Market
Memos from Howard Marks: Cockroaches in the Coal Mine
Digitalization: Today, AI is poised to become the most impactful general-purpose technology in history. It could transform industries—and life as we know it—through faster drug discovery, better healthcare diagnoses, autonomous vehicles, natural disaster predictions, home robotics care and more. Long term, AI has the potential to significantly reduce the marginal costs of producing essential resources, and lead to what many are calling the next industrial revolution.
Yet none of these breakthroughs will be possible without the build-out of capital-intensive physical infrastructure to support the adoption of AI. AI innovation is driving the need for massive infrastructure investment. This includes AI factories, power and transmission, “compute” (computational power) infrastructure and strategic adjacencies and capital partnerships—adding up to an investment opportunity of over $7 trillion over the next decade (Figure 4).
Figure 4: A $7 Trillion Opportunity6
Decarbonization: Key clean-energy technologies continue to enjoy strong fundamentals, with favorable economics and rising technology maturity driving adoption in diverse geographies across the globe.
Renewable power provides a low-cost and quickly scalable source of power relative to other technologies.
Recent legislation in the U.S. may have rolled back some of the tax incentives to accelerate the build-out of renewable power. However, diverse clean and renewable energy sources, including technologies like hydro, nuclear and batteries, continue to play a critical role. Energy demand continues to outpace supply, creating a need for renewable power investment.
The power supply-demand imbalance is expected to further accelerate from the onshoring of manufacturing and the build-out of AI infrastructure projects. Renewable energy sources are among the best-positioned technologies to meet these evolving needs due to their lower cost, faster speed to market and provision of reliable and secure energy. As demand continues to grow for the foreseeable future, the grid is likely to become increasingly reliant on alternative energy sources to provide greater security.
While renewable energy has emerged as the critical component to meet the enormous increase in demand, the world’s cheapest sources of new bulk power—solar and wind—come with a significant limitation: They’re intermittent. To address this challenge, batteries—specifically large-scale lithium-ion storage batteries—are charging ahead to play a vital role in the “any and all” approach to providing uninterrupted access to power.
With global energy storage capacity nearly doubling in 2024 (Figure 5), batteries have become an essential infrastructure asset class, as much for their ability to increase renewable power penetration and help stabilize overburdened electricity grids as for the long-term revenue generated by the services they provide.
Figure 5: Global Energy Storage Capacity Additions
Decarbonization: Key clean-energy technologies continue to enjoy strong fundamentals, with favorable economics and rising technology maturity driving adoption in diverse geographies across the globe.
Renewable power provides a low-cost and quickly scalable source of power relative to other technologies.
Recent legislation in the U.S. may have rolled back some of the tax incentives to accelerate the build-out of renewable power. However, diverse clean and renewable energy sources, including technologies like hydro, nuclear and batteries, continue to play a critical role. Energy demand continues to outpace supply, creating a need for renewable power investment.
The power supply-demand imbalance is expected to further accelerate from the onshoring of manufacturing and the build-out of AI infrastructure projects. Renewable energy sources are among the best-positioned technologies to meet these evolving needs due to their lower cost, faster speed to market and provision of reliable and secure energy. As demand continues to grow for the foreseeable future, the grid is likely to become increasingly reliant on alternative energy sources to provide greater security.
While renewable energy has emerged as the critical component to meet the enormous increase in demand, the world’s cheapest sources of new bulk power—solar and wind—come with a significant limitation: They’re intermittent. To address this challenge, batteries—specifically large-scale lithium-ion storage batteries—are charging ahead to play a vital role in the “any and all” approach to providing uninterrupted access to power.
With global energy storage capacity nearly doubling in 2024 (Figure 5), batteries have become an essential infrastructure asset class, as much for their ability to increase renewable power penetration and help stabilize overburdened electricity grids as for the long-term revenue generated by the services they provide.
Figure 6: World Bank Global Supply Chain Stress Index
As a result, global trade patterns are evolving, driving the need for increased infrastructure investment at major coastal ports that serve as key gateway regions. Inland markets, with limited exposure to global trade but strong manufacturing bases, are well-positioned to benefit from a shift toward domestic production, but these bases will need continued investment to modernize and meet the growing demand.
A long-term investment horizon spanning multiple years, if not decades, is likely to be required for each of the megatrends, and visibility into new deployment opportunities continues to improve as this infrastructure supercycle progresses unabated. With a long history in both digital and energy infrastructure positions, Brookfield is well positioned to build out the physical backbone of AI. Our comprehensive experience spans decades of building railways, power grids and communication networks, which enabled the breakthroughs of past industrial revolutions.
Expertise in developing and operating critical infrastructure is essential to managing the risks involved. Experienced operators with an in-depth market understanding and access to key operational assets are better situated for success in this complex, highly specialized asset class.
Read more in our Alts Quarterly Q4 2025.
ENDNOTES
6 For informational purposes only. Not an offer or solicitation. Estimates are based on internal research and assumptions; actual outcomes may differ. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
A WORD ABOUT RISK
As an asset class, private credit comprises a large variety of different debt instruments. While each has its own risk and return profile, private credit assets generally have increased risk of default, due o their typical opportunistic focus on companies with limited funding options, in comparison with their public equivalents. Because private credit usually involves lending to below-investment-grade credit assets is increased in return for taking on increased risk.
Investments in real estate-related instruments may be affected by economic, legal or environmental factors that affect property values, rents or occupancies of real estate.
Infrastructure companies may be subject to a variety of factors that may adversely affect their business, including high interest costs, high leverage, regulation costs, economic slowdown, surplus capacity, increased competition, lack of fuel availability and energy conservation policies.
Alternative investments often are speculative and include a high degree of risk. Investors could lose all or a substantial amount of their investment. High-yield bonds are subject to interest-rate risk. When interest rates rise, bond prices fall; generally, the longer a bond’s maturity, the more sensitive it is to this risk. Yields are subject to change with economic conditions. Yield is only one factor that should be considered when making an investment decision.
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KEY TERMS AND INDEX DEFINITIONS
Bloomberg Global Aggregate Index is a market-capitalization-weighted index comprising globally traded investment-grade bonds. The index includes government securities, mortgage-backed securities, asset-backed securities and corporate securities to simulate the universe of bonds in the market. The maturities of the bonds in the index are more than one year.
Bloomberg U.S. Corporate High Yield Bond Index measures the USD-denominated, high-yield, fixed-rate corporate bond market. Securities are classified as high yield if the middle rating of Moody’s, Fitch and S&P is Ba1/BB+/BB+ or below.
Cliffwater Direct Lending Index (CDLI) seeks to measure the unlevered, gross-of-fee performance of U.S. middle-market corporate loans, as represented by the asset-weighted performance of the underlying assets of business development companies (BDCs), including both exchange-traded and unlisted BDCs, subject to certain eligibility requirements.
FTSE EPRA Nareit Developed Real Estate Index is an unmanaged market-capitalization- weighted total-return index that consists of publicly traded equity REITs and listed property companies from developed markets.
FTSE Global Core Infrastructure 50/50 Index gives participants an industry-defined interpretation of infrastructure and adjusts the exposure to certain infrastructure subsectors.
The constituent weights are adjusted as part of the semi-annual review according to three broad industry sectors: 50% Utilities; 30% Transportation, including capping of 7.5% for railroads/railways; and a 20% mix of other sectors including pipelines, satellites and telecommunication towers. Company weights within each group are adjusted in proportion to their investable market capitalization.
Green Street Commercial Property Price Index (CPPI) is a time series index published by Green Street, which tracks the value of U.S. commercial real estate properties. The index is based on transaction prices and appraisals of institutional-quality properties across major sectors, including office, industrial, retail and multifamily. It is widely used as a benchmark for changes in commercial property values over time.
ICE BofA Single-B U.S. High Yield Index tracks the performance of USD-denominated below-investment-grade corporate debt publicly issued in the U.S. domestic market, including all securities with a given investment-grade rating of B.
ICE BofA U.S. Convertibles Index tracks the performance of convertible bonds in the U.S.
ICE BofA U.S. High Yield Constrained Index measures the performance of USD-denominated, non-investment-grade, fixed-rate, taxable corporate bonds.
J.P. Morgan CLO Post-Crisis BB Index is a subset of the J.P. Morgan CLO index that only tracks the BB-rated CLO.
J.P. Morgan Emerging Markets High Yield Bond Index tracks liquid, U.S.-dollar emerging market fixed- and floating-rate debt instruments issued by corporate, sovereign and quasi-sovereign entities.
MSCI World Index is a free-float-adjusted market-capitalization-weighted index that is designed to measure the equity market performance of developed markets.
Nasdaq Index is a market-cap-weighted index tracking companies traded on the Nasdaq stock market.
Preqin Infrastructure Index captures in an index the return earned by investors on average in their private infrastructure portfolios, based on the actual amount of money invested in private capital partnerships. Each data point is individually calculated from the pool of closed-end funds for which comprehensive performance data is held, as of both the start and end of the quarter.
Preqin Private Equity Index captures in an index the return earned by investors on average in their private equity portfolios, based on the actual amount of money invested in private capital partnerships. Each data point is individually calculated from the pool of closed-end funds for which comprehensive performance data is held, as of both the start and end of the quarter.
Preqin Real Estate Index captures in an index the return earned by investors on average in their private real estate portfolios, based on the actual amount of money invested in private capital partnerships. Each data point is individually calculated from the pool of closed-end funds for which comprehensive performance data is held, as of both the start and end of the quarter.
S&P 500 Index is a market-cap-weighted equity index of 500 widely held, large-capitalization U.S. companies.
S&P UBS Leveraged Loan Index measures the market-value-weighted performance of the investable universe of USD-denominated leveraged loans.
Secured Overnight Funding Rate (SOFR) is a broad measure of the cost of borrowing cash overnight collateralized by U.S. Treasury securities. Published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, SOFR is based on actual transactions in the U.S. Treasury repurchase (repo) market and is considered a reliable benchmark for short-term interest rates. SOFR has replaced LIBOR as the preferred reference rate for many financial contracts.
World Bank Global Supply Chain Stress Index (GSCSI) is an indicator developed by the World Bank to measure disruptions and stress in global supply chains. The index aggregates data on container shipping volumes, costs and delays, providing a quantitative assessment of supply chain bottlenecks and their impact on global trade. It is used to monitor trends and shocks affecting international logistics and manufacturing.
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