Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving and why.
Apollo Global has launched an eleven billion dollar European private credit platform, backed by Abu Dhabi sovereign capital. The move signals continued institutional appetite for alternatives as traditional lending tightens, and it cements Apollo's push to dominate the private markets space on both sides of the Atlantic.
Shifting to equities, European indexes opened mostly lower this morning as healthcare stocks led the retreat. Investors appear to be cooling off after last week's broad rally, with the pullback looking less like a trend reversal and more like a natural exhale following a stretch of outsized gains across the continent.
And in crypto markets, US spot Bitcoin ETFs closed October with five hundred fifteen million dollars in net outflows, while Ether funds saw a record one point six one billion dollars exit the category for the month. A hack at Binance rattled sentiment late in the period, and with seventy one percent of flagged Bitcoin Lightning nodes still running unpatched software from a year-old vulnerability, confidence in the infrastructure underpinning these assets remains a genuine concern for institutional holders.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
