The highest-quality private equity and private credit managers, Apollo, Ares, Blackstone and KKR, are back on sale, mainly because of interest rates. They are not as cheap as during March's SaaS debt scare, and weaker names such as Blue Owl are still to be avoided. x.com  x.com 

Scaled alternative managers Apollo, KKR, Brookfield and Ares stand to profit if investment-grade bond markets cannot absorb the $1-2T of hyperscaler debt due over the next couple of years. Private credit can then earn premium spreads for structure and flexibility at relatively low risk, as borrowers are under 1x levered and the credit is asset-backed, and few firms have the scale to partner with hyperscalers. Per @PrefShares, hyperscalers issued $159B of bonds in the first five months of 2026. … Show more

Blackstone, KKR, Apollo, Ares and Carlyle face a re-pricing, not a correction, because AI capex is artificially inflating S&P 500 earnings. Hyperscaler capex becomes Nvidia revenue, whose profits make the index look healthy, but those are front-loaded accounting gains, not durable cash flows. When the capex cycle slows, the reversal hits everything downstream, including alternative managers and private credit. Per @Fiscal_ai, drawdowns already run from 33% at Carlyle to 46% at KKR and Ares. … Show more

Blackstone is proving that scale can still drive growth, making it a high-quality compounder at a fair price. Q2 distributable earnings rose 26%, fee-related earnings 22% and AUM 11%, with a $185B data-center platform and over $555B of perpetual capital. Private-credit concerns remain, but diversification, fundraising power and AI-infrastructure exposure strengthen the long-term case. At about 20x forward earnings with a 4%-plus forward yield, it looks attractive, though not deep value. x.com 

Asset-light businesses that take a cut of every transaction have one of the most powerful business models, pairing low capex and high margins with steady cash flow from royalties and fees. That is the basis for a portfolio of McDonald's, Uber, Texas Pacific Land, Visa, Restaurant Brands International, Marriott, Franco-Nevada, CME Group and Arm, built to test whether such businesses can outperform the market. x.com 

Blackstone, KKR, Apollo and TPG remain a great short because alternative managers are structurally rowing against the tide. Portfolio companies carry bloated inventories, the IPO window is closed, the energy and inflation shock is squeezing margins, AI is disrupting business models, and generalists have crowded in treating them as compounders. CVC's earnings revision last week, from one of the more sober management teams with top-performing funds, signals what lies ahead for the rest. x.com  … Show more

Ameriprise's earnings mix has shifted toward wealth management, a stickier, more margin-resilient business less exposed to passive fee compression than asset management. Advisory & Wealth Management grew from a third of earnings to 65%, as pretax adjusted operating earnings more than doubled from $2.4bn to $5.3bn over a decade. Yet Ameriprise trades at 10.1x earnings, a 19% discount to peers running similar playbooks with shakier fundamentals. x.com 

Blackstone is effectively an AI stock: it pivoted hard and early into AI, especially power and data center assets that are massively in the money from a carry perspective. If the AI boom carries on for the next few years, it should keep crushing other asset managers on results. x.com  x.com