Welcome to the Dividing Cafe, weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio

and dividends in your understanding of economic life.

Well, hello and welcome to this week's Dividend Cafe. I am your host, David Bonson. I'm the

chief investment officer here at the Bonson Group, and I have been excited

for a few weeks to do a special Dividendon Cafe dedicated to the subject to private markets,

where there is an awful lot of conversation right now. There is various either hand-wringing

of people panicking about the next big shoe to drop.

And then on the other side, there are people that are just absolutely euphoric about never-before-seen

opportunity. And it is my position that we are in need of a discussion about the reality of the lay of the land in

private credit and private equity. And if you are right now listening saying, okay, I can

tune out because I don't own investments in private credit. I don't own investments in private

equity. I'm not going to. So this doesn't affect me. I just want to say that isn't

actually true that my major intent today is beyond just those that might either be invested in

or want to be invested in private markets. But my intention is to explore the potential systemic ramifications of where things

stand in private markets.

In other words, how it may impact those who don't actually specifically own it.

There are plenty of investments in the world that you could say this can go badly and the

person who owns it will suffer

blame or excuse me suffer consequences. There are other things that you can say this could go badly

and people with direct ownership exposure might suffer but also others may suffer if it leads to a

contagion effect that spreads and does damage throughout other elements of financial

markets and the broader economy. I want to explore that today as it pertains to private markets.

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