In Q1 2026, the non-traded BDC market hit $20.8B in redemption requests — most investors received roughly half of what they asked for. Moody's revised the U.S. BDC sector outlook to Negative. Investors who thought they owned liquid private credit found out their fund manager decided whether they could get out.

On Percent's marketplace that same quarter: new issuances, scheduled payments, and a 0.44% lifetime net loss rate on asset-based deals that's held since inception.†

The difference is structural. BDCs often own concentrated corporate loans with quarterly redemption windows that close at the manager's discretion. Percent finances specialty lenders against pools of performing receivables — diversified, overcollateralized, short duration.

Track record through 3/31/26:†

See what private credit built for individual investors looks like.

^{Alternative investments are speculative. No assurance can be given that investors will receive a return of their capital. Secondary market transactions are subject to availability and issuer approval; liquidity is not guaranteed. †Past performance is not indicative of future results. Terms apply.}

What you need to know

The U.S.-Iran confrontation has downshifted into a pressure-managed pause, not a settled de-escalation. Washington is giving Tehran days, not weeks, to accept a limited nuclear framework and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Trump described the situation on May 20 as "right on the borderline," with resumption of strikes explicitly on the table.

The diplomatic architecture is entirely indirect. Pakistan is the primary conduit, with Qatar, Turkey, and Oman operating as secondary channels. Iran is negotiating through these intermediaries while demanding sanctions relief, compensation for war damage, frozen asset releases, U.S. force withdrawal, and formal control over Hormuz.

U.S. naval posture tightens; maritime interdiction escalates

The most operationally significant move was the May 20 boarding of the Iranian-flagged M/T Celestial Sea in the Gulf of Oman. U.S. forces searched the vessel, released it, and ordered a course change on suspicion of blockade violation. This signals active enforcement of a cordon around Iranian-linked shipping, short of a full Hormuz closure.

The U.S. footprint in the region remains heavy and deliberate.

Hormuz is open but not functioning

Roughly 60-75 visible vessel transits occurred over the past week, far below pre-war norms. Iran is managing passage through IRGC vetting, designated routes, and government-to-government arrangements. Alleged safe-passage fees have been reported. Shipowners and insurers still classify the waterway as a critical-risk zone regardless of technical passage.

The backlog is severe. 1,550 vessels from 87 countries remain stranded in the Persian Gulf.

Energy shock has metastasized beyond oil

WTI is trading around $99 per barrel and Brent around $106, but the commodity disruption has moved well past crude. The economic damage is now running through LNG, helium, sulfur, fertilizer, jet fuel, diesel, condensate, LPG, naphtha, and petrochemicals simultaneously.

Qatar's LNG damage is the most structurally significant single event. Two LNG trains and a gas-to-liquids facility have been hit, removing significant export capacity and suppressing associated helium, sulfur, LPG, and condensate output. Because Qatar is a dominant global helium supplier, this creates a downstream bottleneck for semiconductors, fiber optics, MRI systems, and aerospace. The sulfur disruption feeds into fertilizer, mining, and chemical supply chains, raising the risk that an energy crisis transmits into food security for import-dependent states.

Aviation has moved from acute cancellations to a structural capacity problem. Gulf carriers are rebuilding schedules but operating with longer routings and fragile timetables. Many international operators continue to avoid Iranian, Iraqi, and Lebanese airspace, driving higher fuel burn and tighter aircraft utilization across European and Asian routes.

GCC under drone pressure; Iraq exposed as a corridor

The most alarming regional escalation was a drone strike on the Barakah nuclear plant in Abu Dhabi's Al Dhafra region. UAE authorities intercepted two of three drones; one struck an electricity generator outside the plant's inner perimeter. No casualties and no radiation release were reported, but the strike brought the conflict into direct proximity with civilian nuclear infrastructure for the first time.

The UAE attributed the drones to an Iran-aligned proxy launch from Iraqi territory. Saudi Arabia separately reported drones entering its airspace from the direction of Iraq. Iraq denied detecting the launches. The campaign's logic is low-volume harassment of strategic infrastructure, not mass barrages.

Watch the next 10 days

The most likely near-term outcome is a narrow interim document, not peace. A workable formula would bundle Iranian nuclear commitments, a Hormuz traffic mechanism, and a 30-day negotiating window covering nuclear restrictions, maritime access, and sanctions. That would freeze the most dangerous dynamics without resolving them.

Israel is the most significant constraint on that path. Netanyahu is reportedly opposed to any deal that leaves Iran's military and nuclear capacity insufficiently degraded. Washington is trying to hold Israel aligned while preventing a renewed strike cycle that would deepen the energy shock.

Birthplace of civilization

Israel's parliament has taken its first formal step toward early dissolution, triggering a process that would bring national elections forward from the scheduled October 27 deadline to as early as September. The catalyst is not the war, but a domestic coalition fracture that the war has made unmanageable.

The Knesset voted 110-0 on May 20 on a preliminary reading of a dissolution bill. Three additional readings are required before parliament is formally dissolved and an election date is confirmed.

Ultra-Orthodox exemptions crack the coalition

The immediate break came over military-service exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men, a long-standing arrangement that has become politically toxic since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks. Reservists and their families, who have borne the bulk of the military burden through more than 19 months of war, increasingly view blanket exemptions as inequitable. Israel's Supreme Court has already ruled against their continuation, forcing the government to produce new legislation.

Netanyahu depends on ultra-Orthodox parties to hold his majority, but accommodating them risks bleeding secular and national-religious voters he also cannot afford to lose. The exemption issue has become both a coalition liability and a legal deadline simultaneously.

Netanyahu's wartime record goes on trial

The coming election would be Israel's first since the Hamas attacks and will function, in part, as a direct judgment on Netanyahu's leadership through the Gaza war, the Lebanon campaign, and the broader confrontation with Iran.

Opposition primed, but fragmented

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and opposition leader Yair Lapid are the leading challengers expected to contest the ruling bloc. Israel's fractured party system, however, means that defeating Netanyahu at the ballot box would not automatically produce a stable replacement government. Translating votes into a governing coalition majority remains the central obstacle for any opposition alliance.

Procedural steps now determine the timeline

The dissolution bill must clear three further Knesset readings. If it passes, lawmakers set an election date, parliament dissolves, and Netanyahu continues as caretaker prime minister until a new government is sworn in. Post-election coalition negotiations could extend that caretaker period by weeks or months.

The coalition math is Netanyahu's core vulnerability

The ultra-Orthodox parties remain indispensable to any right-wing majority, but the political cost of satisfying them has risen sharply in a country shaped by war mobilization and sustained public anger over unequal service obligations. The same alliance architecture that has kept Netanyahu in office for years may now be the primary reason he cannot hold it together. Whether he can reassemble a viable Knesset majority, or whether the 2023 war has permanently redrawn the coalition calculus, is the central question the election will answer.

It’s the U.S. vs China, everyone needs to pick a side

Three separate developments across East Asia have converged in a single week, signaling a return of Indo-Pacific tensions across the Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, and Korean Peninsula simultaneously. Each development is distinct, but together they indicate that Beijing is managing pressure on multiple fronts while Washington's regional posture remains unsettled.

A Trump-Lai call would rewrite 46 years of protocol

Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te has confirmed he is willing to speak directly with President Trump, after Trump indicated he intended to make contact. No sitting U.S. president has spoken directly with a Taiwanese leader since Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, making any such call a structural break with decades of deliberate ambiguity.

Lai's stated message to Trump is pointed: China is actively undermining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. That framing positions the call not as a courtesy exchange but as a strategic communication, timed against Trump's recent engagement with Xi Jinping and ongoing Washington debates over arms support for Taipei.

Philippines pushes back inside its own waters

The Philippine Coast Guard challenged a China Coast Guard vessel operating approximately 48 nautical miles [89 kilometers] west of Pundaquit, Zambales, inside Manila's exclusive economic zone. The Philippines explicitly invoked the 2016 arbitral tribunal ruling that invalidated Beijing's sweeping South China Sea claims, a ruling China rejects and refuses to recognize.

The incident fits a well-established pattern of Chinese coast guard and maritime militia presence inside Philippine-claimed waters. Manila's consistent invocation of the arbitral ruling is a deliberate legal strategy, not diplomatic reflex, designed to build an evidentiary record of Chinese non-compliance.

Xi-Kim summit may come within days

Chinese President Xi Jinping may visit North Korea as early as next week, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, citing senior government officials. Chinese security and protocol officials have recently been reported in Pyongyang, a standard pre-visit footprint that suggests preparations are substantively underway for a late May or early June trip.

A visit would be Beijing's most significant diplomatic move toward Pyongyang since pandemic-era ties atrophied. The timing matters: North Korea has deepened its military cooperation with Russia over the past year, and China has an interest in reestablishing influence in Pyongyang before that alignment hardens further.

Watch how Washington divides its attention across all three

The compounding of these three developments inside a single week creates a sequencing problem for U.S. policy. A Trump-Lai call demands a response from Beijing. Chinese coast guard activity in Philippine waters tests the credibility of U.S. alliance commitments. A Xi-Kim summit would shift the diplomatic geometry on the Korean Peninsula.

The new Monroe Doctrine & the Trump Corollary 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio used a Spanish-language video address on May 20 to speak directly to the Cuban people, bypassing Havana entirely. The choice of Cuban Independence Day was deliberate: it framed Washington's offer as a liberationist alternative to communist rule, not a diplomatic overture to the Cuban state.

The address served two simultaneous functions. It packaged a $100 million humanitarian offer as a political ultimatum, and it previewed an escalating legal campaign against Cuba's ruling elite. Together, they signal that the Trump administration is shifting from passive sanctions pressure to active regime-change messaging.

Aid offer is structured to exclude the Cuban government

Rubio offered $100 million in food and medicine, but conditioned delivery entirely on distribution through the Catholic Church or other trusted charitable organizations, explicitly excluding the Cuban state. The design is intentional: it positions Washington as the provider of relief while denying Havana any ability to claim credit or control distribution.

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, attributed the island's electricity, food, and fuel shortages to leadership corruption and mismanagement rather than U.S. sanctions. That framing directly contests Havana's core narrative and is aimed at eroding the government's domestic legitimacy at a moment of severe economic strain.

Criminal charges against Raúl Castro signal a new legal front

The Trump administration is expected to announce criminal charges against former Cuban President Raúl Castro in connection with the 1996 shootdown of aircraft operated by Cuban exile pilots. The move would open a legal front against Cuba's most senior living former leader, adding a punitive dimension that goes beyond economic pressure.

Havana rejects the framing, but its position is weakening

The Cuban Embassy in Washington dismissed Rubio's remarks as lies and described U.S. policy as cruel aggression, restating Havana's longstanding position that the U.S. embargo is the primary driver of Cuban hardship. The response was predictable, but its defensive tone reflects a government under genuine domestic pressure.

Cuba's energy, food, and fuel crisis is severe enough that Washington's ability to offer credible humanitarian alternatives carries real political weight inside the island, regardless of whether Havana accepts the terms.

Washington is building a sustained regional pressure architecture

The Cuba moves fit a broader pattern of the Trump administration using sanctions, legal action, aid conditionality, and direct public communication to force alignment across the Western Hemisphere. Cuba joins Venezuela on a list of targets where Washington is applying simultaneous economic, legal, and informational pressure.

Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz has announced a cabinet reshuffle after weeks of sustained protests, roadblocks, and clashes driven by austerity measures, fuel shortages, and inflation. The domestic crisis escalated into a regional incident when Bolivia expelled Colombia's ambassador after President Gustavo Petro publicly described the unrest as a "popular insurrection" and offered to mediate. Paz accused Petro of ideological interference and of threatening Bolivian democracy.

The expulsion transforms a domestic governance crisis into a live test of regional norms around sovereignty and non-interference. It also draws a sharper ideological line between Paz's government and the Latin American left, with Petro positioning Colombia rhetorically alongside the street movement.

Supply shortages are driving acute humanitarian pressure in La Paz

Road closures from sustained protest activity have severely restricted supplies of fuel, food, and medicine into La Paz, pushing prices sharply higher. The supply squeeze has become severe enough to trigger public confrontations over basic goods.

The compression of daily life in the capital raises the political cost of inaction for Paz while simultaneously giving protest organizers concrete grievances beyond abstract austerity policy. A population fighting over food and fuel is harder to demobilize through a cabinet reshuffle alone.

Bolivia's strategic weight makes instability a wider concern

Bolivia is not simply a protest flashpoint. It is a significant lithium producer, a natural gas exporter, and historically a political bellwether for South America's left-right cycle. A fuel-subsidy crisis that destabilizes state authority carries direct implications for critical mineral supply chains and regional energy flows.

The U.S. has reportedly warned of a possible coup, a signal that Washington is monitoring the situation as a potential state-stability event rather than a routine protest cycle. That assessment, if accurate, suggests the crisis has moved beyond street politics into institutional risk territory.

Petro's intervention reshapes the Andean left's internal fault lines

Petro's decision to publicly label the protests a "popular insurrection" and offer mediation was not a diplomatic misstep. It was a deliberate ideological signal, placing Colombia's leftist government in open alignment with Bolivian street movements against a center-government managing an IMF-style adjustment. Bolivia's expulsion of the Colombian ambassador is the sharpest diplomatic rupture between two non-right-wing governments in the region in recent memory.

The exchange exposes a fracture within the post-pink-tide left between governments managing inherited fiscal crises and those in opposition or ideological solidarity with protest movements challenging those governments.

Watch whether the cabinet reshuffle buys Paz time or accelerates the crisis

The most likely near-term scenario is a partial stabilization attempt: a reshuffled cabinet offers some political signal, but does not address the structural drivers of fuel shortages or inflation. Whether that is enough to reduce roadblocks and reopen supply lines to La Paz is the immediate operational question.

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