Jon Gray has insisted for some time that Blackstone, where he is president, will not wait for the “all-clear” in order to jump-start its investment. During last week’s earnings call, Blackstone said it had put $34bn to work in the most recent quarter. The group, along with KKR, Apollo and Ares put $160bn to work in the period.
That comes just as red lights start flashing. The S&P 500 is down a tenth since its July peak, hobbled by worries of a recession and capital markets volatility spreading across the world. Blackstone shares have lost roughly the same in that period.
Private markets are supposed to be less erratic than their public equivalents, since those instruments are not traded on exchanges where valuations are marked constantly. It has been a running joke each quarter that when the listed private capital managers shared their returns, the rosy figures seemed unmoored from widely broadcast public market benchmarks.