“July 4^th is the worst holiday,” one of our friends declared as our families sat watching the jaw-dropping fireworks display last Wednesday evening in Newport, RI. Huh?

“Think about it,” he explained. “Now the summer will zoom by. Kids back in school last week of August. Then Labor Day. A month later, Halloween. Before you know it, bingo – Thanksgiving, Christmas, the whole winter thing.” He sighed. ”See what I mean?”

It did seem like just yesterday we were changing our snow tires. But we aren’t ready to throw in the beach towel quite yet. At any rate not with the leveraged loan market demonstrating such uncharacteristically investor-friendly exuberance.

For the first six months of 2018, middle market sponsored loan volume weighed in at more than $40 billion, according to Thomson Reuters LPC. That’s better than 2017’s $37 billion and is on pace to beat last year’s total of $78 billion. It also mirrors the trend occurring in the broader loan market, as we covered last week.

Unlike at the liquid end of things, however, the supply/demand dynamics are a bit different for direct lenders.