The capture of Venezuelan President Maduro has been digested well by global markets, which is in keeping with 2025’s theme of massive volatility and solid index-level returns.
LPL Research reviews 2025 market predictions: key wins, misses, and lessons across equities, fixed income, and the U.S. economy.
Despite recent results, healthcare has been one of the most compelling sectors over the past decade, consistently outpacing earnings growth in both the U.S. and across developed markets.
Here we consider an area that is less explored: the ability to implement systematic strategies like trend following within an overlay program. We see a natural opportunity for integrating overlay and trend strategies, given that both have similar architecture as predominantly rules-based derivatives strategies.
Geopolitical risks remain elevated as the markets continue to digest the impact of trade tariffs. What does this mean for private markets? Franklin Templeton Institute shares its outlook.
Our playbook for 2026 aims to address real risks by expanding allocations in new directions.
Income ETFs can help retirees and their advisors navigate complicated economic times as they strive to meet their goals.
The construction of data centers has come to define the US economic narrative of 2024 and 2025. This unprecedented buildout reflects the urgent need to adapt national infrastructure to the rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI).
Canada’s strong showing was part of a broader global rotation away from U.S. mega-cap technology stocks and into international “value” markets.
As careers advance and income increases, spending often follows suit. This is lifestyle creep: the gradual increase in expenses as your financial life expands.
Silver was the best-performing commodity last year, up an astounding 145%, but precious metals as a whole delivered solid returns. Gold, silver, platinum and palladium all responded positively to a number of factors, from rising geopolitical tensions to changes to global trade to the accelerating energy transition.
This week’s release of the FOMC meeting minutes showed relatively strong diverging views on current monetary policy as well as on the path for policy this year.
For many high-net-worth investors in Pittsburgh, an Opportunity Zone conversation starts the same way: a large capital gain shows up on a return, perhaps from a business sale, a commercial real estate exit, or a concentrated stock position, and the question becomes how to manage the tax hit without making a rushed investment decision.
Last year, we thought economic growth would slow. Verdict: GDP data say we were wrong, employment data say we were right. Last year we thought the stock market would decline. Verdict: it did in March and April, sharply, but the S&P 500 ended the year with an impressive 16.4% gain. Overall, we’d say our negativity was unwarranted.
From an investment perspective, the financial ramifications operate on two levels — direct and indirect effects. The most direct effect is visible in the distressed debt market. Bonds issued by PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-run oil company, remain in technical default but had already begun a sharp rally in mid-December. Investors, anticipating an increased likelihood of regime change, have now seen that thesis validated.
The market enters 2026 on a fundamentally solid footing, even if the year-end trading days were choppier than the traditional year-end rallies we often see. Economic momentum exiting 2025 was strong.
The outlook for Chinese equities in 2026 is bright. Its ability to stand up to US trade demands reflects the narrowing technological gap between the two economies. We anticipate a less confrontational approach towards trade in 2026 as both sides seek to focus on growing their economies.
The defining feature of every bubble is the same: a growing inconsistency between the long-term returns that investors expect in their heads - based on extrapolation of the past, and the long-term returns that properly relate prices to likely future cash flows - based on valuations. Every bubble smuggles the same tragic past into the same tragic future by packaging it with new wrinkles that convince investors that this time is different. Ultimately, they still end the same way.
In 2025, the prices of precious metals rose sharply, with silver prices recently surging past $80 per ounce. Of course, when precious metals rise, there is always the same group of commentators (mostly paid newsletter writers and physical metal dealers) to declare that a financial analysis is underway.
As the private-credit market matures, it’s also becoming more accessible to a wider range of investors. But variation in outcomes has increased. In our view, that’s a byproduct of growing scale and competition.
With 2025 in the books, we take a brief pause to reflect on QuantStreet over the last few years. We started managing our first portfolio in December of 2021. What started out as just an idea has grown into a business serving many clients, both retail and institutional. 2025 was a year of growth for QuantStreet, and we hope to continue to build on this in 2026.
Now, as we turn the page to 2026, new challenges await: geopolitical tensions, lofty valuations, and an evolving macro backdrop. That’s why we’re excited to unveil our Ten Themes for 2026, inspired by Mission: Impossible, celebrating the 30th anniversary of its first movie this year.
Nuclear power tends to be attractive for its reliability, longevity, and emission free-power generation. Despite these benefits, nuclear energy represents a relatively small portion of worldwide power generation. In 2024, nuclear accounted for 9% of the global electricity mix.
Our 2026 outlook shows fixed income continuing to benefit from elevated rates, while equities still face a narrowing edge over risk-free investments.
In late December, I attended the Direxion Investments opening bell ceremony at the New York Stock Exchange. In October 2025, Direxion launched a new family of ETFs into their ever-growing roster of leveraged and inverse funds: the Titans ETFs.
Having visited scores of companies around the world, conducted interviews with our team, and especially with Matt Ridley, we want to highlight what we think are the best of the best. These are our choices. But remember, ROS is a community. You will disagree with at least a few of my picks.
Investors and advisors have numerous goals to meet with their portfolios. Some investors full send their portfolios to produce as much capital appreciation as possible. Others, especially those at or near retirement age, look for current income and ballast to steady their financial ships.
Artificial-intelligence-related investment is one of the trends likely to sustain the rise of emerging market equities in 2026, as policy support also contributes to a favorable backdrop.
As we step into 2026, the financial landscape is shifting rapidly—new legislation, evolving markets, changing interest rates, and changing family needs may all shape the choices you make today.
With silver and gold both surging significantly higher over the past couple of weeks, a correction was inevitable. When an asset price quickly rises, at some point, it will ultimately become oversold. Investors book profits, and the price corrects.
The Federal Reserve delivered a widely anticipated rate cut in December, signaling caution about growth risks while maintaining a “wait and see” stance.
U.S. equities were little changed on Friday in a quiet, low volume session following the Christmas holiday, with a lack of major catalysts keeping trading subdued. All three major indexes finished modestly lower on the day, snapping a short rally, but still closed the week with solid gains.
RiverFront’s Investment Team is proud to present the summary of our 2026 Outlook, which will be released this Friday, December 19th. In 2025, the tech-heavy US stock market rode a wave of AI awareness and spending.
The U.S. economy appears poised for a measured and confident expansion into 2026 driven by a stabilizing monetary policy, corporate strength, and resilient household income growth. Our outlook suggests a supportive environment for risk assets, particularly domestic equities, while favoring specialized strategies in fixed income.
Thematic ETF assets climbed 49.6% through the first 11 months of 2025, reaching $467.93 billion by the end of November, according to research from ETFGI.
Franklin Templeton Institute believes tax-free municipal bonds continue to be well positioned in the current market environment.
When it comes to interpreting the economy we put a premium on sobriety. One good piece of economic data doesn’t mean a boom, nor does one bad report mean a bust.
We examine what’s driving gold’s ascent — from central bank reserves to portfolio hedging — and why it can play a strategic role for investors.
Micron Technologies (MU) rose 10% the week of December 15th, after the company markedly beat Q1 FY26 revenue and earnings expectations. The company is a key player in memory and storage products for many technology sectors, including AI data centers.
Silver surged above $80 an ounce on Friday, capping a meteoric rally that drove the metal’s price up 176 percent over the year. What is driving silver higher at such an unprecedented rate?
As we pass the halfway mark of the 2020s, comparisons now abound between our current decade and the roaring 1920s. F. Scott Fitzgerald best captured the opulence of the Flapper Era in The Great Gatsby, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.”
There is a rising market risk in 2026 that is largely overlooked as we wrap up this year. Optimism about 2026 is running high. Currently, investors are pricing in strong economic growth, robust earnings, and a smooth path of disinflation. Notably, Wall Street estimates suggest a significant acceleration in corporate profits...
The sovereign debt of developed market (DM) countries for decades was largely presumed to float free of governance and societal risk factors endemic to the sovereign issues of emerging markets (EM) countries. Global Bond Portfolio Manager Bill Campbell says this luxury is no longer the case.
Plenty of headlines were written as the One Big Beautiful Big Bill Act (OBBBA) made its way through U.S. Congressional debates earlier this year. For the advisor community, many were likely wondering how the OBBBA would affect their portfolio strategies. To be more specific, which investing themes could be boosted by this U.S. policy maneuver?
Global power demand is surging, energy security is the new macro imperative and innovation across grids and generation is redefining what “secure power” means for investors.
There are numerous hedging tools, each with its own benefits and drawbacks. One increasingly popular choice is the inverse exchange-traded fund (ETF), a vehicle designed to move opposite its benchmark and offer a straightforward way to target downside protection in a portfolio.
The “active” in active ETFs simply means there is not an underlying index. This somewhat obvious statement, made last February in my predictions column, was intended to dispel the misconception that active somehow means more risk or more tracking error, which certainly is not the case.
South Korea has been the top performer in 2025 in emerging markets equities through December 15, generating a 70.9% return in U.S. dollar terms. It has outperformed peers as well as developed markets, including the U.S.
Participants’ financial well-being is our top priority, and we know that they’re struggling with emergency savings, so we’re offering a way for participants to save with confidence—the Vanguard Cash Plus Account.
As we get ready to close out 2025, one stand-out trend in the U.S. Treasury (UST) market has been the steepening of the yield curve. The question now is whether this trend will continue into 2026, and if it does, how should investors position their bond portfolios?
