There are 38% fewer companies listed on U.S. exchanges today than at the peak in the mid-1990s. The forces behind that decline—regulatory burden, the abundance of private capital, and the quiet disappearance of mid-sized public companies—are structural, not cyclical.
Growing demand for AI-savvy workers has led some companies, including software makers International Business Machines Corp., Shopify Inc. and Cloudflare Inc., to ramp up entry-level hiring, betting that recent Gen Z graduates will be able to do more with AI tools than existing employees.
US stocks rose into the first trading day of the month as attention turned to this week’s heavy slate of earnings reports.
The deeper promise may be in human-AI collaboration. AIs may prove most valuable not as autonomous traders but as a counterweight to our very human behavioral biases such as overconfidence, recency bias, and the tendency to bet too big on views that feel certain but aren’t.
In this article, I explain why baby boomers in target date funds (TDFs) should not feel lucky today or in the near future. There’s a 40% chance that the typical TDF will have at least one losing year during the next five years. These are bad odds, especially since retirement with dignity is at stake.
Learn what Trump Accounts for advisors mean for financial planning, including contribution rules, employer funding, 529comparisons, and ETFs.
Chris Galipeau discusses high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.
On Thursday, July 30, Amazon Inc.(AMZN) released its Q2 2026 earnings report. Given its crucial position as a Mag 7 mega-cap straddling both tech and e-commerce, Amazon’s earnings reports are usually closely watched by the broader investing community.
The AI bear case is worth taking seriously on price and financing. It is not worth taking seriously on demand. Anyone selling you the whole package as a single story, bull or bear, is selling you a mood, not an analysis. The revenue is real. The cash flow is the thing to watch. Price accordingly.
Mega-cap tech stocks have helped large caps dominate small-cap ETF flows and performance for years. However, this year a shift is taking place. In 2026, small-cap index ETFs are outperforming their large-cap peers as the market has broadened out.
Schwab Sector Views is our six- to 12-month outlook for stock sectors, which represent broad sectors of the economy. The Schwab Center for Financial Research (SCFR) combines a factor-based approach with a market and economic assessment to determine the ratings.
For anyone worried about the gargantuan costs of developing artificial-intelligence infrastructure, it was comforting to think that Big Tech firms could just turn off the spending taps if demand for chatbots and coding tools didn’t pan out. That’s starting to look like wishful thinking.
As concerns grow about the market’s biggest companies, investors are looking further down the market-cap scale. Mid-cap innovators are drawing more attention because they have more room to grow.
Following historic inflows, momentum in the covered call ETF market continues unabated. Yet first-generation buy-write products were often viewed somewhat narrowly as high-yield income vehicles built on sacrificing equity upside for immediate cash flow. While early strategies proved the massive appetite for yield, they also exposed key advisor pain points — from steep NAV erosion in bull markets to tax-inefficient distributions.
One of the most noteworthy data points during July was the June CPI report. While some moderation in price pressures was expected, the actual ‘cooling’ in inflation that was reported was greeted as a long sought after welcome development by the financial markets.
Energy markets have reached a precarious moment, with the path of prices over the remainder of the year – and potentially beyond – hinging on two key questions.
In part two of AB’s “Build a Better Path” Disruptor SeriesTM, we shifted from diagnosing the challenge of long-term investing to a potential approach for solving it. With practical, actionable steps, investors have the potential to translate the concept of improving up/down capture into strategies aimed at improving portfolio design.
Cash is king. Not for investors right now, but among the hyperscalers. The craving for capital is high as the AI arms race takes new twists and turns.
In this report, John P Kerschner, Global Head of Securitized Products, Daniel Siluk, Head of Global Short Duration and Liquidity, and Michael Contopoulos, Head of Multi-Asset Macro Investing, make the case for why it’s time for short-duration bonds.
GMO’s liquid alternatives are hedge fund strategies (e.g., equity long-short, global macro, event-driven) managed with an emphasis on risk control and liquidity. The GMO Alternative Allocation Strategy (“ALTA”) is a liquid alternative solution combining several underlying strategies; ALTA is available in a mutual fund with daily liquidity.
US stocks rose at the open on Thursday as Microsoft Corp. soared 16% after reporting the fastest cloud unit growth in four years. Top semiconductor companies, like Micron Technology Inc. and Nvidia Corp., gained as well.
Europe’s big banks have joined the global stock trading party. Danger lurks, however: When the market turns, it is often brutal.
If you’d rather get ahead of where income allocations are heading than read about them in next quarter’s flow report, this is the session.
Oil markets have entered a period of heightened volatility. Geopolitical tensions, shifting supply expectations, and uncertain demand forecasts continue to weigh on investor sentiment. This environment can make traditional energy investing challenging. However, it also increases interest income generation strategies like the Amplify Energy & Natural Resources Covered Call ETF (NDIV).
Once again, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decided to remain ‘on hold’, keeping the fed funds trading range at 3.50%–3.75%. Although there had been earlier conjecture in the money and bond markets the Fed may raise rates at the July gathering, that sentiment ultimately faded, and the final result was largely expected.
South Korea and Taiwan are grabbing the majority of financial news headlines when it comes to international exposure, but a peek inside Latin America reveals potential opportunities. Brazil, in particular, could be offering investors ample value in both equities and bonds beyond those aforementioned countries already benefiting from the artificial intelligence (AI) buildout.
Considering that the Federal Reserve has been meeting this week, it’s safe to say that inflation is likely front-and-center on the minds of many advisors and investors. After all, energy prices and supply chain constraints have kept inflationary pressures far more persistent than the Fed would like.
Join the experts at Harbor Capital and PanAgora for a product due diligence session exploring the Harbor PanAgora Dynamic Large Cap Core ETF (INFO).
Clients do not need us to predict whether the next 10% move is up or down. They need help staying invested in a way that matches their goals, their time horizon, and their actual tolerance for risk. Staying invested is easier when clients understand what each part of the portfolio is designed to do.
Investors overwhelmingly recognize the value of financial planning, but a substantial planning gap remains. The desire for guidance is there. Access remains the challenge.
In the current macroeconomic landscape marked by higher-for-longer interest rates, investors looking to optimize their short-term capital allocations may want to consider collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) as a higher-yielding potential alternative to traditional cash proxies like money market funds.
At the party, hosted on a hot day last July at HPS business development head John Christmas’ New Jersey beach house, bandana-clad colleagues across his teams mingled poolside with the wind at their backs. With the addition of HPS, one of the biggest names in private credit, it seemed BlackRock was set to break through in the market in a way that had eluded the asset manager for years.
Wall Street is racing to roll out complex investment products tied to SpaceX shares that aim to shield buyers from future losses amid a sharp selloff following its market debut.
The US dollar will weaken if the Federal Reserve leaves interest rates unchanged this week, according to TD Securities.
Leverage, ratings arbitrage, liquidity transformation, and a growing willingness to embrace complexity and illiquidity are becoming more visible across parts of the financial system.
The market encountered its stiffest test in months last week as rising oil prices, higher bond yields, and renewed scrutiny of AI capital spending combined to pressure many of the year’s biggest winners. Easing tensions over the weekend have buoyed stocks. If the Strait of Hormuz was opened, I believe the market would be 5% to 10% higher.
As the Q2 earnings season kicks into high gear, market sentiment around the AI trade is undergoing a critical sanity check. Alphabet’s second quarter results last week served as a barometer for how Wall Street is weighing artificial intelligence investments against current profitability.
Without the support of rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, it’s been a lethargic year in terms of performance by municipal bonds and the related ETFs, but that doesn’t mean advisors and fixed income investors should ignore this bond segment.
Gasoline prices jumped for a third straight week, reaching their highest level in almost two months.
Fifth district manufacturing activity was mostly flat in July, according to the most recent survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The composite manufacturing index inched up one point to 5, marking the fourth consecutive positive reading.
Home prices fell for a third straight month in May according to the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller index, as the housing slowdown continues. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the national index was essentially flat month-over-month and was up 1.1% year-over-year.
Discover Aberdeen’s closed-end funds (CEFs) for high yields, illiquid assets, long-term investments, and resilient income for 2026.
As equity compensation becomes a larger component of employee wealth, financial advisors are helping clients navigate the complexities of stock options, RSUs (restricted stock units), and ESPPs (employee stock purchase plans). Here, three financial advisors discuss how to balance the upside potential of equity awards with tax planning, concentration risk, diversification, and strategic exercise decisions.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI) rose more than expected in May, reaching a new record high.
Pimco has been one of the loudest voices warning of risks in private debt markets, and Ivascyn, 56, has cautioned on the trillions of dollars pouring into the infrastructure underpinning the artificial intelligence boom.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that tariff tensions between the United States and the rest of the world won’t be going away any time soon. Last Friday, the U.S. imposed a series of tariffs on 60 different trading partners, including China, Canada, and the European Union.
US state and local government debt hit its cheapest level since the spring, after inflation fears caused municipal bonds to see their worst week of returns since April 2025.
On July 28, Morgan Stanley launched two new spot crypto ETFs on NYSE Arca. The Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust (MSSE) and the Morgan Stanley Solana Trust (MSOL) provide spot price exposure to underlying ethereum (ETH) and solana (SOL), alongside additional distributions from staking yields.
Brent crude crossed above $100 a barrel this week, all due to a 20-mile-wide stretch of water some 6,500 miles away from the U.S. Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—the Persian Gulf bottleneck that carried roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil before the fighting started—has fallen to virtually zero.
