NEW YORK, May 21, 2026, 18:05 (EDT)
Blue Owl Capital Inc. shares rose nearly 5% on Thursday, outpacing a slightly firmer Wall Street session as investors picked through a bruised alternative-asset stock still under pressure from private-credit worries. Blue Owl last traded at $10.20, up 48.5 cents, after touching $10.23 during the session; volume was about 32 million shares.
The move matters because Blue Owl, an alternative asset manager — a firm that runs funds outside plain-vanilla stocks and bonds — has become a live test of how public investors price private credit, or loans made by non-bank funds. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Blue Owl’s stock had fallen about 50% on investor concern over its private-credit exposure to software companies, even as co-founder Doug Ostrover’s sale of his remaining Washington Commanders stake was not linked to share-backed personal loans or stock selloffs.
The broader market helped a little, but not much. Wall Street’s three main indexes ended slightly higher, with the Dow up 0.55%, the S&P 500 up 0.17% and the Nasdaq up 0.09%, after a choppy day tied to oil prices, Iran-related headlines and corporate earnings.
Private-market peers were mixed, making Blue Owl’s move stand out. Ares Management rose about 1.5%, Blackstone gained roughly 1.5%, while Apollo Global Management fell about 1.0%.
Blue Owl’s own latest numbers gave bulls something to point to. The company said on April 30 that assets under management, or client money it oversees, reached $315 billion at March 31, and declared a quarterly dividend of 23 cents a Class A share payable May 27. Co-CEOs Doug Ostrover and Marc Lipschultz said the quarter showed “stability” from a durable capital base and growth from fundraising and deployment. Blue Owl Capital
Still, the stock has not been trading only on the income statement. Reuters reported after the first-quarter results that retail private-credit funds had faced historic outflows, with concerns centered on lending standards and software exposure. CFO Alan Kirshenbaum said Blue Owl was “working down” its software-sector exposure and had seen “no material negative developments” across portfolios, while TD Cowen analysts said the results suggested contagion risk beyond elevated direct-lending redemptions was not spilling into other asset classes. Reuters
There is the but. If redemption requests stay high, or if software borrowers come under more strain, Blue Owl may have to keep spending management time and fund liquidity on withdrawals rather than new lending. That could slow fee growth, especially in wealth products where individual investors have proved less patient than institutions.
Analyst screens still show a divided but not broken setup. Benzinga listed Blue Owl with a “Buy” consensus rating, a $17.30 consensus price target, and TD Cowen as the latest rating action, with a $14 target reported on May 18. Those screens also showed the shares at $10.17 after hours, down slightly from the close. Benzinga
Management has been trying to widen the story beyond direct lending. On May 12, Blue Owl named Deva Mishra head of its insurance-solutions platform, an effort aimed at insurers and long-duration capital. “The opportunity now is to further scale the insurance solutions platform,” Mishra said in the company release. Blue Owl Capital
For now, Thursday’s gain buys Blue Owl some breathing room, not a clean reset. The next question is whether investors treat the stock as oversold after a sharp drawdown, or keep marking it down until the private-credit redemption story cools.
