Private Markets Sector

Mortgage rates hit a one-year high of 6.69% in July as existing home sales fell 1.7% from June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.06 million units. The benchmark 30-year fixed rate climbed for the fifth consecutive week, squeezing prospective buyers with steep borrowing costs tied to rising long-term bond yields. At the same time, the U.S. median sales price rose 2% from a year earlier to $434,100, marking thirty-seven consecutive months of annual price increases. Homeowners locked into ultra-low pandemic-era mortgages are refusing to sell, leaving inventory at 1.54 million unsold homes, well short of the pre-pandemic norm of roughly 2 million. This lock-in effect restricts supply to a 4.6-month supply at the current sales pace, squeezing buyers and keeping activity well below the historic normal pace of 5.2 million annual units.

Nvidia signed memorandums of understanding with Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, and KKR on Monday to establish financing platforms that will mobilize over $500 billion in third-party capital for AI infrastructure buildout. The deal treats Nvidia's computing power—the GPUs and data centers that form what the company calls "AI factories"—as a long-lived, revenue-generating infrastructure asset rather than a depreciating technology expense, similar to how power plants or toll roads are financed. Here's how the money flows: instead of a customer paying millions upfront to buy Nvidia chips, a financing platform backed by institutional investors buys the hardware and leases it to the customer, collecting rental income over years. The platforms will assess each project for demand, utilization, and cash flow before deploying capital. Nvidia may cover up to 25% of the risk if chips lose value, but the lenders conduct independent underwriting. Goldman Sachs, the only bank in the partnership, will serve as lead bookrunner on public debt deals; the vehicles are expected to issue tens of billions in debt at a time and may start coming to market within months. The shift matters because it unlocks a new funding source for the trillions of dollars expected to be needed for data centers, power infrastructure, and chips. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he approached only these six firms and none declined. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink framed the deals as offering "high credit quality" and attractive yields for investors "overinvested in equities." The compute is liquid and fungible—it can be reallocated to different customers—which reduces risk for debt investors. The move also addresses a real constraint: many AI companies and enterprises have demand for compute but lack access to financing at the scale and cost needed to build quickly. By making Nvidia's chips cheaper to access without cutting GPU prices, the partnership effectively lowers the barrier to entry for customers while locking in future demand. But it also creates a new vulnerability: future demand now depends on credit conditions and the ability of borrowers to service debt. The Bank of England has already flagged that if AI companies taking on debt fail to deliver sustainable profits or face disruptions, it could affect global financing conditions and tighten credit more broadly.

eToro agreed to acquire U.S. brokerage TradeZero for up to $231 million in cash and stock, betting that traditional equity trading can offset collapsing crypto revenue. The deal, expected to close in the first half of 2027, adds 81% gross margins and $80 million in annual revenue from commission-free stock and options trading—a business eToro does not yet operate in the United States. The move comes as eToro's crypto trading swung to a $7.2 million loss in Q2 2026 from a $37.7 million profit a year earlier, with crypto revenue down 30% to $1.35 billion. July crypto trades fell 73% year-over-year to 1.4 million, and the average trade size halved to $182. eToro beat earnings expectations with adjusted diluted EPS of $0.68 versus the $0.61 consensus, and overall net contribution rose 9% to $229 million, driven by equities and commodities. Yet the stock fell 11% on the earnings release, signaling investor skepticism about the company's pivot away from its crypto core. The TradeZero acquisition is eToro's third signed deal this year and the first concrete move into U.S. equities distribution, a market where the company has no foothold.