Telis Demos

Card payments in the U.S. are no longer growing twice as fast as personal consumption: What that means for the business of plastic

Private investment giant Apollo Global Management has said before that a major limitation on reaching its goal of $1.5 trillion in assets might not be raising enough money, but finding enough things for it to buy. The company reported that its originations were a record $62 billion in the third quarter, and $194 billion over the 12 months through the third quarter. The firm called out the Atlas platform, an asset-backed finance business built in part with a group acquired from Credit Suisse, with $50 billion of originations cumulatively since its 2023 launch.

Financial stocks are surging following Donald Trump’s election victory. Rocket Cos. and UWM Holdings were down on Wednesday, by 4.5% and 2.4%, respectively. One major reason is what is happening in the bond market.

Donald Trump was elected at least in part because of voter unhappiness with living costs, and their hope he might do something about it. Among those high prices have been what it costs to borrow on a credit card. Trump during the campaign even floated the idea of a temporary 10% cap on credit-card interest rates, less than half of what the typical rate is today.

As Black Friday nears, the market’s attention will naturally start to turn to what’s expected for the holiday shopping season. Shopify in its quarterly release said that it expects its fourth-quarter revenue to grow from a mid-to-high-20s percentage rate over the prior year. Wall Street analysts’ consensus estimate for the quarter was at less than 24% growth, according to estimates compiled by Visible Alpha.

Donald Trump’s election has unleashed big hopes in the market for dealmaking, regulatory easing and private credit. Goldman is the top-performer among global banks in the S&P 500 so far in November, up nearly 15%. Like other Wall Street banks, Goldman would benefit from an uptick in merger-and-acquisition or initial-public-offering activity, as well as any regulatory rollback.

Credit-card delinquencies seem to have peaked, for now.

Among Berkshire Hathaway’s largest holdings is a financial information-services company. The sector’s results speak for themselves.

Cyber Monday spending via buy now, pay later hit a record in the U.S., which could further fuel investor hype for these digital payments.

It may be no surprise that people are eager to put off paying in full for their holiday shopping. Increasingly, there is an answer: private credit. Buy now, pay later provider Affirm last week announced a $4 billion commitment for lending from investment firm Sixth Street.