In short: Named as the face of the problem, not analysed as a stock: when annuity holders find "the go-go crowd in private credit on Wall Street, the Apollos and the rest of them, are controlling these companies, that doesn't make you feel good." Private-credit-owned insurers are the "bomb" in Gundlach's framing, which he endorses.
Apollo is one of the big private-credit firms that also controls a large annuity and life-insurance business. Whalen doesn't analyse the stock. He uses Apollo as the leading example of a trend he thinks is dangerous: private-credit managers owning insurers and filling them with loans to private-equity-owned companies.
A life insurer is supposed to hold safe, long-dated bonds that match what it owes policyholders decades from now. If it holds risky company debt and those companies go bankrupt, it doesn't have the capital to take the loss. He agrees with Jeffrey Gundlach: private credit is the fuse, insurers are the bomb.
15:19So when you start finding out that the go-go crowd in private credit on Wall Street, the Apollos and the rest of them, are controlling these companies, that doesn't make you feel good. — No. And then also I imagine too, Chris, we're still early in, because in a rising rate environment, I imagine there's going to be more to come in this space, more problems.
In short: Snipe owns and holds it despite the alt-manager selloff (33:06). Realizations and fundraising "will probably get a little bit tougher," but Apollo is "a little bit more diverse than the typical alt manager, like I really like their insurance business. So I'm still going to hold" — with Goldman, "our favorite picks."
Apollo manages private investments (private credit, private equity) and also owns a large insurance business, Athene. Private-market managers sold off on worries that higher rates make it harder to raise money and sell holdings. Snipe agrees that part gets harder but holds Apollo because the insurance arm earns steady income that other managers lack.
In short: Named with Goldman as one of the unusual co-financiers of the ~$500B AI raise. Separately, Taylor wonders who will absorb CoreWeave's planned debt: "maybe insurance companies and annuities." A financing reference.
15:12Oh, you mean NVIDIA? Yeah, that thing. But like six, like Apollo, Goldman, like firms that wouldn't ordinarily work together. And his, if I recall correctly, which I think I do, he said, I believe deeply in these numbers. The qualifier. Deeply. Now, this one thing. To believe, but deeply. So now you know it's false. I mean, true.
In short: Named through its CEO: "I'm actually quite in agreement with people like Marc Rowan and Jon Gray, who all say that actually private credit helps de-risk the system" — a dollar of lending moving from a regulated bank to a locked-up fund "is actually safer for the system." The agreement is about the asset class, and it sits next to his near-term call: way too much money, standards "gone to [expletive]," PIK up "massively," "lots of people are going to lose money" — but "I don't think it's systemic." No company view.
Apollo is one of the biggest managers of "private credit" — loans made to companies by investment funds rather than by banks. Its chief executive, Marc Rowan, argues that this shift makes the financial system safer, and Wigglesworth says he is "quite in agreement." The logic is about who is exposed when loans go bad: a bank funds itself with deposits people can withdraw tomorrow, so bad loans can turn into a bank run, while a fund whose investors have agreed to lock their money up for years simply takes the loss.
That endorsement is of the idea, not the current vintage. In the same breath he says far too much money arrived too quickly, lending standards slipped, and the damage is being hidden — borrowers switched to "payment in kind" (adding interest to the loan instead of paying it in cash), and much of the money went to software companies, which own little a lender can seize. He expects real losses and some embarrassment, "but it's not systemic."
For a shareholder of an asset manager the takeaway cuts both ways: he thinks the business model is sound and durable, and he thinks the next few years of the credit cycle will be ugly for the funds' investors.
48:25That's way better. That's way safer for the financial system. So, I'm actually quite in agreement with people like Marc Rowan and Jon Gray, who all say that actually private credit helps de-risk the system. I don't think, there'll be nuances. There'll be frictions around that. But broadly speaking, if a dollar of lending is moving from a regulated bank to a private credit fund, overall that's actually safer for the system.
In short: Referenced as a credible insider now questioning the boom: "the head of Apollo said that it appears that most of the revenues coming from the AI complex is coming from investors, not end customers."
2:56That suggests that things aren't going so well internally. Then we have notable dignitaries in the finance world starting to question this whole thing. Recently, the head of Apollo said that it appears that most of the revenues coming from the AI complex is coming from investors, not end customers.
In short: Cited on both sides of the private-markets ledger. The negative: "Apollo Global Management reported weak quarterly results in its PE division. The firm specifically pointed to a tricky market for company sales and IPOs as a reason for lower performance, saying that exits were being delayed." The positive: "Apollo is also trying to list a lot of their private credit and give them CUSIPs. So this is a positive development that Mark Rowan is pushing" — securitizing private credit into tradable instruments. Apollo is also a member of the Nvidia $500B financing consortium, and its study on AI and the labor market is the research he recommends this week. Deck pages 21-22.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: One of the six firms in Nvidia's $500B third-party compute-financing consortium. Hayes' read: they get paid either way — "we're just going to collect fees brokering the securization and laying it off to institutions and retail investors" — while the credit risk lands on insurers and retail buyers of the paper.
33:56slower growth in the AI sector. Take a look at this story that was released just two days ago. Nvidia and AI compute $500 billion of third party capital. Nvidia today announced strategic partnerships to establish independent compute financing platforms with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to mobilize over $500 billion of third party capital for the buildout of AI infrastructure over time.
In short: Named twice: as one of the six firms signing MOUs with NVIDIA for the $500B compute-financing consortium, and in the private-equity move — "one of the strongest areas of the market today, Apollo's up 6%, but there's your Blackstones and your KKRs as well." Wapner ties it to both the consortium news and to software trading better. No committee position.
In short: Named as one of the private-capital firms in the reported $500B NVIDIA financing partnership. Fits Amoroso's broader point that the AI buildout "is going to take debt capital, equity capital — it's certainly going to take private markets as well." No committee stance.
In short: Reiterated overweight today amid a strong month for private equity. Snipe: still down around 10%; fee-related earnings of $785M, up 25% — "a record quarter for them" — with insurance spread income driving results and private equity performing better. His hold condition: "I need to see those monetizations continue to pick up to see the stock move further." Terranova's read on the group: "one of the reasons private equity is trading better is because software is trading better — there's a very strong correlation between the two," plus "this environment where the market loves the underdog and the underperformance, and private equity certainly characterizes itself as such."
Apollo manages private-equity and credit funds and owns a large insurance business. It got an overweight reiteration, and the numbers were good: fee-related earnings — the steady management fees, as opposed to lumpy performance profits — hit a record $785 million, up 25%, helped by insurance spread income (the gap between what it earns on investments and what it pays policyholders).
Jason Snipe still wants one more thing before the stock re-rates: monetizations, meaning Apollo actually selling portfolio companies and crystallising gains. Until deals close, the private-equity value is on paper. Joe Terranova adds a useful cross-market observation — private equity has been tracking software closely, so software's recovery is part of why these stocks are working, alongside a market that currently rewards anything unloved.
In short: Met them in June: "an incredibly great franchise, great underwriting." Explicitly not where he sees the trouble — the risk is in "smaller GPs, the ones that have been gating," not "the AAA ilk of Apollo" with strong LP relationships. Sector-level caution, company-level respect.
Apollo is one of the giants of private equity and private credit — it raises money from institutions and lends it or buys companies with it. Morrison met the firm in June and calls it "an incredibly great franchise" with great underwriting, so this is not a bearish view on Apollo itself.
It appears here because of where he does see bubble risk. When asked whether Canadian banks are dangerous, he redirected: the worry is the private-equity and private-credit world, where some managers have been valuing their own holdings on questionable assumptions ("marks") while using borrowed money. There may have been a thousand private-equity firms when he started his career and there are perhaps ten or fifteen thousand now — far too many, most of them funded by the free-money era. As a wall of debt matures over the rest of the decade, the weak underwriters get exposed. His distinction is explicit: the trouble will come from the small managers who have already been blocking client withdrawals ("gating"), not the top-tier firms with deep institutional relationships.
20:40I don't think the Apollos are the ones with the strong LP relationships they have where the troubles are going to come. It's going to be, I don't know when I started my career, I don't know if there were a thousand private equity firms in the world. I don't know today if there's 10 or 15,000, but there's too many, right? Again, too much money during the time of quantitative easing and free money went towards private markets.
In short: Did the ~$35B June deal with Blackstone to fund TPUs — peer reference only. (His financial short is an unnamed big PE entity with office/low-cap-rate exposure — not attributed to a ticker.)
41:51— done well, no doubt, because none of them trade particularly well. — That's been our main financial short along with some of the — Is that related to the AI spend? Blackstone and this is Apollo flew out. No, yeah. But Apollo and Blackstone did that deal, I want to say a month or so ago, really June, where they basically raised $35 billion to invest in TPUs or it was like the Broadcom — what we're involved with is not only in AI, but it's an office building and it's in
In short: Referenced — Apollo's chief economist Torsten Slok, whose free July 13 interview Eisman previews: AI spending/capex is ~100bps of 2026's ~2% GDP growth (half of all growth).
4:52On July 13, we will post a free interview with Torston Sllock, chief economist of Apollo. I'm just going to flag one part of that. First of all, we have an AI spending boom because of the data centers and the energy associated with the data centers. We calculate that that contributes at the moment about 1%age point to GDP growth.
In short: Same warning: Apollo Debt Solutions BDC got ~16.8% redemption requests and honored only the 5% structural cap (~$0.7B), with offshore redemptions running ~12.5%. PE bosses are even borrowing against carried interest as liquidity dries up.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: Talkington sold it (flat on the name): fee-related earnings are great (~20% growth) but the charts/sentiment around Apollo — and the alt-credit group — are "just so negative"; capital is flowing to the Goldmans/BofAs/JPMs instead. (Backdrop: ex-CEO Leon Black subpoenaed over Epstein ties.)
Apollo is a giant "alternative-asset manager" — it runs private-credit funds (lending to companies outside the traditional banking system). Talkington sold it. Her reasoning separates the business from the stock: Apollo's fee earnings are still growing nicely (~20%), but the sentiment around private-credit names has turned sharply negative this week amid "redemption" headlines (investors pulling money out of these funds). She respects what the charts and mood are saying, and money is rotating away from these names toward the big traditional banks (Goldman, BofA, JPMorgan) instead. With a cloud also hanging over the firm (former CEO Leon Black was subpoenaed over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein), she stepped aside — selling at roughly breakeven.
In short: Cited as evidence, not a stance: Apollo "dropped another one" ("redemptions will continue until morale improves") — offered as the marquee tell that private credit is in a "slow bleed," consistent with CDS leaking higher even as hyperscaler bonds rally.
Apollo is one of the giant "private credit" firms — it runs funds that lend money directly to companies (outside the public bond market) and to which investors commit cash for long stretches. Paulo isn't giving Apollo a buy or sell view; he uses it as the marquee example of a problem he's tracking: private-credit funds are seeing investors ask for their money back ("redemptions"), and he quips that at Apollo "redemptions will continue until morale improves."
The point is the broader "slow bleed" in private credit. It fits a worrying divergence he flags elsewhere: even though the bonds of the big AI/cloud companies are holding up, the cost of insuring against their default (their "CDS") is creeping higher — the market quietly paying up for protection while the surface looks calm.
In short: Bought half of Intel's Ireland fab for $11B when Intel was desperate — "private equity guys don't work for free"; Intel just paid to unwind it ("a pretty good return over the three years"), removing the earnings dilution.
32:57— And remember, the private equity guys don't work for free. So, it was actually a very earnings dilutive deal for them which they needed to sign at the time. — Um, however, — private equity yourself a sweetheart deal. Really? — Yeah. Yeah. Again, if you're sitting down with private equity, you're probably not walking out with the better side of it.
In short: Interview promo — Chris Edson, Apollo's global head of originations, on what's really happening in private credit / private equity and how Apollo is navigating it. Referenced, not rated.
26:44This last Monday, we hosted an interview with Chris Edson, global head of originations at Apollo Global Management. The controversy surrounding private credit continues to dominate headlines, and Chris has a front-row seat as to what is really going on in the private credit private equity sector and how Apollo is navigating these waters.
In short: Evidence, not a stance: per Bloomberg, "Apollo cut its private credit funds' software exposure almost by half in 2025, from about 20% at the start of the year" — a marquee tell that the smart money in private credit is actively derisking software.
In short: One of the "Kingmakers of our CLO equity/BDC shorts": "Apollo needs a little work but seems to be coming together" — an ROS short setup building in the private-credit alts complex.
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Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.