Mapping PE stocks' horrible February

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2026-04-09 23:12:50

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Mapping PE stocks’ horrible February

Jordan Rubio, Jacob Robbins, Rod James

Fri, February 27, 2026 at 7:05 AM GMT+9 2 min read

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It’s been a rollercoaster ride for the stocks of some of the world’s biggest private equity firms.

Since Feb. 1, the stocks of Ares, Blackstone, BlackRock, Apollo Global Management and The Carlyle Group declined on average by more than 16%, while the S&P 500 Index was relatively flat.

Driving these companies down, analysts say, are fears of an overheated credit market and of AI upending the software-as-a-service business.

“The private credit scare trade—much like and in tandem with the AI scare trade—has really walloped the group this past month,” said Greggory Warren, senior equity analyst at Morningstar.

Investors have been spooked since Blue Owl began restricting withdrawals from one of its private credit funds, sparking broader concerns about liquidity access. That has been coupled with fears that AI will weaken the SaaS portfolios of several firms.

Firms with greater exposure to private credit, such as Ares and Blue Owl, have been hit the most, with their stocks down 29% and 26.7% YTD.

New tariffs imposed by the Trump administration Monday were another bump in the road for publicly listed PE firms, caught up in a broader market sell-off triggered by fresh uncertainty linked to the Supreme Court’s ruling and the president’s workaround.

Some US PE executives have expressed frustration about the damage that tariffs, a flagship policy of the second Trump administration, have done to business sentiment, though their concerns remain largely private for now.

Stock prices of the major listed PE firms rose after the president’s inauguration but haven’t hit that height since.

“These are macro-exposed names,” said John Barnidge, an equity research analyst at Piper Sandler covering KKR, Apollo and Brookfield. “You’re just seeing all of these things coming together, causing a lot of market volatility.”

This article originally appeared on PitchBook News

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