Capital still not deployed. Exits still delayed. Liquidity still borrowed, not earned.

October 1, 2025: Back in June I posted about the “stuck cycle” in private markets. Capital raised. Capital not deployed. Exits delayed. Liquidity borrowed, not earned.
It’s October now. I pulled the new data. The story hasn’t changed.

Dry powder as a share of invested capital is still at a 25-year low (Bain).
The call-to-distribution gap is the widest since 2008 (MSCI).
NAV loans and continuation funds make up nearly half of secondaries (Preqin).
VC fundraising just hit a 10-year low (PitchBook).

Four months later, nothing’s shifted. That’s not resilience. It’s paralysis.


What it Means

This is systemic. It’s not a “bad quarter” — it’s the machine running in place.

LPs are effectively net-negative cash: more going out than coming back.
GPs are keeping the optics alive with paper marks and borrowed liquidity.
Exit windows are frozen, so real cashflow (DPI) has collapsed.

The consequence? The supposed “illiquidity premium” has flipped. LPs are taking illiquidity risk + leverage risk + opacity risk, with no premium.


What’s Causing It

Rates broke the model. The easy-money era let leverage mask weak underwriting. Now debt costs crush deal math.
Valuations won’t reset. Sellers defend yesterday’s marks, buyers want tomorrow’s discounts. So assets just sit.
Deployment pressure. GPs can’t sit on commitments. They must call capital — even if the odds are bad — or they look weak.
Liquidity games. NAV loans, continuation funds, recycled structures. It’s not cash, it’s accounting.


The Meta-Truth

Private equity isn’t “booming.” It’s stuck.
Every quarter we rerun the same story. Different numbers, same conclusion.

If four months later the cycle is unchanged, maybe that’s the headline:

This isn’t temporary friction. It’s structural gridlock.