Private Markets
The $16.7 trillion that trades nowhere, valued by the managers who hold it: the buyout and what it earns after fees, the exit drought and the debt that filled it, private credit and the gates that went up at most of its largest retail funds in 2026, the insurers and banks underneath, venture's AI year, real estate, and infrastructure, the evergreen funds that sell them to individuals, and the push into 401(k)s. Written as of October 2026, with Fitch's private-credit default rate at a record, most of it deferrals and extensions, $9.6 billion of redemption requests unfilled at midyear, and Anderson v. Intel argued before the Supreme Court. Where the field argues, from whether private equity beats the market and whether the 2026 stress is a crisis or a mismatch to whether private credit is systemic and whether retirement savers should own private assets, each side makes its case before the evidence. Opens with a market snapshot from one day's close, and its three worked examples run on October's numbers: one buyout bought in 2019 and again in 2021, a non-traded BDC's redemption quarter, and a 10% private sleeve in a target-date fund.