Alex Nicoll

Ares is the latest private credit player to limit withdrawals after investors ask to redeem their money

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Ares is the latest private credit fund limiting payouts to investors following a record spike in attempts to withdraw money.

Investors requested to redeem more than 11% of shares in Ares Strategic Income Fund this quarter, and the firm decided to cap payouts at 5%, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund’s net value is $10.7 billion as of February 28, with a total portfolio value of $22.7 billion.

Investors looked to withdraw more than $1.2 billion in the quarter, with the firm limiting withdrawals to about $524.5 million. It plans to allow 43% of the requested redemptions, with it pro-rated so that each requesting shareholder receives a portion of their request.

The fund actually grew in the first quarter, with $708 million in inflows leading to $184 million in net gain. According to an SEC filing, the fund actually saw the amount of money coming in from investors increase from January to February to March, even as jitters increased in the asset class.

Ares joins other major private credit firms, like Blackstone, Apollo, and Blue Owl, in seeing massive redemptions amid rising anxiety about the asset class. Concerns over the underlying quality of private credit loans, overexposure to embattled software companies, and concerns about liquidity in the industry’s popular semi-liquid retail strategies have led some investors to look for an exit.

According to a letter sent to shareholders, a majority of requests came from a “limited number of family offices and smaller institutions in select geographies,” making up less than 1% of the fund’s total shareholders.

The choice to limit withdrawals to 5% of outstanding shares was made “consistent with the Fund’s design,” according to the letter, which also touted Ares’s ability to deploy capital, and make money for investors in challenging times. The fund, the letter says, is “well-positioned.”

“We believe periods of market dislocation have historically created some of the most attractive opportunities in direct lending, in certain cases, such as during the COVID pandemic, driving nearly 300 basis points of incremental return,” the letter said.




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Used Tesla prices have soared since the end of the $7,500 tax credit, even as other EVs get cheaper

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  • Used Tesla prices are rising as the secondhand EV market booms following the end of the $7,500 tax credit.
  • That’s a relief for Tesla owners, who have seen resale prices plunge in the past few years.
  • The Model S and X saw the largest price hikes. Elon Musk said Tesla would discontinue them to build its Optimus robots.

The market for used Teslas is heating up.

A booming secondhand EV market is pushing used Tesla prices up even as other electric vehicles get cheaper.

The average price of a used Tesla has climbed 4.3% since the end of the $7,500 tax credit for new electric vehicles in September, according to data from used car seller iSeeCars.

The two used EVs with the largest rise in prices were Tesla’s luxury Model S and X vehicles. Musk announced in January that both models would be discontinued in the coming months to make room for the company’s Optimus robot.

The spike comes as other used EVs get cheaper. The average price of used non-Tesla EVs fell 3.6% between September and January, per iSeeCars data. The exception was the Porsche Taycan, which was the only non-Tesla model to see used prices rise.

With the auto industry in the grip of an EV winter as prices soar and automakers cancel new models after the end of the tax credit, electric vehicle buyers are turning to the used-car market.

Sales of used battery-powered vehicles surged 21% in January from the previous year, per data from Cox Automotive, even as sales of new EVs fell nearly 30%.

That’s good news for Tesla. The brand dominates the used EV market in the US, with used Teslas outselling Audis, the second-largest retailer, by more than 10,000 vehicles in January, per Cox figures.

It’s also a relief for Tesla owners, who have seen their resale values collapse in recent years.

Used Tesla prices have been in freefall since 2022 and hit new lows last year amid backlash over CEO Elon Musk gutting government spending through his role at DOGE, which he has since left.

Tesla fans disappointed that the company never made its long-promised $25,000 EV do have a consolation prize — a secondhand Model 3 now sells for an average price of $25,700.




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A woman in glasses wearing a blue dress standing in front of a bush.

I found dozens of recurring charges on my credit card. I had been wasting $1,600 a year on subscriptions I didn’t even use.

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My 17-year-old daughter told me that she’d been offered a special deal at the Verizon store: access to Apple Music for up to six people for $10 a month. She was desperate to take advantage of the promotion and said the streaming service had an amazing selection of songs.

I said no, not only because we have Spotify, but also because I’d had a rude awakening after New Year’s.

My husband and I were worried about how much we were charging to our credit cards, especially during the holiday period.

We decided to do a financial tune-up, and I was responsible for reviewing the Mastercard statement. We only used it as a secondary payment method if a merchant didn’t accept American Express.

I thought I’d been subject to fraud

As a result, I rarely looked at the bill. This time, however, I printed the statement covering November 11 to December 12, 2025, when we did most of our Christmas shopping.

There were a few transactions for items like coffee at a little café that doesn’t take Amex and some co-pays for doctors’ visits, but there were others I didn’t recognize.

What on earth was Uexton? I’d paid them $19.99 on November 11. Then there was Sportelx, to whom I’d paid $29.55 on November 21. I’d never heard of it.

I Googled to find that Uxeton was a gaming website and Sportelx was a sports news service.

I’d been a victim of fraud on several occasions, and assumed it had happened again.


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The author accidentally signed up for services she never used.

Lam Kraker/Business Insider



Then, I looked over the rest of the bill and saw payments of $29.99 to ESPN New York, $14.99 to Canva, and $11.95 to Audiobookstore.com. As far as I was concerned, neither my husband, kids, nor I had used any of them.

There was also a $25 fee to Rockin’ Jump, where my son went once a week before getting too old for a trampoline park. Why were we still paying for his membership?

I reviewed the last two months’ statements and realized the suspicious payments had occurred before, on the same day each month.

It wasn’t fraud. The recurring fees were subscriptions we’d signed up for before switching banks and credit cards. Some went back years. We had failed to cancel Rockin’ Jump. I didn’t know how the rest had come about.

Over the next few hours, I racked my brains trying to figure out where they came from. The only thing I could think of was that my spouse or I must have shared our credit card information at some point to get a trial subscription.

We’d wasted almost $1,600 annually

We must have forgotten to cancel at the end of the free or discounted period. The total of our unnecessary payments was $131.88 a month, the equivalent of a family cellphone plan.

Over the years, I calculated that we’d spent almost $1,600 annually on streaming and other services we didn’t touch. It was hard to blame the companies that use subscription models when I had been the one to drop the ball. I felt dumb and ashamed.

I sprang into action, canceling as many fees as I could. In most cases, I found it much more difficult to unsubscribe than to subscribe because of the hoops you have to jump through.

Still, the experience taught me a lesson. It’s no thank you to tempting — but ultimately useless — offers from now on.




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Bryan Metzger

Trump says his call for a 10% credit card cap sounds like Zohran Mamdani’s idea

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President Donald Trump knows he’s aligning himself with the progressive left when it comes to credit cards.

During an interview with CNBC’s Joe Kernen in Davos on Wednesday, Trump acknowledged that his call for a 10% cap on credit card interest rates isn’t a standard conservative policy.

In fact, he joked that it’s something that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, might have come up with.

“I know it’s sort of like… it sounds like the mayor of New York maybe came up with that,” Trump said with a laugh.

Following Mamdani’s election in November, the two met in the Oval Office and appeared to share some common ground in remarks to the press afterwards.

“I’m conservative, but I think I’m common sense, you know?” Trump said on Wednesday. “People say, ‘Are you a conservative?’ I say, ‘Yeah, but I’m a common-sense person.’ I mean, I do things that aren’t necessarily that conservative sometimes.”

Trump said he respected credit card companies but that consumers can’t afford to pay high rates.

“Whatever happened to usury? They can’t pay 28%,” Trump said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump called on Congress to pass a bill capping credit card interest rates at 10% for one year.

Key Republicans in Congress have been cool to that idea, with House Speaker Mike Johnson telling reporters last week that Trump “probably had not thought through” the potential downsides of the policy and that credit card companies may “just stop lending money” or “cap what people are able to borrow at a very low amount.”

Many business leaders have also been critical of the idea.

Yet Trump’s call has also been met with agreement from some progressives, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, whom Trump called last week.

In Congress, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri have introduced a bill that would do just what Trump said, capping credit card rates at 10% for a year.




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Trump calls for a one-year 10% cap on credit card interest in a Truth Social post

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  • President Donald Trump said that he was calling for a 10% cap on credit card interest for one year.
  • The President cannot unilaterally cap credit interest rates; it would require an act of Congress.
  • This week, Trump has also announced proposals to address the affordability of housing.

President Donald Trump has taken another shot at big business, this time targeting banks.

On Friday, Trump said on Truth Social that he would call for a 10% cap on credit card interest for one year.

“Please be informed that we will no longer let the American Public be ‘ripped off’ by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%, and even more, which festered unimpeded during the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration,” Trump wrote in his social media post.

“Effective January 20, 2026, I, as President of the United States, am calling for a one year cap on Credit Card Interest Rates of 10%,” he added. “Coincidentally, the January 20th date will coincide with the one year anniversary of the historic and very successful Trump Administration.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. The president cannot unilaterally impose such a cap; it would require an act of Congress to advance. Similar efforts that have been advanced in Congress have yet to become law.

The announcement, made on Truth Social, is the latest in a series of swipes at big business this week.

Earlier this week, he announced that he is instructing “representatives” to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds, aiming to lower interest rates and monthly payments. He also said he was barring “large institutional investors” from buying up single-family homes and signed an executive order that would limit defense contractors’ corporate spending.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.




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A $25B credit investor says betting only on AI chips misses the bigger cycle

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The artificial intelligence boom is real — but there’s more to the AI trade than chips alone, according to a credit investor.

“This is a super-duper micro cycle that will outlast many investing careers,” said Scott Goodwin, the cofounder and managing partner of Diameter Capital Partners, a quote he attributed to his partner Jonathan Lewinsohn.

AI represents what Diameter Capital sees as a long-running, disruptive cycle — but buying the most obvious winners isn’t the only way to play it, he said on the “Goldman Sachs Exchanges” podcast published on Friday.

Diameter Capital, which manages approximately $25 billion in assets, has focused on where AI demand could create less obvious bottlenecks — and where those bottlenecks show up in credit markets.

The AI opportunity beyond chips

That view led Diameter to buy the unsecured debt of a midsize telecommunications company in 2023.

Goodwin said the bet was rooted in the idea that as companies move from training AI models to actually using them, demand shifts away from chips alone and toward the networks that carry data.

“It had to leave the data center. How would it leave? It would leave on the commercial fiber, the pipes,” he said.

The telco went on to sign more than $10 billion in contracts with hyperscale cloud providers, and the debt has rebounded to face value, Goodwin said.

Diameter Capital also made “a big bet” on a satellite company tied to the wireless spectrum — a wager that later paid off after the company sold spectrum assets and the debt returned to face value.

Goodwin’s comments come amid growing debate over whether sky-high AI valuations are sustainable and whether investors are overlooking other opportunities tied to the technology.

Risks and rewards

Goodwin warned that parts of the AI-credit boom may be taking on risk that’s hard to price, especially in chip finance.

Some investors, he said, are taking on “residual risk,” or the riskiest slice of chip-financing deals — betting on what the hardware might be worth years from now. Cutting-edge firms refresh their technology often, so chips can quickly become outdated for some customers.

“We call up really smart people in Silicon Valley, we call up really smart people at Big Tech companies and ask them what the residual value is on these chips three, four, five, six, seven years forward,” he said. “None of them have a clue.”

Goodwin said the next phase isn’t just about spending on infrastructure — it’s about competitive disruption rather than capital expenditure.

“Who are the companies, who are the entities that are going to adopt AI and take a step forward versus their peers? And who are going to be the losers?” he asked.

“That is actually a longer cycle than the capex cycle, so that’s really interesting,” he said.




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