Market News

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.

Gen Z’s retail-spending growth is outpacing all other generations with the generation’s global annual retail spending expected to exceed $12 trillion by 2030. The cohort also spends a greater proportion of their discretionary dollars in physical stores than older generations.

Exxon Mobil plans to move its legal home to Texas from New Jersey, joining other companies that have flocked to the Lone Star state in search of a more business-friendly environment.

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.

The U.S. Senate is aiming to restrict the industry that builds homes to rent them. Senators recently inserted a new provision in their latest housing legislation that would require large single-family home investors to sell their newly built rental properties to individuals within seven years of completing them.

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.

Housing supply currently sits at 7.6 months. Anything over six months typically cues a buyer's market, giving shoppers more leverage to negotiate for concessions.