March 16, 2026 | Compounding Shocks Raise Bear Market Odds

An oil shock amid rising credit stress and negative job revisions, unexpectedly pushing up unemployment.  Every cycle is a little different, but similar developments have marked the onset of past recessions and bear markets. Oil price spikes reduce economic demand, partly because they tend to keep interest rates higher for longer. The segments below do a good job of examining the implications of recent trends.

Private credit has exploded in recent years, drawing in major institutions and alternative asset giants, and even featuring more heavily in retail portfolios. But as cracks emerge in parts of the private credit space, we take a look at how the benefits of non-bank lending could be turning into vulnerabilities. Apollo’s Marc Rowan points to the broad appeal of private lending to institutions, while former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and former Federal Reserve Board Governor Daniel Tarullo worry about the harm it could cause for retail investors. Here is a direct video link.

A simply brutal reminder from Canada about the real state of the global economy. The Canadians backed up the US payroll number for February, except in Canada it was the largest loss of jobs since 2022. As one big bank economist put it, this is a “simply brutal” result. While everyone has been talking, really hoping for reflation maybe recovery, the opposite keeps showing up instead. Especially where it comes to employment. Here is a direct video link.

Danielle Park March 16th, 2026

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