One of this year’s hottest themes in the stock market has been the crowds of traders chasing the recipients of all the planned spending on new artificial-intelligence data centers.
Politicians all over the world are showing renewed enthusiasm for public ownership of private companies. The methods range from modest government stakes to outright nationalization, but the trend is apparent.
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 US economy grew 2.0% in 2025 and it looks like it is growing another 2.0% this year. Real GDP grew at a 2.1% annual rate in the first quarter and, as we set out below, it looks like it grew at a 2.0% rate in the second quarter.
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.
With the US-Iran conflict nearing the five-month mark, equity markets have mostly shrugged off the latest escalation. On one hand, that’s understandable – a healthy economy and record corporate profits continue to support the market’s fundamentals. But a note of caution is warranted.
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.
Chris Galipeau discusses high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.
On a recent episode of the Money Metals Podcast, host Mike Maharrey welcomed veteran market strategist Gregory T. Weldon, publisher of the Global Macro Strategy Report, for a wide-ranging discussion on precious metals, inflation, Federal Reserve policy, artificial intelligence, and global macroeconomic trends.
For many years, globalization felt like a one-way street. Supply chains stretched effortlessly across continents. Companies built “just-in-time” systems that assumed goods, data, and capital would flow smoothly around the world. Investors could buy a global index fund and feel reasonably confident that they were capturing the benefits of ever-closer integration.
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.
The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index® unexpectedly inched lower in July, falling 1.4 points to 90.8. The index was below the forecast of 92.4.
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.
In the coming years, more investors will expect financial planning to be a key part of the services they receive from advisors. To be prepared, advisors will need technology to help streamline added workflows, as well as the expertise of certified financial planners to support their clients long term.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI) rose more than expected in May, reaching a new record high.
BlackRock Inc.’s $12.55 billion bond sale tied to a Meta Platforms Inc. data center rallied in early trading on Monday in a sign that relatively high yields on the debt ultimately attracted investors.
CME Group Inc. said the debut weekend of 24/7 trading for its one-ounce gold futures saw stronger-than-expected demand with deep liquidity despite subdued volatility.
Registered investment advisors (RIAs) are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence (AI) tools that automatically transcribe and summarize client calls. While these technologies may offer efficiency gains, they introduce significant legal and compliance risks. This article discusses the intersection of AI transcription tools with state wiretapping laws, privacy considerations, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requirements, and the evolving litigation landscape.
If you own treasuries, you need to make two separate decisions rather than one blended bet. The liquidity sleeve holds the bill exposure and does the work people mistakenly ask the long end to do. The duration sleeve stays deliberately small, sized as recession insurance rather than as a conviction call on falling inflation.
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.
US earnings are set to grow briskly in 2026, but much of the expected gains are being driven by expanding profit margins that may be hard to sustain. Equity investors should ask whether portfolios are exposed to businesses with durable demand and profitable reinvestment—or merely a favorable margin cycle.
The structural backdrop for U.S. inflation increasingly suggests that the long run equilibrium range is migrating from roughly 1.5–3.5% toward 3.5–4.5%, with a significant risk of episodes of inflation above 5%. An important core reason is the steady erosion of the disinflationary architecture that dominated the 1990–2020 period, even as various cyclical pressures also play a role.
The motivation for today's report comes from the growing number of articles warning about the possibility of an AI bubble. The truth is that nobody knows whether a bubble exists today in artificial intelligence or whether one may emerge in the future.
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.
Earlier this week, I wrote that the gold-silver ratio has recently widened to around 70-1, a bullish signal for silver. But is this metric still relevant today?
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.
Microsoft Corp., Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. face renewed investor anxiety over their debt-fueled capital expenditure plans after Alphabet Inc. raised the upper end of its spending forecast this year by as much as $15 billion.
As markets place a greater premium on shareholder-friendly capital allocation, companies that consistently combine buybacks with dividends may be better positioned to outperform.
I am not right as often as I would like. And feeling bad about being right occurs very, very rarely. But now is one of those times. I was not surprised when the ceasefire between the United States and Iran broke down long before it was due to expire.
As advisors face outflows to client income and one-time distributions, organic growth via client pickups can prove a useful asset, according to a recent report.
A wave of new active ETFs is reshaping the fund landscape, and advisors now need extra care when screening funds for their models.
Join the experts at SS&C ALPS Advisors, Ladenburg Thalmann, and VettaFi for a product due diligence session exploring the ALPS Electrification Infrastructure ETF (ELFY) and how it is designed to invest in companies supporting the electrification of everything.
The narrative presented in this article is uniquely suited only to the retirement scenario. (And it neglects such complications as tax-deferred accounts, etc.) Other investing narratives will be different — for example, those of pension funds or endowment funds.
To evaluate SpaceX from a fundamental perspective, investors need to quantify the implied growth in its valuation and compare it with both their own and market forecasts. In this article, we attempt to help by providing context for growth expectations, using Amazon’s history as a proxy. The question we pose is: What does the Amazon playbook require of SpaceX?
The Dallas Fed released its Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey (TMOS) for July. The general business activity index rose 1.3 points to 1.3, indicating accelerated growth of manufacturing activity and improved business conditions perceptions.
Whenever faced with tradeoffs between risk and return, we recommend turning to expected utility. The method of maximizing expected utility is the most sensible technique for making these tradeoffs, taking into account both your personal preferences and the specifics of the situation.
New orders for manufactured durable goods rose 0.3% in June to $334.77B, less than the projected 1.6% monthly growth.
June may have proven to be a difficult month for silver investors, but it’s likely far too soon to give up on the precious metal. To better understand this, it’s important to contextualize why silver’s price is struggling and why the metal’s long-term opportunities are still there.
Your client needs income. Investment-grade corporate bonds are offering it in the form of yields above 5%. That's a compelling number, and you're thinking about how to position this client's portfolio. Here's the problem: That 5% shouldn't be possible right now. And that's what should worry you.
Kioxia Holdings Corp. faces more wild price swings with leveraged exchange-traded funds tracking the Japanese memory chipmaker’s shares set to be listed in the US.
Jefferies Financial Group Inc. is hiring several muni sales and trading veterans, according to a person familiar with the matter.
US Treasuries edged higher as oil prices softened after the US paused its nearly two-week campaign of strikes against Iran, while traders eyed a roughly one-in-three chance of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike on Wednesday.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and T. Rowe Price Group Inc. are launching their first interval fund for the masses as Wall Street races to bring private investments to Main Street.
Let’s get this out of the way right away: It’s highly unlikely the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates when policymakers meet this week after the latest data showed inflation has slowed.
