CREDIT

Your credit score is your financial reputation. Protect it like it is worth money. Because it is.

Your credit score isn't a grade on your character. It's a tool. Learn how to use it.

Every time someone buys something with Affirm instead of a credit card, we've saved them from the compound interest trap.

Credit cards were designed in the 1950s. We thought maybe financial technology should actually use some technology.

Credit cards are a 1950s product. Pay in 4 is what credit looks like when you design it for the internet generation.

Banks wouldn't give credit cards to startups because they had no revenue. We said: we'll underwrite on cash balance and funding instead. That one insight built the whole company.

When we started Apollo, everyone wanted to do buyouts. We saw that the real scale was in credit. Thirty years later, they are all trying to catch up.

Credit is the lifeblood of the economy. People obsess over equity returns while the credit markets quietly generate superior risk-adjusted income.

Credit investing is not glamorous. Nobody writes articles about a loan that paid back on time. But the returns are real and they compound beautifully.

Banks retreated from middle market lending after 2008. We walked right in. That gap has been the source of $400 billion in assets for us.

Credit investing taught me that the most important question in any deal is not how much you can make but how much you can lose.

Ares went from zero to $400 billion because we solved a real problem: who lends money to good companies that are too small for the bond market and too complex for banks?

The best risk management in credit is simple: only lend to companies that can pay you back. Everything else is window dressing.

We are leaving 40 years of free markets and entering an era of government-directed credit.

Credit investing generates more consistent returns with less downside than equity. That's why Apollo shifted.

Liquidity is overrated in good times and underrated in bad ones. That cycle is what keeps pricing inefficient in credit markets — and that inefficiency is our business.

Everyone sees the distress. Very few take the time to understand whether the distress is terminal or temporary. That gap is where we make money.

Bankruptcy is not death. It is a legal process. Most people confuse the two — and that confusion is the opportunity.

Credit is the most important market in the world and the least understood by the average investor.

Credit markets are the dark side of the moon. Equity investors look up and see a bright surface. The real action is on the other side.

Hundreds of millions of people in Nigeria and India need credit and can't get it. Their phone data can predict creditworthiness better than a FICO score ever could.

The equity market is the more emotional friend. The credit market is the more sober minded friend. When this friend gets nervous, that's when we get more nervous.

Credit goes through cycles. We just haven't seen a cycle in a long time.