion to almost $90 billion. Combined with other similar private funds for other asset classes, their collective growth far more than offset Breit’s decline in size.

Last year, a record 6% of workers in 401(k) plans took a hardship withdrawal. That is up from 4.8% in 2024 and a prepandemic average of about 2%. The median withdrawal was $1,900.

Chicago took the top spot in a ranking of U.S. cities by financial distress. Chicago saw a 30% increase in residents allowed to skip payments due to financial difficulty, and it also ranked near the top for the number of distressed accounts per capita. Houston, Las Vegas, Dallas and Los Angeles rounded out the top five.

While the S&P 500 has traded within a range of just 2.7% in 2026, the average company in the index has moved within a band that is about seven times as much. That ratio is the largest since at least 1994, signaling a market with unusually high divergence in returns between different companies.

Companies in the State Street Software ETF trade at roughly 19 times their next 12 months of earnings, down from a peak of more than 47 times in 2022. Companies in the broad S&P 500, meanwhile, are trading at close to 22 times forward earnings.