HALO Strategies Extend Year-to-Date Lead to $2.2 Billion as Total Fundraising Reaches $134.4 Billion
Shrewsbury, New Jersey, October 23, 2026 – Robert A. Stanger & Company, Inc., a nationally recognized leader in non-listed alternative investment products, has published its September 2026 issue of The Stanger Market Pulse. The report highlights hard asset strategies outraising credit by $5.3 billion in the third quarter while extending their year-to-date lead through September.
Alternative investment fundraising totaled $134.4 billion through September 2026, down 14% from $156.4 billion in the same period of 2025. Credit strategies raised $42.5 billion year-to-date, down 48% year-over-year, while non-credit fundraising increased 24% to $91.9 billion.
HALO strategies – hard assets with low obsolescence, consisting of real estate and infrastructure – raised $44.7 billion through September, a 39% year-over-year increase. These strategies now lead credit by $2.2 billion year-to-date, widening the narrow lead first reported in August. Infrastructure fundraising rose 67% year-over-year to $22.8 billion, while real estate increased 18% to $21.9 billion. Hard assets have now outraised credit in six consecutive months.
Year-to-date 2026 gross fundraising by investment strategy, compared with the same period in 2025, is summarized in the table below:
The divergence was particularly pronounced in the third quarter. HALO strategies raised $16.3 billion, up 54% from Q3 2025, while credit fundraising fell 61% to $11.1 billion. The resulting $5.3 billion gap marked the second consecutive quarterly lead for hard assets and a reversal from Q3 2025, when credit raised roughly 2.7 times as much as real estate and infrastructure combined.
“The overall decline in fundraising doesn’t tell the full story,” said Kevin T. Gannon, Chairman & CEO of Stanger. “Credit is weighing heavily on the totals, but outside of credit, capital formation is growing at a healthy pace. The market isn’t slowing down across the board – it’s slowing in credit, while real estate and infrastructure keep gaining ground.”
BDCs remain the largest contributor to the credit pullback. Combined publicly registered and private placement BDC fundraising totaled $18.8 billion through September, down 62% from $49.1 billion in the same period of 2025. Publicly registered non-listed BDCs raised $8.6 billion year-to-date, down 76%, while private placement BDCs raised $10.2 billion, down 27%.
Private placement vehicles raised $69.5 billion through September, up 10% year-over-year, while public programs raised $64.9 billion, down 30%. Private placements accounted for 52% of year-to-date fundraising, up from 40% a year earlier. In Q3, private placements accounted for more than 55% of fundraising, their second consecutive quarter ahead of public programs.
One notable September development was the first closing of Cliffwater’s Cascade Real Assets Fund, a new real estate-focused interval fund that became effective in August. The fund raised $895 million in September, expanding Cliffwater’s interval fund platform into hard assets alongside its existing credit and private equity strategies.
Year-to-date gross fundraising by product category through September 2026, compared with prior full-year totals, is summarized in the table below:
As published in the September 2026 issue of The Stanger Market Pulse, the Top Twenty Sponsors by year-to-date gross fundraising are summarized in the table below:
To request a copy of The Stanger Market Pulse, or for more information on all available Stanger Publications, please visit our website or contact:
Gregory R. DiSalvo
732.389.3600
gdisalvo@rastanger.com
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About Robert A. Stanger & Co., Inc.
Robert A. Stanger & Co., Inc., founded in 1978, is a nationally recognized investment banking firm specializing in providing investment banking, financial advisory, fairness opinion and asset and securities valuation services to partnerships, real estate investment trusts and real estate advisory and management companies in support of strategic planning, capital formation and financings, mergers, acquisitions, reorganizations, and consolidations.
Stanger is also well known for its industry leading publications: The Stanger Report, a nationally recognized comprehensive report focused on non-traded REIT and BDC investing, including aggregate market statistics, total returns by company and total return indices, fee structure comparisons, and profiles of current offerings; The Stanger Market Pulse, a monthly deep-dive into alternative investment fundraising; The Stanger Chairman’s Report, focused on NAV REIT and non-traded BDC sales and redemptions; The Stanger Closed-End Fund Report, focused on non-traded interval fund and tender offer fund investing; Stanger Privates, a quarterly publication focused on Private Placement REITs and BDCs exclusively available to Stanger Institutional Access subscribers; and The Stanger Alt Street Journal, a weekly newsletter providing an update on industry activities.
For More Information:
Kevin T. Gannon | Chairman & CEO | (732) 389-3600
Robert A. Stanger & Co., Inc.
1129 Broad Street, Suite 201
Shrewsbury, NJ 07702
www.rastanger.com
Member: SIPC
