Where we heard itCNBC’s Morning Call, Oct. 7, 2026. Speaker: CNBC’s Morgan Brennan, on Blue Owl co-CEO Doug Ostrover’s interview with the Financial Times.
Over the five years through the October 7, 2026 close, Blue Owl CapitalOWL lost 24.4% including dividends. Over the same stretch, Apollo Global ManagementAPO gained 100.2%, Ares ManagementARES rose 76.0% and KKRKKR climbed 47.5%. On share price alone, Blue Owl fell 40.0%. Three of the four alternative asset managers are up over that period. Blue Owl is down, and the gap between it and Apollo is the widest in the group.
The recent selloff is being explained as a rate repricing hitting the whole sector, and a five-year view shows these four stocks have followed very different paths.
Every Stock in the Group Fell, and Blue Owl Fell Hardest
Over the past month, through the October 7 close and including dividends, Blue Owl is down 22.5%, KKR is down 16.8%, Ares is down 16.5% and Apollo is down 13.6%. Those one-month figures closely match what a CNBC segment reported this week.
Year to date, also including dividends, Blue Owl is down 35.1%, KKR is down 29.3%, Ares is down 25.9% and Apollo is down 19.2%.
CNBC reported each firm’s decline from its recent high: Blue Owl down 47%, KKR down 37%, Ares down 35% and Apollo down 25%.
Down from the highest close of the past year, as of Oct. 7
Wednesday’s session went the other way for Blue Owl. It closed at $9.11, up 0.4% on the day. Apollo slipped 0.3%, KKR fell 1.1% and Ares dropped 1.7%. For one session at least, the selling in Blue Owl paused.
How Higher Rates Reach Alternative Asset Managers
Higher rates make financing more expensive, which makes deals harder to complete and pressures the value of assets these firms own and manage. This applies to all four firms but does less to explain why one has trailed the others for half a decade.
Blue Owl Names a Gap in Its Own Business
The Financial Times reported on October 6, 2026, that Blue Owl plans a “big push” into insurance, with co-chief executive Doug Ostrover telling the paper the firm is not managing enough capital. Yahoo Finance ran it as “Blue Owl Plans Expansion Into Insurance Capital, Co-CEO Tells FT.” Traders Union framed it as private credit groups chasing “long-term assets.”
Finimize described Blue Owl as seeking more insurance money “Without Buying Insurers.” The effort is to bring in insurance capital to manage. Insurers hold long-dated obligations and need long-dated assets to match them, which is why asset managers compete for that money.
On the same day, the Financial Times published a related piece on private equity’s future after the boom and bust.
Considering Strategy Against Five Years of Underperformance
A co-chief executive said the firm is not managing enough capital while Blue Owl’s shares trail their peers over one month, year to date and five years. No source links the insurance strategy to the share price. Readers seeking to study the business directly can start with Blue Owl’s most recent quarterly results filing with the SEC.
What Investors Still Can’t See
Whether insurance capital will change Blue Owl’s path remains an open question in the coverage. On the record, the firm has identified a gap in its own funding base and proposed a way to fill it. The market has yet to show whether it believes the plan will work. Until it does, Blue Owl’s five-year, year-to-date and one-month figures all show the same thing, a stock lagging Apollo, Ares and KKR.
Blue Owl has trailed Apollo, Ares and KKR over one month, this year and five years, and CNBC called it the group’s biggest laggard. Its answer is a push for long-term insurance money to manage, without buying an insurer. The risk is that higher rates keep pressure on deals and asset values across the group while that plan takes time to show up in results.