In short: Referenced only — held, no new view. Weight ~3.0%. Sheet: EPS 6.11 → 9.29 (15.0%/yr) + 0.8% = 15.80%/yr.
In short: Named only in the same list of data-center capacity buyers.
56:18street says, "Hey, I'm building a 50-megawatt data center down the road, I need whatever" — okay, show me what you've got. Amazon, Blackstone, Brookfield, KKR, all these guys are going to gobble up that supply and contract capacity. So you're not going to be able to do anything.
In short: BUY (portfolio). ER 11.60%; fair value $119.5 vs $102.22 (14.5% under); fwd PE 16.2 vs 17.9; RDCF 3.6% vs 9.8%. YTD −20.7%.
In short: Historical exhibit in Colin's 1970s inventory: Jerome Kohlberg, "the first K in KKR," joined Kravis and Roberts to scale LBOs, "a way to deploy capital in mature companies and force them to find extra productivity." The LBO is a maturity-phase financial innovation.
KKR is the private-equity firm that made the leveraged buyout famous. An LBO means buying a mature company mostly with borrowed money and forcing it to become more efficient. Colin uses its late-1970s founding (Jerome Kohlberg with Henry Kravis and George Roberts) as evidence for his framework.
When a technology wave matures and stops producing easy productivity gains, finance invents new ways to squeeze value out of existing companies, and the LBO was one of them. KKR is a historical exhibit here, not a stock view.
22:09Thus providing an abundant source of capital for many many things including something else that was kind of invented in the 1970s, leveraged buyouts. The end of the 1970s is when Jerome Kohlberg, the first K in KKR, partners with Henry Kravis and George Roberts to found KKR because the two younger co-founders have seen that what Kohlberg had been practicing in a very artisanal way at a very small scale was a way to deploy capital in mature companies and force them to find extra
In short: "If you pull up a chart of KKR versus the financials, it smells to high heaven" — the private-credit complex is diverging badly from the banks, a tell of real credit deterioration.
KKR is a private-equity and private-credit giant: it lends to companies outside the banking system, in loans that rarely trade and are therefore valued by estimate rather than by market price.
His signal is a chart comparison — KKR against the financial sector — and it "smells to high heaven": the private-credit names are badly underperforming the banks. When the lenders closest to the murkiest loans move first, he treats it as evidence of "real credit deterioration" rather than a sector rotation.
12:37Same thing with Blue Owl. There's something going on in the private credit side and in the triple C side with the loans where there's real credit deterioration. I'm not saying it's not 2000, late 2007 or anything like that in terms of a big blowup, but it's me.
In short: ~3.0% of the book. 17x NTM P/E on a 15% EPS CAGR; 520 shares yielding $3,177.20; modelled three-year return 15.80%. One of only three holdings positive on both measures — +5% YTD and +6% over twelve months. Bought in June 2026, so like the three upweight candidates it is still building its weight.
In short: Deal one of Merger Monday — Aon buying USI Insurance Services from KKR for $17 billion in cash — and Terranova, who owns Aon, says to play the other side: "the better trade and opportunity here is the seller. It's KKR. In 2017 they made this acquisition, they're now selling it, they're making about $3.3 billion." Saccocia's follow-on generalizes it to the alternative managers as the way to own the deal wave.
KKR is a private-equity firm: it buys companies with investor money, improves or grows them, and sells them years later. Today it sold USI Insurance Services to Aon for $17 billion in cash, having bought it in 2017 — a roughly $3.3 billion gain.
Terranova's advice is the transferable bit: in a takeover, look at the seller, not just the buyer. The buyer takes on the price, the debt and the integration risk; the seller books cash. He owns Aon and still says "the better trade and opportunity here is the seller."
In short: BUY (portfolio). ER 11.50%; fwd PE 16.2 against a 17.9 average (9.5% under); RDCF 4.6% required vs 9.8% expected. Fair value $127.1 vs $109.86 — 13.6% under, the second-smallest discount in the book. YTD −14.8%.
In short: The other named signatory to the NVIDIA financing MOU. Same treatment — a press release until the paper exists. Passing mention, no company view.
8:30Blackstone, BlackRock, KKR, to finance chips and recognize that these are an investable asset class. I asked Claude before this what percentage of that 500 billion is going to be debt versus equity. They said roughly 80% debt 20% equity. So you're the debt guy, so this is good, we're speaking to you.
In short: The capital leg of the Helix Platform — "KKR provides capital and deal sourcing" in the partnership with Vistra, NVIDIA and the Kuwait Investment Authority, which Haymaker calls "the stock's long-term game-changer" and describes as "structured to generate additional contracted capacity commitments as it deploys capital." Cited as evidence of the capital now chasing dispatchable generation — private equity, a chipmaker and a sovereign fund assembling around a merchant power producer — rather than as a call. No view is taken on KKR's shares.
In short: Named in the $500B Nvidia compute-financing consortium — one of the arrangers whose success depends on getting rating agencies to bless securitized GPU exposure as investment grade.
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: An MOU signatory in the NVIDIA compute-financing consortium, and named in the private-equity group having one of the strongest days in the market. No committee position.
In short: Named as one of the six firms in the reported $500B NVIDIA AI-financing partnership (FT, five people briefed on the talks). No committee stance.
In short: Schorr's counterexample to the whole exit-drought narrative: "Ken and I both cover KKR. They had record monetizations today… if you didn't know any about the news flow in the past year and just look at the year results, you'd be like, 'Wow, those are pretty good results.'" The point is dispersion — "there will be others this quarter that put up results and have very limited monetizations" despite a better IPO and M&A market and record equity highs.
KKR is one of the large private-equity and private-credit firms. Its role in this conversation is as the exception that defines the rule.
The industry's problem right now is monetisation — actually selling the companies it bought and returning cash to investors, who are pressing hard for it. Assets bought in 2020-21 at high prices with zero interest rates are now five or six years old, the age at which they should be sold, and many can't be sold at a price the owner will accept. Private equity has, for the first time since the financial crisis, underperformed public markets.
KKR reported "record monetizations" on the day of taping — proof that the exit window is open for the right assets and that this is a dispersion story, not a sector-wide freeze. Schorr's warning is the other half: others reporting this quarter will show "very limited monetizations" despite a strong IPO market, better M&A and record equity prices. When a seller cannot sell into that backdrop, the honest reading is that the asset isn't worth what it's carried at.
20:26Use code EISMAN to save $300 on tuition. Well, let's go with one example today. Ken and I both cover KKR. They had record monetizations today. They're like, I saw that. I don't know what you guys are talking about, but our monetizations are fine. We put record monetizations, and they talk about how they've grow their business and manage their portfolios over time.
In short: "KKR is up a couple of percentage points" in the same private-equity move tied to software's recovery. No committee position.
In short: BUY, and the most recent purchase in the table. Bought 23 Jun 2026; $97.4 against a $119.9 fair value (+23.2%). EPS 6.11 → 9.29 by 2028 (15.00% a year), expected return 15.80%. Down 27.1% YTD — bought into that fall, six weeks before this update.
In short: Akre's #3 at 10.2%, and a shared holding. "KKR is a global investment firm that earns revenue from private equity management fees, carried interest, and investment income across various asset classes." Akre's reasons as given: "the diversified business model, strong management, and ability to generate recurring fee-based revenue." The ambition is quoted directly: "KKR has set the goal for itself to build 'the next Berkshire Hathaway'." First bought in 2018, "the stock is up +300% since then."
KKR raises money from institutions, buys companies and other assets with it, improves them and sells them later. It earns in two ways: a steady annual fee on everything it manages, which arrives whether or not investments do well, and a share of the profits when they do — usually about a fifth.
Akre's stated reasons are the diversification across asset classes, the quality of management, and specifically the recurring fee revenue, which behaves like a subscription rather than like a trading business. The strategic ambition is quoted directly: KKR wants to build "the next Berkshire Hathaway" — meaning it increasingly wants to own things permanently, financed partly with insurance money, rather than only running funds with fixed lives.
He first bought in 2018 and the shares are up more than 300% since, and it sits at 10.2% of the portfolio. It is also one of the five names Slegers and Akre both own — and one Slegers has separately described as down heavily on recession and private-credit fears while insiders keep buying.
In short: Named by the host ("your Apollos, your KKRs") as the archetype of the big GPs when Morrison located the bubble risk in private equity/private credit. He declines to name names and puts the large franchises outside the risk set. Reference, not a view.
20:19So that's where I think there could be a domino that fly because you have leverage. — Your Apollo's your KKRS. — Well, I'm not going to. Yeah. So I met Apollo in June and they have an incredibly great franchise. great underwriting. I think it's more smaller GPS, the ones that have been gating that we don't hear about necessarily.
In short: BUY, Very Strong conviction — its first appearance in the portfolio table, bought on 21 June at a $98 limit. FV $109.9 vs $94.0 = 14.5% under; ER 11.6%; fwd PE 16.2 against 17.9 (9.5% under); RDCF 0.9% required against 9.8% expected — an 8.9pp margin, the widest of the nineteen holdings. YTD −27.1%: the position is under water within three weeks of purchase.
KKR appears in the portfolio table for the first time, three weeks after being bought at a limit of $98. It is already down: the shares are 27% lower than they started the year and the position is under water almost immediately.
What the table adds to the purchase case is the third model. Working backwards from today's price, the market is implying KKR grows profits by less than 1% a year, against an expectation of nearly 10% — the widest such gap of any of the nineteen holdings. In plain terms, you are being asked to pay a price that assumes the business essentially stops growing.
In short: BOUGHT — $50,000, limit price $98, 520 shares. Disclosed data: price $97, market cap $87.0bn, average daily volume $595m, ISIN US48251W1045, type Owner-Operator. Quality Score 8.3/10 across 15 metrics — highest marks for balance sheet, capital allocation and valuation (9.5/10 each), lowest for stock-based compensation (4/10, 20.3% of adjusted net income) and cyclical risk (7/10). The structure: $744bn of AUM in three linked businesses — asset management (fee income), insurance via Global Atlantic (premiums to invest), and strategic holdings (investments and dividends) — where "Global Atlantic brings in premiums that need to be invested" and KKR deploys them "into private credit, infrastructure, and real assets." Growth: revenue and adjusted net income CAGR of 35.7% and 20.0% over five years, capital raised in 2025 nearly double 2023, expected long-term EPS growth 21.1%, and management targeting a doubling of earnings in five years. Balance sheet: "the headline debt figure is mostly non-recourse debt sitting inside separate funds, meaning lenders have no claim on KKR itself." Alignment: founders Kravis and Roberts still own 18.5%, insiders 30% in total, co-CEOs Bae and Nuttall 30 years each at the firm. Valuation: forward PE 14.9x vs an 18.0x five-year average, and a sum-of-the-parts fair value of $133. Track record: +870% since 2010, a 19.2% CAGR since IPO.
KKR manages $744 billion of other people's money, mostly in things that are not listed on a stock exchange: whole companies, loans made directly to businesses, infrastructure, property. It gets paid a fee for managing that money, and a share of the profit when the investments do well. It has been doing this since 1976 and the two surviving founders still own 18.5% of it.
The part that makes it different from an ordinary fund manager is the insurance company it owns, Global Atlantic. Insurance customers pay premiums now and claims are paid out years later, so KKR is permanently holding about $219 billion that it can invest in the meantime. Most private-equity firms raise a fund with a ten-year life, must spend it, and must give it back; KKR has money that never has to be returned, so it can wait for the right moment instead of investing on a schedule. Insurance is now the larger half of the group.
On price, the shares change hands at about 15 times expected profits against their own five-year average of 18, and below the competition. Adding up the parts of the business separately gives a value of about $133 a share against a market price of $97. The firm's own scoring system gives it 8.3 out of 10, with the highest marks for its balance sheet, its capital allocation and its price.
The blemish is stated openly and is worth carrying: KKR pays its staff heavily in shares, worth about a fifth of adjusted profit, which quietly dilutes outside shareholders. That single item scores 4 out of 10 — the lowest of the fifteen — and it is excused on the grounds that the whole industry does it, which is a weaker defence than the rest of the case.
The transaction: $50,000, a limit of $98, 520 shares — announced before it was executed, and the fourth month running that KKR had appeared on the firm's shortlist without being bought.
In short: BUY — and bought three days later. FV $109.2 vs $93.4 = 14.5% under; ER 11.6%; fwd PE 16.2 against 17.9 (9.5% under); RDCF 1.2% required against 9.8% expected — an 8.6pp margin, the second-widest among the Buys. YTD −27.6% on a 20.8% ten-year CAGR. The 21 June full investment case takes the position at a $98 limit.
In short: "KKR, which is exposed to the credit markets and private credit, down 42%" off the highs while JPMorgan is up 23% — "you're already seeing cracks in the foundation, but that's going to crack all the way up to the big banks."
KKR is a private-equity and private-credit giant — it lends to companies outside the banking system. It's down 42% from its highs over about eighteen months while JPMorgan is up 23%, and he treats that gap as the early warning: the losses are showing up first where the risky lending was done. "You're already seeing cracks in the foundation, but that's going to crack all the way up to the big banks."
24:32KKR's down 42% off the highs. And since say a year and a half, KKR, which is exposed to the credit markets and private credit, down 42% and JP Morgan's up 23%. So, you're already seeing cracks in the foundation, but that's going to crack all the way up to the big banks. So, we're seeing a lot of clients short the financials, either short puts on the XLF.
In short: BEST BUY #1. "KKR is now managing nearly $800 billion (!)." The model: "The more assets KKR manages, the more it collects in management fees. The beauty of this? The management fees are very stable. They have to be paid no matter how the underlying investments perform." Growth evidence: "In 2025, they raised a record $129 billion in new capital." Two structural additions — Global Atlantic, "a large insurance operation", supplying permanent capital, and the K-Series funds giving individuals direct access to private-market deals, "growing very quickly", which KKR believes "opens up another $11 trillion market". Closing corroboration: "Insiders agree. They have been buying more KKR stock recently."
KKR takes money from pension funds and other large investors and uses it to buy whole companies, lend to them, or build infrastructure. It also owns Global Atlantic, an insurance business.
The reason it is ranked first is that its income is far steadier than what it invests in. KKR charges a management fee on the roughly $800 billion it looks after, and that fee is payable whether or not the underlying investments do well. So you are buying a fee stream, not a portfolio.
The stream is still growing: it raised a record $129 billion of new money in 2025. Two things make it durable. Global Atlantic's insurance premiums give KKR capital that never has to be given back, unlike a fund with a fixed life. And the new K-Series funds let ordinary investors buy into private-market deals for the first time — a channel KKR thinks is worth another $11 trillion of potential money.
Insiders have been buying the shares themselves.
In short: BUY, four days after being named Best Buy #1. EPS growth 9.8%, dividend 0.7%, FWD PE 16.2 against a fair exit 17.9, expected return 11.5%, fair value 119.9 against 103.7 = 13.6% undervalued — a modest number for the month's top-ranked idea.
In short: Best Buy #1. "KKR proves that size is a moat in private equity", with nearly $750bn of AUM. Three supports: a record $129bn raised in 2025 while "smaller firms struggle to raise capital in a high-interest-rate environment"; roughly $126bn of dry powder — "in a market where assets are getting cheaper, KKR is ready to buy"; and the insider signal — "despite the stock being down ~50% from its highs, insiders have been aggressively buying shares. There are lots of reasons for insiders to sell, but there's only one reason they buy. The stock is cheap." Summarised as "an alternative asset manager with permanent insurance capital." Also April's best performer at +12.8%.
KKR is the month's number one pick. It invests institutional money — pension funds, insurers — in companies, infrastructure and private lending, and now looks after nearly $750 billion.
The argument is that in this industry, being big is itself the advantage. When money is expensive and investors are cautious, smaller firms cannot raise new funds at all; KKR raised a record $129 billion last year. It also has about $126 billion of uncommitted cash sitting ready, which is worth a great deal precisely when asset prices are falling.
The share price is down about half from its high on worries about private credit. The signal offered against that is insider behaviour: executives have been buying heavily. As the write-up puts it, there are many reasons an insider might sell — a house, a divorce, a tax bill — but only one reason to buy.
In short: Buy candidate #1. "KKR is one of the best capital allocators on the planet. Its size and reputation with institutional investors give it fee-related earnings that grow steadily regardless of market cycles." The distinctive argument is behavioural rather than financial: "The fact that it owns private assets means that there's no daily price to obsess over. KKR focuses on long-term business building. That's exactly how we think too." Judged two days earlier to be "at or very near an interesting price to buy"; becomes Best Buy #1 on 3 May.
KKR invests other people's money — mostly pension funds and insurers — in companies, infrastructure and private loans, and charges an annual fee plus a share of the profits.
The reason it makes the shortlist here is not a valuation argument but a temperament one. Because most of what KKR owns is private, there is no share price flashing at it every day, so the people running it can concentrate on making the businesses better rather than on what the market thinks this quarter. The write-up says so directly: "that's exactly how we think too."
Underneath that, the fee income is unusually steady because the money it manages is locked in for years or, in the case of the insurance business it bought, permanently. Steady fee income regardless of the market cycle is exactly the "smooth compounding" this issue says it now wants.
In short: The one name in the 21-company series judged buyable now. "KKR is currently trading near its average Forward P/E over the past decade. I would say KKR is at or very near an interesting price to buy", with insider buying as corroboration. Scale and structure: $744bn AUM across private equity, real estate, infrastructure and credit since 1976; the Global Atlantic life insurer supplies $321bn of permanent capital — "money that never leaves"; and 92% of AUM sits behind 7-12 year lockups, so "they don't have to worry about investors panicking and pulling their money out during a market crash." Fundraising: $129bn raised in 2025, with over $115bn a year expected. The bear case is answered numerically: "the stock is down nearly 21% this year due to fears around private credit. But KKR's actual direct lending exposure is just 21% of assets. This looks like an overreaction." Becomes Best Buy #1 a week later.
KKR takes money from big institutions — pension funds, insurers, sovereign funds — and uses it to buy companies, infrastructure and property, or to lend privately. It charges an annual fee on the money it manages and keeps roughly a fifth of the profits when an investment is sold well.
Two structural features make it unusually safe for its type. It bought a life insurer, Global Atlantic, which gives it $321 billion of money that never has to be given back — it can invest that permanently and keep all the returns. And 92% of the $744 billion it manages is locked up for seven to twelve years, so even in a crash investors cannot pull it out. An asset manager that cannot suffer a run has far steadier earnings than one that can.
The opportunity is that the shares have fallen 21% this year because investors are worried about private credit blowing up. But actual direct lending is only 21% of what KKR manages, so the whole company has been marked down for a fifth of it. The valuation is simply back to its ten-year average, insiders have been buying, and the verdict is that this is "at or very near an interesting price to buy" — the only one of twenty-one companies across the three shopping lists to clear its own bar.
In short: Best Buy #1. "In private equity, reputation is everything. KKR has a 50-year track record that makes them the first choice for massive institutions." AUM tripled in five years; a record $129bn raised in 2025 with ~$126bn still in cash — "KKR is in a great position to buy up cheap assets if prices continue to fall." Down close to 50% off the highs on three fears — recession, software holdings and private credit. "But insiders continue to buy. That's a great signal from the people who know the business best."
KKR manages money for large institutions — buying companies, infrastructure and property with their capital — and collects an annual fee on everything it manages plus a share of the profits when investments are sold well. It also owns an insurance business, which supplies capital that never has to be handed back on a schedule. Its assets under management have tripled in five years, and reputation is the barrier to entry: a fifty-year record is what makes a pension fund pick you.
The stock has fallen close to 50% for three reasons, all of them about the future rather than the fee base: worries about a recession, the fact that KKR owns a lot of software companies at a moment when the market fears AI will damage them, and concern that the companies it lends to privately may struggle to repay. Against that, 2025 was its largest fundraising year ever at $129 billion, and $126 billion of it is still uninvested cash — which in a falling market is an asset, not a problem, because it lets KKR buy cheaply. And insiders keep buying the stock, which Slegers treats as the confirming signal.
In short: BUY. 13.1x forward against a 17.9x five-year average (26.8% under), fair value $118.5 against $89.0, expected return 14.2% and a +8.6pp reverse-DCF margin. Down 31.0% year to date against a 19.7% ten-year CAGR — the sharpest fall-versus-record mismatch on the Buy list.
In short: "The KKRs" / business development companies seeing 30–40% drawdowns — credit stress hitting the private-credit complex.
KKR is a big private-equity and private-credit firm. He uses "the KKRs" as shorthand for the whole private-lending complex — including business development companies (BDCs), which are funds that lend to mid-sized private businesses.
These names are seeing 30–40% drops, far worse than the broad market. To him that's direct evidence the credit stress he's warning about is already hitting the firms most exposed to private lending — the canary in the coal mine for a wider crisis.
14:00So the financial equities, the business development companies, the KKKRS, uh we're talking like 30 40% draw downs, like the worst start for the financials since maybe 2008, like to start off a year. So that's one that's your radar is going to go up, right? But then on the loan side um the performance of the leveraged loans and the loan indexes especially the triple croches that are exposed to all these software loans.
In short: Best Buy #2. A large alternative asset manager earning stable management fees plus performance fees. "In private equity, size and reputation are everything. KKR has both" — a record $129bn raised in 2025, ~$750bn AUM including $126bn of cash waiting to be deployed. The stock is down almost 50% because ~7% of the portfolio is software (so it fell with software) and Q4 EPS missed at $1.24 vs $1.26. "KKR remains a very strong business… What makes it even more interesting? Insiders are buying shares as we speak."
KKR takes money from pension funds and wealthy institutions and invests it in private companies, infrastructure and real estate. It earns two kinds of fee: a steady annual percentage on everything it manages, and a share (usually around 20%) of the profits when an investment is sold well. The steady fee is the part that matters most — it arrives regardless of markets, and it grows with assets under management, which have roughly tripled in five years to around $750bn.
The stock has halved for reasons that have little to do with those fees: about 7% of its portfolio is in software companies, so it was dragged down with the software selloff, and fourth-quarter earnings missed by two cents. Meanwhile 2025 was its biggest fundraising year ever — $129 billion — with $126 billion of that still sitting in cash, ready to buy assets cheaply if prices keep falling. And insiders are buying the stock now, which Slegers reads as a signal from the people who know the business best.
In short: Named in a single line as a live example of the checklist's first item: "Two great examples of companies where insiders are now buying shares? KKR and MSCI." No thesis or valuation here — the full write-up and the Best Buy #2 rating arrive a week later in March, where the same insider signal is cited as the confirming evidence.
In short: BUY. Trades 15.1% above its own five-year multiple (20.6x against 17.9x) yet is 49.4% under on the Earnings Growth Model — a $259.5 fair value against $131.42 — for a 14.3% expected return, with a +6.7pp reverse-DCF margin. A 27.4% five-year and 25.4% ten-year CAGR. It becomes Best Buy #2 in March.
In short: CLO/BDC "Kingmaker" short: "KKR is now in play — one last kiss before the big break?" — the most-advanced of the private-credit-alts ROS setups.
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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.