Private & Real Assets
Private Credit & Hard-Money Lending
Private credit is lending to borrowers who never issue a public bond — mid-sized private companies, developers, small businesses. The income is interest, and it arrives the same way a bond coupon does. What differs is the plumbing: the loans are not rated, not listed, not priced daily, and usually cannot be sold before they mature.
Data as of Aug 21, 2026.
The tiles above are not one measurement repeated. Where a median BDC figure appears it is a forward distribution yield computed from our own rows — the last regular distribution annualised over the current price — while the credit figures are ICE BofA index effective yields and option-adjusted spreads, and the mortgage figure is the Freddie Mac primary market survey rate. Every published series here is read from FRED, and the date above is the newest observation among them; the BDC median moves instead with our daily quote pipeline. Numbers built on different bases should be read one at a time, not lined up against each other.
Every private-credit product on this page is the same mechanism as a savings account: somebody borrows your money and pays you interest for it. The difference is who the borrower is, whether anybody else will buy the loan off you, and what happens if they stop paying.
Two ways to reach it
One is a stock you can sell this afternoon. The other is a loan you own until it matures.
Business development companies
A BDC is a listed vehicle that lends to mid-sized private companies. It trades like a stock, distributes almost all of its income, and is the only genuinely liquid way into direct lending.
Open the screen → PrivateHard-money & private mortgages
One note, one lien, one property. The deal anatomy, the documents that create it, the diligence file behind it, and why the number on the note is not a yield.
Open the reference →Where the money comes from
A private loan pays interest because a borrower agreed to pay it. That is the whole mechanism — the same one behind certificates of deposit, corporate bonds and promissory notes. What changes as you move from a bank deposit toward a private loan is not the mechanism but the three things wrapped around it: who is on the hook, whether anyone else will buy the claim from you, and what recourse exists when the payment does not arrive.
The public end of that spectrum is visible and priced every second. The private end is negotiated one deal at a time and carried at par until something forces a write-down. Both print a percentage; they are not the same kind of number.
What sits under the label
- Business development companies — listed portfolios of loans to private US firms, covered below.
- Private credit funds — private placements and interval funds holding the same kind of loans, without a daily price or a daily exit.
- Direct business lending and peer-to-peer lending — loans to operating companies or individuals, sometimes fractionalised through a platform.
- Hard-money lending and seller-financed loans — private loans secured by real property.
- Mezzanine debt and preferred equity — claims that sit between senior debt and ownership, paid after the senior lender and before the owner.
- Receivables factoring, invoice financing, trade-finance funds and litigation-finance funds — lending against a specific cash flow rather than a company.
The public-market comparison
Before reading any private quote, this is what liquid, daily-priced credit pays today.
Use the rows below as a measuring stick. They are what a large, diversified, daily-priced pile of loans pays right now, so a private deal offering something similar is offering it without the daily price, the diversification or the exit. One thing to watch: the two spread lines are not yields. A spread is only the extra a lender is paid above a government bond, so it is a much smaller number than the yield rows above it and the two cannot be read down the same column.
Each row below is one published series: the label, the value, the date of that series' own latest observation, and the provider it came from. They are not points on a single scale. The index lines are effective yields — what a whole index of corporate bonds yields to maturity — the spread lines are option-adjusted spreads over Treasuries, which is the extra a lender is paid rather than the total, and the mortgage line is a weekly survey of quoted rates. The caveat that matters most: each row carries its own observation date, so two rows can be a week apart even though they sit in the same list.
Index yields are ICE BofA effective yields; the two spread series are option-adjusted spreads over Treasuries, shown here in percent. The 30-year mortgage rate is the Freddie Mac primary market survey — the rate a conventional borrower is quoted, and the number a private mortgage borrower is implicitly measured against. All redistributed via FRED: the corporate and high-yield series are ICE BofA index data, the mortgage series is the Freddie Mac survey.
Series identifiers, in the order shown: BAMLC0A0CMEY, BAMLH0A0HYM2EY, BAMLC0A0CM, BAMLH0A0HYM2, MORTGAGE30US.
Listed business development companies
A research screen, not a recommendation. The distribution yield shown is a forward figure — the last regular distribution annualised over the current price — and it says nothing on its own about whether that distribution holds.
How to read a row: the company lends money, the distribution yield is what one year of the current payment would be as a percentage of today's share price, and the annual figure is the same payment in dollars per share. What would mislead: the biggest yield in the column is not the best row. A BDC has to pay out almost everything it earns, so a large distribution describes the structure rather than the outcome, and the yield rises on its own whenever the share price falls.
| Ticker | Company | Price | Distribution yield (forward)The last distribution, annualised, over today's price. | Annual rate (forward)What one share is on track to pay over a year, at that rate. | Pays | Income scoreOur own research screen, and the order this table is in. Not a rating. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GAIN | Gladstone Investment Corp. | $16.49 | 5.82% | $0.96 | Monthly | 75.20 |
| MAIN | Main Street Capital Corporation | $58.54 | 5.43% | $3.18 | Monthly | 67.00 |
| CSWC | Capital Southwest Corporation | $25.21 | 9.21% | $2.32 | Monthly | 58.30 |
| GLAD | Gladstone Capital Corporation | $19.84 | 9.07% | $1.80 | Monthly | 57.00 |
| ARCC | Ares Capital Corporation | $19.93 | 9.63% | $1.92 | Quarterly | 55.30 |
| HTGC | Hercules Capital, Inc. | $17.59 | 10.69% | $1.88 | Quarterly | 53.00 |
| SLRC | SLR Investment Corp. | $12.60 | 9.84% | $1.24 | Quarterly | 51.10 |
| BBDC | Barings BDC, Inc. | $9.45 | 11.01% | $1.04 | Quarterly | 50.90 |
| OCSL | Oaktree Specialty Lending Corporation | $13.15 | 10.34% | $1.36 | Quarterly | 50.90 |
| GBDC | Golub Capital BDC, Inc. | $13.11 | 10.07% | $1.32 | Quarterly | 50.50 |
| TSLX | Sixth Street Specialty Lending, Inc. | $18.98 | 9.96% | $1.89 | — | 48.40 |
| MFIC | MidCap Financial Investment Corporation | $9.68 | 12.82% | $1.24 | Quarterly | 46.20 |
Prices as of Aug 25, 2026.
A short list of the business development companies we track, ordered by our own income score and then by yield, highest first. The ticker links to that company's page; price comes from the daily quote pipeline; the distribution yield and annual rate are forward figures — the last regular distribution multiplied by the number of payments a year, divided by today's price — and not the cash actually paid over the last twelve months; “Pays” is the payment frequency and the income score is our own research screen, not a rating. The caveat to carry away: a forward yield assumes the next distribution matches the last one, which is precisely the assumption a deteriorating loan book breaks.
What a BDC actually is
A business development company is a listed vehicle that lends to mid-sized private companies. It is a closed-end investment company regulated under the Investment Company Act of 1940, and it exists because Congress wanted a route for ordinary capital to reach smaller US businesses. Most of what it holds is senior secured, floating-rate loans to firms that file nothing publicly.
Its distribution is therefore mostly interest income passed through, which is why it is taxed as ordinary income rather than at qualified-dividend rates for most holders. And because a BDC that elects regulated investment company treatment has to distribute the large majority of its taxable income, the payout is a feature of the structure rather than a signal about the portfolio.
The failure modes are leverage and non-accruals. A BDC may carry roughly a dollar of debt per dollar of equity, so a modest fall in loan values is a larger fall in net asset value; and when portfolio loans stop paying they are placed on non-accrual, income falls, and the distribution loses its cover. The full BDC page works through both.
Where private credit is researched and accessed
Business development companies file 10-Ks and quarterly schedules of investments here, which is where loan-level marks, non-accruals and PIK income appear.
The schedule of investments is the loan-by-loan detail no summary page carries
Visit SEC EDGAR ↗An investment adviser that publishes the Cliffwater Direct Lending Index and runs interval funds holding directly originated corporate loans.
Index methodology and quarterly index reports are public
Visit Cliffwater ↗An alternative-investment platform offering private credit, legal finance and real estate deals, most restricted to accredited investors.
Most offerings have no secondary market and lock capital until the deal repays
Visit Yieldstreet ↗A marketplace for private credit transactions, mostly short-duration asset-backed deals, open to accredited investors.
Accredited-investor verification is required before any deal is visible
Visit Percent ↗Listed on this page for research. A plain link is not a sponsorship, and nothing here is a recommendation to open an account or fund a loan.