系统重启：美国私募股权的定量视角

QUANT RESEARCH System Reboot A quantitative perspective on US PE Introduction PitchBook Data, Inc. Research The first four months of 2026 were defined by liquidity. Outsized returns should come fromdecreased liquidity, and semi-liquid vehicles have become popular recently as they attempt tooffer a best-of-both-worlds solution for a mass-market investor. But matching liquid assets withredemption demand is a monumental challenge. Taylor Criswell, CFASenior Quantitative Research Analysttaylor.criswell@pitchbook.com There is another form of liquidity on the minds of investors: the hundreds of millions of barrelsof liquid assets sitting in the Persian Gulf. Andrew Akers, CFALead Quantitative Research Analystandrew.akers@pitchbook.com This puts buyout managers in a tough position. Fighting the macro environment during anenergy spike is a fool’s errand, but the fruits of the early-2020s deal environment should be ripefor the picking. Making strategic moves to harvest gains would be ideal, though the economicdisruption from large language models (LLMs) may leave some investments to rot on the vine.If software becomes less viable for investment, where does a material portion of PE capital getdeployed? This same disruption affecting the buyout universe is also surfacing in the semi-liquid market.Billions of dollars have poured into these vehicles in the past half-decade. But as the marketrevalues certain assets, there has been a rush to the exits. Fund managers have managed toquell fears so far, but there is tension in the air. In a difficult environment, it is tough to break free from the herd. Is an annual allocation to eachvintage’s megafund the same as last generation’s “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”? Howmuch should allocators be thinking about upside performance from a newly launched fund?How much should they aim to avoid underperformance? And just how much capital can aninvestor expect to put to work in the buyout world without drowning in GP pitches? In this edition of Quantitative Perspectives, we explore the big trends in the world of privateequity and what it all means for investors, allocators, and observers. The PE buyout world isfinally poised to shrug off the postinflation doldrums: Both deal and exit activity ended 2025with strong momentum. Yet disruption is poised to create another difficult environment for in-ground assets. We are already seeing the deal environment compress from the pressure. Contact Key takeaways •The shock to crude oil prices threatens to derail recent momentum in buyoutexits. The exit environment has recovered from the challenges of the post-pandemic, high-interest-rate world (pages 22and23). •LLMs have demonstrated practical capabilities far beyond those of cleverchatbots. The foundational shift in how code is created and deployedthreatens investors that have bet big on software over the past decade(pages 13and14). •If the energy spike threatens the buyout universe, the historical response tooil shocks may provide some insight into how to navigate the rest of the year(pages 26,27, and28). •Despite an uneasy macro environment and jitters in private credit, bonds andleveraged loans remain resilient. Spreads in the leveraged loan universe haveseen only a slight uptick in 2026, and ratings quality appears stable (pages 6and7). •High-profile defaults in private credit have investors questioning the truevalue of loans in semi-liquid funds and public BDCs. These funds have addedbillions of dollars to their balance sheets in the past five years, but thebalance between deployment and redemption is fundamental to the structureand performance of these vehicles (pages 5,8, and9). •Our default predictor reinforces this view: Leveraged loan defaults areunlikely to rise over the next six months. We use recent rating actions andmarket pricing to assess the future of credit risk (page 13). •Every discount-club shopper knows that buying in bulk can result intremendous savings, but only when such volume is needed. As ever-largermegafunds dominate private equity, how much value is there in the one-stopshopping of marquee managers (pages 33,34, and35)? •Megafunds are becoming the norm in the buyout landscape, and the scale oftheir fundraising is staggering compared with that of small managers (page32). •The revaluation of software firms may spell trouble for in-ground assets butmay also create opportunities that could make some public-to-private dealsattractive in the next 18 months (pages 17and18). •The environment for new buyout deals has only just started softening–though the good times may not last as trends revert below short-term means(page 19). Fixed income, floating NAV The cracks in illiquid and semi-liquid credit are driving a sustained divergence between market prices and book values for loans at businessdevelopment companies (BDCs). These market jitters are not reflected across the broader fixed-income spectrum. Index performance for US investment-grad