Blackstone, the LBO boutique founded by legendary Lehman partners Pete Peterson and Stephen Schwarzman, was the flagship IPO of the credit bubble era in 2007. My RMs at Morgan Stanley Dubai told me that some of the biggest sovereign wealth fund investors in the Gulf/China were bidding for the deal. I declined, as I saw macro storm clouds that would seal the fate of Wall Street in 2008. While I was not invited to the dinner MS/Blackstone’s chairman hosted for the leading CIOs in the Emirates, I also did not suffer the pain of seeing the IPO tank from 32 to 5 in the depths of the global recession.

Mark Twain was not a credit-cycle geek like moi, but I totally agree with him that while history does not repeat, it surely rhymes. Blackstone rose 5x from 30 to 152 in the five years that preceded the Powell Fed’s belated pivot to tight money in November 2021. When Wall Street grasped the macro significance of Powell’s inflation mia culpa, the shares of the world’s largest alternative investment manager with $845bn AUM was a no-brainer short since spike in bond yields would hit its vast real estate, private equity and shadow banking empires in unison. Blackstone (BX) has plunged from 152 last November to 89 now.