Private Credit / ARES Short

I began warning about the risk of private credit to the broader market well before anyone was talking about it. Back in November, I posted publicly about private credit being a ticking time bomb — but I didn’t initiate a direct short position to trade off the thesis until February, when I went short Ares.

I was late to express the trade, but I was still able to capture a large move to the downside. The thesis was right, the timing of the trade still worked, and the position paid off.

At the time of putting this together, there’s a new private credit story in the headlines every day. Everyone’s talking about it now. But no one was back in November when I first flagged it.