This week in charts
2025’s top keyword searches by month
Median age a U.S. company goes public by year
S&P 500 Index valuation metrics – today vs. history
% of constituents outperforming the S&P 500 Index
A.I. vs oil companies – 5-year return above cost of capital vs. capital expenditure as % of cash flow
Pension allocations - public (active) vs. public (passive) vs. private equity
2025 performance by sector
2025 performance by sector and region
Data sources – 2024 vs. 2025
Uses for machine learning/A.I. – 2024 vs. 2025
Uses for generative A.I. – 2024 vs. 2025
Private equity firms sell assets to themselves at a record rate
Private equity firms sold companies to themselves at a record rate this year, making use of a controversial tactic to hold on to assets as managers struggled to find buyers or list their investments.
Roughly a fifth of all PE sales this year involved groups raising money from new investors to acquire businesses from their older funds, up from 12-13 per cent the previous year, said Sunaina Sinha Haldea, global head of private capital advisory at Raymond James. Such transactions sell assets already owned by a PE group to so-called continuation vehicles — newer funds also managed by the firm. The tactic enables PE firms to return cash to investors in older funds, but has prompted concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
“This year is set to break all records,” added Sinha Haldea, predicting that the final figures for 2025 would show $107bn in such sales, up from $70bn last year. Skip Fahrholz, who oversees such transactions in Europe at investment bank Jefferies, concurred that the global total for the year for sales involving continuation vehicles would be close to $100bn.
The use of the structure has boomed in recent years as buyout firms have struggled to secure the valuations they want from external buyers or public markets, choosing instead to hold on to investments in hope of fetching more in the future.
In a deal valuing the company at €15bn, European private equity house PAI Partners sold part of its stake in Froneri, an ice cream group that includes brands such as Häagen-Dazs in the US, to a continuation vehicle for the second time.
Vista Equity Partners, New Mountain Capital and Inflexion also used multibillion-dollar continuation funds to sell down some of their largest investments.
Sinha Haldea said such transactions had become “a popular and effective win-win-win liquidity solution in a stressed exit environment, where exit values are still recovering from 2024 lows”. The structure is attractive to buyout firms because such deals generate extra management fees and potentially lucrative future performance fees from companies in ageing funds.
This week’s fun find
Why We’ve Been Chasing 10,000 Steps for Decades—and What Japanese Walking Gets Right Instead
I used to think of walking as a consolation prize—the thing you did when you couldn’t run. I couldn’t imagine going from an 8:10 pace to genuinely enjoying what felt like a 24-minute mile—the kind of slow movement where my Apple Watch buzzes to ask me if I’ve stopped moving.
Fast forward to May of this year, and a new walking trend has captured our attention: Japanese walking. In a viral video, fitness coach Eugene Teo explains this method of interval-style walking, which involves alternating between walking fast for three minutes and walking slow for three minutes, for five sets in half an hour. The goal? Metabolic efficiency.
Before I ever mapped out my walking loop, I thought 10,000 steps was a rule. Not a suggestion. It lived everywhere: embedded in my fitness tracker, baked into my phone’s health app, echoed in friends’ attempts to “close their rings.” It felt like the adult version of eating your vegetables. You just did it.
But here’s what no one tells you. Ten thousand steps didn’t come from science. It came from a pedometer ad.
In mid-1960s Japan, amid a national fitness push ahead of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics, exercise physiologist Yoshiro Hatano estimated that doubling the average person’s daily steps—from about 4,000 to 10,000—“would result in an increased energy expenditure of about 300 kcal/day.” There were no clinical trials. No test subjects. Just back-of-the-envelope energy math.
In the 2015 book Health Trackers: How Technology Is Helping Us Monitor and Improve Our Health, technology journalist Richard MacManus describes how Japanese companies, such as Coca-Cola Japan and the green tea brand Ito En, distributed pedometers as part of large-scale marketing campaigns. These giveaways weren’t just promotions; they reinforced 10,000 steps per day as a public health guideline, embedding it into daily routines and branding it as common sense. What began as a marketing device was quietly becoming a cultural standard.
That foundation set the stage for one of Silicon Valley’s most iconic inventions—the FitBit. When Fitbit launched in 2009, it put 10,000 steps as the default daily goal—not because medical science required it, but because decades of repetition had already made it feel official. Fitbit’s own Help Center confirms: “The default daily step goal is 10,000 steps.”
The Benefits of Japanese Walking, According to Science
In 2007, exercise physiologist Dr. Hiroshi Nose and his team at Shinshu University in Japan developed Interval Walking Training (IWT), a deceptively simple yet highly effective protocol specifically designed for aging populations. Walk fast, then slow, three minutes each, five times per walking session, at least four days each week. No wearables. No tracking apps required.
In a five-month randomized controlled trial involving 246 older adults, IWT outperformed moderate-intensity continuous walking and sedentary control groups. Participants in the IWT group experienced a ten percent increase in peak aerobic capacity (VO₂ max), as well as a 13- and 17-percent increase in quadriceps and hamstring strength, respectively. A reduction in systolic blood pressure was another benefit.
Broader reviews associate IWT with significant gains in fitness, muscle strength, and glycemic stability in individuals with type 2 diabetes.
Of course, IWT isn’t a magic bullet. The Shinshu University training method focused on a fairly specific group—healthy, older Japanese adults—which makes it harder to say how the protocol translates across more diverse populations.
But here’s the encouraging part, per the Shinsu study: even when participants didn’t hit every target, they still saw meaningful gains in blood pressure, aerobic capacity, and strength. In other words, you don’t have to be perfect for IWT to work—you just have to show up often enough.
In a culture that equates health with hustle, that quiet efficiency is the most radical act of all.
