Leslie Picker

Practicing what he preaches! Riding the subway with @LesliePicker @jlebenthal @CNBC @HalftimeReport #ridiningthesubway

@jimcramer Yay Heather!!! ❤️❤️

Celebrating the marriage of superstar Mad Money producer Heather Gaines! The BEST in the business!!

@ferrajr Ugh it was $90 to fill up my car the other day as well!

@LesliePicker my wife told me $90 to fill up her SEDAN yesterday!!!!

BofA says March gas spend was up 16% year-over-year but still a small proportion of the total wallet

Jamie Dimon on private credit: "The actual credit hasn't gotten that much worse. There are pockets where it has. And, you know, the credit spreads themselves haven't gotten much worse in general... "I just don't expect every player to be the same. It won't be a bell curve. It'll be something different than that. And people will be surprised that some of the players aren't gonna be good at it." $JPM

Wells Fargo in its 1Q presentation, detailed more granularity of its private-credit exposure this morning: ➡️$36.2B of loans to private credit funds (out of $1T of loans) ➡️ 98% senior first lien loans ➡️23% to BDCs (private and public) ➡️17% software, 19% business services, 15% healthcare

Goldman's David Solomon providing some much needed rational thought around private credit: - GFC saw defaults peak at 10% - recoveries were 50% - trough cumulative loss of 5%-6% vs coupons of 9%-10% For context, listed BDCs are currently pricing in defaults of more than 20%

BlackRock recently reclaimed a title it had ceded to one-time corporate cousin Blackstone for most of the past five years: Wall Street’s most-valuable publicly traded asset manager (via @WSJ) $BLK $BX wsj.com/finance/invest…

"A wall of debt maturities is looming for the private markets industry, with more than $330 billion of high yield, leveraged loan and business development company-linked software and technology debt coming due for repayment through 2028." bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Private credit fundraising has slumped this year, with capital rotating into private equity, which is -- checks notes -- lower on the capital structure (via Jefferies research)

Jamie Dimon on private credit (via his annual shareholder letter): Actual losses right not are already a little higher than they should be, relative to the environment. "By and large, private credit does not tend to have great transparency or rigorous valuation 'marks' of their loans." He said at some point insurance regulators will insist on more rigorous ratings or markdowns and said if anything goes wrong, retail investors will seek remedy in courts. However, Dimon said private credit is "probably not" a systemic risk," due to its relatively small size in the broader credit market.

"The firm’s flagship OCIC, with about $36 billion in assets under management, received redemption requests of about 21.9% of shares outstanding during the first quarter, the firm said. Blue Owl’s smaller, tech-oriented fund, OTIC, received redemption requests of 40.7% during the same period, it said." cnbc.com/2026/04/02/blu…

Did they have xAI draft the S-1? cnbc.com/2026/04/01/spa…

U.S. banks' loan exposure to NDFIs has grown to $1.4 trillion or about 11% of total balances, according to Moody's. That growth has been led by lending to private credit, which rose 7.5% QoQ (as of Dec. 31). Moody's says this "raises concentration risk in a fairly opaque market sector, since banks' exposures are concentrated with a comparatively small group of private credit managers." However, private credit lending is still a small percentage of the total at about 3.9%.

Literally, for the birds

@mmcassella @CNBC Woo hoo! Welcome back, Megan!

Some news after market close: I’m back from mat leave this week! It’s back to the White House beat for me @CNBC, with a new email address: Megan.Cassella@cnbc.com. Send me your tips, update your press lists, and see you on the air soon! 📺 🎬👶🏻

Redemption levels in private credit funds can partially be explained by concerns about concerns. Investors see high redemption requests that get cut back in other funds so then they double their own requests in anticipation of also being cut back. It’s a similar game to a hot IPO - you bid for a much bigger allocation, and expect to receive only a fraction of it. The concerns about concerns dynamic explains while several of these funds simultaneously have seen net inflows. However, the funds are less inclined to use the net inflows to fulfill more redemption requests because they don’t want to be seen as the private-credit ‘ATM’ that will always dole out money when you need it, as others lock up. The private-credit prisoners’ dilemma.

Interesting nugget in the $ARES ASIF letter, detailing who the redeemers were (11.6% of shares outstanding) ‘The majority of repurchase requests were made by a limited number of family offices and smaller institutions in select geographies who represent less than 1% of our over 20,000 shareholders.’ This aligns with what I’ve been hearing about the makeup of the redeemers - that it’s a few, very wealthy investors

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"As investors in private credit funds rush for the exits, Cliffwater has become one of the biggest question marks in the $1.8 trillion industry." bloomberg.com/news/features/…