TOPIC • 4 CLAIMS
Capital Flows
Where money is going, how fast, and what it does to standards when it arrives.
HOWARD MARKS/
The direct lending market grew from a niche into a scale that, by his account, could not have been filled by good borrowers alone.
- about $2 trillion of direct loans made over 15 years
- the entire private credit sector was about $150 billion 20 years ago
HOWARD MARKS/
Private equity returns have already lagged the public index over the recent period, undercutting the premium the asset class is sold on.
- MSCI: US private equity funds annualized 5.8% between 2022 and Q3 2025, versus 11.6% for the S&P 500
HOWARD MARKS/
He frames the economic transfer in terms of labor value migrating to compute.
- $150-250 billion in annual labor value migrating to AI compute, in software alone
HOWARD MARKS/
His concern is located in the financing of the buildout rather than in the equity multiples.
- roughly $5 trillion of data center buildout
- against about $350 billion held collectively by Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Oracle
Claims are restated; figures are the authors' own. Each links to the document it came from, which in turn links to the original in full.