The Week in Markets
Blackstone restricted withdrawals from its $45bn BCRED fund after redemption requests hit $4.5bn — 10% of net asset value — honouring only 5% of NAV. Cliffwater’s $31bn private credit vehicle faced 17% withdrawal requests, up from 14% in Q1. Partners Group became the first firm to gate a semi-liquid private equity fund — its shares down 33% this year — as the crisis spread from credit into private equity. AllianceBernstein warned that “recent fund redemptions have reinforced that illiquidity isn’t theoretical,” noting the wide dispersion of manager returns separates survivors from casualties (see chart). Impax Asset Management argued BDC liquidity expectations have been “meaningfully re-rated” as AI fears about software loan portfolios — the so-called “SaaSpocalypse” — drive the exodus.
High dispersion in private markets
Source: AllianceBernstein
Anthropic filed confidentially for an IPO at an expected valuation above $1tn, with annualised revenues up fivefold to $47bn. SpaceX goes public on June 11 at $1.78tn. Goldman Sachs projects xAI revenues of $322bn by 2030; OpenAI is expected to file shortly at $852bn. David Solomon, Goldman’s chief executive, summarised the mood: “more greed than there is fear.” Franklin Templeton argued the listings mark an “important inflection point”, resetting how public markets value companies built and scaled in private — all three will enter the S&P 500 and MSCI World indexes. GAM Investments noted the VanEck Space Innovators ETF is up 97.3% year-to-date; European space stocks still trade at steep discounts to American peers.
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Gold now accounts for 27% of global central bank reserves — overtaking US Treasuries at 22% — according to ECB data published this week. Central banks hold 36,000 tonnes, near the Bretton Woods peak, having bought 1,000 tonnes a year since 2022; Tether was the single largest buyer in 2025. Janus Henderson Investors flagged that gold’s relationship with real yields “isn’t broken, just operating from a higher base” — de-dollarisation has permanently raised the floor. Western Asset Management highlighted that for reserve managers the question is “no longer just about return or liquidity; it’s about resilience,” as Treasuries are “no longer viewed as risk-free in the same way” amid heavier issuance, higher rate volatility and the use of the dollar as a geopolitical weapon.
Foreign investors pulled $26.4bn from Indian stocks this year — a record $2.3bn in a single day — pushing India’s $4.82tn NSE behind Taiwan and South Korea, each now at $5tn. The Nifty IT index is down 23%; the rupee has fallen to ₹97 per dollar. India has no chipmakers, no large language models, no AI play. Pacific Asset Management cautioned markets have “bifurcated clearly into AI stocks and the rest” — its India underweight boosted April returns, while the KOSPI trades at a record-low seven times earnings despite rallying 200% since early 2025. Robeco found Taiwan’s AI ecosystem — now worth $1.66tn and 14.2% of the MSCI EM index — has more than 60 stocks benefiting from the AI build-out, well beyond TSMC alone.
US convertible bond issuance has hit $57bn year-to-date — the highest on record for comparable periods, Barclays says — putting 2026 on course to beat last year’s $120bn full-year record. About half of deals are AI-linked, as companies exploit elevated stock volatility to borrow at zero cost: Akamai raised $3.5bn interest-free; ON Semiconductor $1.3bn. UBP - Union Bancaire Privée highlighted converts as the ideal AI value-chain vehicle, capturing equity upside via the embedded call option while preserving a bond floor. BNP Paribas Asset Management noted stretched AI valuations are shifting demand toward convertible-bond arbitrage — which isolates volatility rather than equity direction — with hedge funds now holding around 64% of the US market.
📅 Monday, June 8, 2026
📅 Tuesday, June 9, 2026
📅 Wednesday, June 10, 2026
📅 Thursday, June 11, 2026
📅 Friday, June 12, 2026
Source: Bloomberg, All times GMT/UTC+1
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