The Puck Newsletter: June 2026

We Can Always Do More

This month The Puck is highlighting National Immigration Forum.

Established in 1982, the National Immigration Forum is the nation's premier immigrant rights organization. The Forum is dedicated to embracing and upholding America's tradition as a nation of immigrants. The Forum advocates and builds public support for public policies that welcome immigrants and refugees and are fair to and supportive of newcomers to our country. Their activities include: building alliances and a stronger field; engaging in direct advocacy; and conducting effective media and public outreach.

National Immigration Forum is a 501(c)(3) organization

SOURCE NOTES AND EDITORIAL DISCIPLINE

This newsletter is intentionally written as a forward-looking market thesis, not as a neutral institutional research note. The facts below keep the edge grounded; the interpretation is The Puck's.

January The Puck thesis: private credit should be understood as a market-structure story - illiquid loans, private marks, semi-liquid wrappers, and language that made "senior secured" sound safer than it always was.

April The Puck newsletter: "The Golden Age Is Over. Now We Find Out What Private Credit Is Made Of" - defaults, PIK, weak covenants, soft collateral, and opacity were the borrower-side warning signs.

Fitch Ratings reported that its U.S. private-credit default rate reached a record 6.0% in April 2026.

Reuters reported Fitch's estimate that the 2025 default rate among U.S. corporate borrowers of private credit reached a record 9.2%.

With Intelligence reported Apollo Debt Solutions received redemption requests equal to about 11.2% of net assets in Q1 and honored requests pro rata at about 45% of requested redemption volume, paid out at full NAV.

Disclosure-game examples per company filings and earnings materials: KKR’s fixed-price tender for FS KKR common stock at $11.00 per share against a reported NAV of $18.83; FS KKR’s 50% incentive-fee waiver for four quarters and $150 million KKR convertible preferred (5% cash / 7% PIK at FSK’s option); Blue Owl’s announced $1.4 billion asset sale at 99.7% of par; Apollo Q1 inflows of $724 million against $1.5 billion in redemption requests. The pending securities class action against FS KKR (Levi & Korsinsky, lead-plaintiff deadline July 6, 2026) contains allegations, not adjudicated findings. Quoted “Disclosure English” phrases are paraphrases of common filing language; interpretations are The Puck’s.

Gate roll call per Bloomberg, Reuters, SEC filings, and company disclosures: BlackRock HLEND capped at 5% against 9.3% requested; Blackstone BCRED met record 7.9% requests with a 7% tender plus roughly $400 million of firm and employee capital; Blue Owl halted quarterly redemptions on one vehicle, shifted to return-of-capital distributions, and certain Blue Owl BDCs announced a $1.4 billion asset sale; Morgan Stanley paid roughly half of 10.9% requested; Cliffwater capped at 7% against 14%; Goldman Sachs Private Credit Corp. reported requests of 4.999%. With Intelligence reported average Q1 non-traded BDC redemption requests of 12.1%; Octus reported public BDCs trading near a 20% average discount to NAV with some large names approaching 50%.

FS KKR Capital Corp. reported Q1 2026 non-accruals of 4.2% at fair value and 8.1% at amortized cost, up from year-end 2025.

The Puck's editorial judgment is that visible stress among the strongest managers should be treated as an early signal of broader stress in less visible private-credit portfolios and in the middle-market operating companies underneath.