Private Credit Could Be The Next Black Swan

Money Tree Investing

Money Tree Investing Podcast

Investing, Business

4.6 • 732 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2026

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Private credit could be the next black swan and we're going to break it down for you. We also discuss the ongoing war and how geopolitical uncertainty is affecting financial markets, investor psychology, and economic conditions. Misinformation, AI-generated content, and media bias make it difficult to know what is actually happening amidst the "fog of war", which increases market uncertainty. Markets have reacted with volatility rather than a sharp crash, highlighting unexpected moves such as a stronger U.S. dollar, mixed performance across sectors, and spikes in oil prices that could fuel inflation. Risk management is of the upmost importance during uncertain periods and investors should reassess their theses, reduce exposure when necessary, and consider holding cash until clearer trends emerge. We also talk broader economic risks including rising credit balances, potential policy mistakes by central banks, and structural concerns in areas like private credit and financial sector exposure.

We discuss...

The ongoing war has created uncertainty and a wide range of opinions about its political and economic implications.
The S&P 500 has only modestly declined so far, suggesting markets have not fully priced in the potential risks.
Traditional market expectations have been challenged, such as the U.S. dollar strengthening instead of weakening.
Oil prices have spiked due to geopolitical tensions, raising concerns about inflation and broader economic impacts.
Energy has been the strongest-performing sector while many other sectors have struggled.
Risk management should come before return-seeking when uncertainty is high.
Investors should not hesitate to move to cash when market conditions become unclear.
Crowded trades in war-related assets like energy, defense, and gold could reverse if sentiment shifts.
The potential for consumer stress is highlighted, including rising credit card balances and higher costs from energy prices.
Rising mortgage rates are a factor that could freeze housing activity during the spring selling season.
Geopolitical risk is increasingly being priced into markets after years of relative stability.
The current environment may represent a shift away from the low-rate, liquidity-driven market regime of the past decade.
Policy mistakes by governments or central banks could become a bigger risk than the war itself.
There are potential risks in the private credit sector, particularly due to limited regulation and transparency.
Private credit has replaced some traditional bank lending since the 2008 financial crisis.
Redemption freezes in private credit funds could signal stress in the system.
Patience, discipline, and careful portfolio management are essential during periods of geopolitical and economic uncertainty.

Today's Panelists:

Kirk Chisholm | Innovative Wealth
Douglas Heagren | Mergent College Advisors

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For more information, visit the full show notes at https://moneytreepodcast.com/the-next-black-swan-799

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Money Tree Investing podcast. Stock market, wealth, personal finance, value stocks, invest in your life.
0:11.3	Hello, Smart Money Tree podcast listeners. Welcome to this week's show. My name's Kirk
0:14.8	Chisholm. I'll be your host and today I'm joining with Doug Hagerin. Hey, Doug. How you doing? Kirk? Hey,
0:19.5	no battles today. There's enough battles going on in the
0:22.0	world. You and I, we've got to get along. So let's keep the civil, okay? We always do, Doug. We always do. It's just crazy. The world's crazy right now, Kirk. So obviously, that means there's a lot of fun things. have been, you know what, for a long time, everything was just kind of tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick,
0:40.1	status quo. We already started to... obviously that means there's a lot of fun things have been you know what for a long time everything
0:37.6	was just kind of tick tick tick tick tick tick status quo we already started talking about rotation
0:42.7	we already started talking about things changing they already started to do that you know we're living
0:47.4	a new world right you know the president obviously was never going to war has gone to war now this
0:52.1	does not sound like it's settling out lots of things talk about and the impact of all that. I've had this conversation with a lot of people the last two weeks, obviously, with the war going on without getting to the politics of it all. I do find everybody's opinions on it, fascinating. It is all over the map. Like what people think about this, what they think is going to happen,
1:15.2	you know, why, whether it's good or bad. Like, I've heard so many different opinions. I find that fascinating. Because what used to happen is you used to have one opinion or two opinions.
1:20.4	You'd have the Democrat opinion, the Republican opinion. But you're not getting that anymore.
1:24.2	Now you're getting Democrat opinion, the public opinion. On the Republican side,
1:28.2	you're getting like 20 different views. On the Democrat side, the Democrats themselves have their view,
1:33.5	but the party's a mess. What is a Democrat Republican these days? Not to get a public. You don't even know.
1:37.8	You've now fractured so much. Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, like, the Republican Party
1:42.4	is led by Democrats. Trump's former Democrat. You have
1:47.2	RFK as a Democrat. Tulsi Gabbard's a Democrat. You've got virtually everybody there as a Democrat.
1:52.8	The party system's a mess. You can't take your old framework to apply it to the way things
1:57.7	operate now because it's just not the same because Trump is the anti-war president. He's going to war and we still don't even know why. And you say something really funny because it reminds me of years ago from the Iranian president at the time. If you remember, Akhidinajad, which by the way, the one of the funniest things I ever heard is how do you remember it? I'm a dinner jacket. That was one of the funniest things I ever heard. If you can't say his name, just say,
2:20.5	I'm a dinner jacket. It was a comedian. But he talked about at the time, the Iranian government
2:25.9	was way more democratic than the U.S. because, you know, we had Republicans and Democrats,
	...

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