Small Cap

A snowball effect of asset values can similarly empower wealth effects: the tendency for consumers to spend more as the value of their investments rises. Wealth effects are surprising at first glance: household investments may be illiquid and tend not to produce substantial cash flow. However, a rising net worth builds a consumer’s confidence in their ability to afford purchases.

"Funflation" is on the rise, and it could bode quite well for the retail sector if the trend remains persistent.

Northern Trust Asset Management will move six mutual funds with $33 billion in assets into ETFs in early 2027, its first such conversions.

The U.S. economy remains resilient despite headwinds including sticky inflation, trade instability and rising geopolitical tensions. State and local government tax revenues have followed suit and have posted solid growth, aided by robust equity market returns.

The S&P 500 has remained remarkably resilient in the face of mounting macro headwinds. Despite oil prices topping $100 per barrel, 10-year Treasury yields climbing above 5%, and a renewed shift toward tighter monetary policy, the index continues to hover near record levels.

This week, there are a few things that we need to pay attention to: the large move in interest rates and what it means (and more importantly, what it doesn’t mean!); and the constant barrage of doom and gloom on energy and AI. Let’s jump in.

Last week we looked at the Federal Reserve’s inflation problem. This week, let’s look at the other half of its mandate: maximum employment.

The exchange-traded fund (ETF) market is pacing toward a record-breaking year in 2026, driven by an unprecedented wave of new product launches and historic capital inflows.

Since ChatGPT was first released in 2022, the artificial intelligence (AI) trade has dominated US equity markets. Gains have been driven by three interrelated forces: enthusiasm for artificial intelligence, growing concentration in the largest technology companies and strong price momentum.

This year has presented no shortage of challenges for investors. Geopolitical conflict, trade tensions, rising energy prices, shifting interest rate expectations and an increasingly active political backdrop have each taken turns dominating the headlines. Yet despite these obstacles, the economy has continued to expand, corporate profits have marched higher and markets have climbed one wall of worry after another.

Trump Accounts are now available nationwide. Explore how the new tax-advantaged accounts work, who can contribute and key considerations for families evaluating their long-term savings options.

Investment bubbles are inherently dangerous beasts. Like a natural Ponzi scheme, an investment bubble needs to draw in ever larger amounts of capital to keep it going. Nothing attracts capital like apparent success, so an inflating bubble that is creating fortunes for those who got in early will inevitably draw in capital. Unfortunately, this means the amount of money lost when the bubble bursts can outstrip the gains created on its way up.

The appeal of a portfolio of individual bonds for many investors are the known qualities that they can provide: a known stream of cash flow, a known redemption value, a known redemption date, and a known yield; all of which are locked in at the time of purchase.

LPL Research analyzes S&P 500 margin expansion, assessing how much is structural versus cyclical and what that means for future earnings forecasts.

It’s really starting to feel like autumn now. August PPI, CPI, and Retail Sales are in the books, the September FOMC meeting is out of the way, and we can now look forward to Jobs Week on Wall Street. Football is in full swing, and earnings season begins before you know it, with Pepsi (PEP) posting results on Thursday, October 8, followed the next morning by Delta (DAL).

While the AI trade absorbs nearly all available investor attention, owning energy covers our absolute risk while creating the risk budget to cover the AI relative risk more effectively.

The Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) is more than a regional milestone — it is a shift in competition among U.S. capital markets. After months of anticipation, the TXSE reached a major landmark last week as Texas Capital’s TXS and OILT ETFs became its first primary listings, followed a day later by PWRX as the first new ETF to launch on the exchange.

Dividend growth is back, and it’s fair to say that outperformance among dividend growth stocks may simply be overdue amid a shift in U.S. equity market leadership beyond a small group of mega-cap technology companies.

Share buybacks are when a company purchases its own shares, reducing the total number of shares on the market. Oftentimes, these buybacks occur on the open market, but companies may also look to buy shares from existing shareholders as well.

This has been an incredible year in that Wall Street has spent all of it raising its earnings estimates, and the second-quarter season only accelerated the trend. Analysts began the year expecting S&P 500 earnings to grow about 15%.

Early this week, I was in Los Angeles at the All-In Summit along with about 4,000 others, including tech investors, money managers and entrepreneurs. The ticket wasn’t cheap, but it was well worth it.

Chris Galipeau and Taylor Topousis discuss high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.

As summer officially gives way to fall on September 22, it's not just the weather that's changing. The global monetary policy landscape is shifting as well. After spending much of the past two years focused on supporting growth, central banks have increasingly turned their attention back to inflation, especially with oil prices climbing back above $100 per barrel.

This week's Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decision was largely in line with expectations. While many market participants and Federal Reserve (Fed) members anticipated another rate increase later this year, we remained in the camp that viewed the move as likely the last increase before the Fed adopted a wait-and-see approach, allowing geopolitical developments to stabilize and recent inflationary base effects related to the US-Iran war to fade.

The K-shaped economy is real, and it is old. What changed isn’t the shape of the economy; it’s just that the media found a narrative that gets lots of clicks and views, and we let headlines do our thinking for us.

Throughout this Indexing Redefined series, we explored how traditional market-capitalization indexing ties portfolio weights directly to stock prices, creating hidden concentration risks. Furthermore, we discussed how fundamental indexing offers a disciplined alternative by weighting companies according to their real-world economic footprint. In this final installment, we address the dilemma investors face in highly concentrated equity markets.

According to the latest SPIVA U.S. Scorecard report, broader isn’t always better for active managers. Following a volatile start to the year, the S&P 500 rebounded sharply in the second quarter to gain 10% through June 30 thanks to robust corporate earnings.

Pacing isn't pausing. Calls to "pace the frontier" mean slowing the release of powerful artificial intelligence (AI) models to test and control them better, not halting development or spending.

Janus Henderson Investors today announced two senior investment appointments that will further deepen the firm’s leadership across its global equities franchise.

Open any market commentary today and the conversation is dominated by giants. Mega-cap technology companies command outsized shares of major indexes, and the private markets tell a similar story, as we watch companies increasingly staying private well past the point where they once would have gone public.

Artificial intelligence is advancing at a stunning, and perhaps uncontrolled speed. Last week, Evan Hubinger, the Alignment Science Lead at the AI company Anthropic estimated a greater than 10% chance that AI could eliminate humanity within a decade. Jakub Pachocki, Chief Scientist at OpenAI, recently observed 'The core problem in AI research is that of alignment - getting the AI to ‘try to do the right thing’ by human standards…

As ETF strategies continue to expand into new asset classes and structures, the SEC has been taking a closer look at how some of these products fit within existing regulations.

For decades, equity investors have relied on a foundational promise from Corporate America: the continuous return of surplus cash. Dividends and share repurchases represent the two primary ways by which companies deliver tangible value back to shareholders. Yet as we navigate the final stretch of the third quarter of 2026, both channels are signaling a distinct shift toward restraint.

The new investment case for global power, security and affordability. The phrase “energy transition” has served as a useful political and cultural shorthand, but it has become a misleading framework for capital allocation. Franklin Templeton Institute explodes new opportunities for investors—and where shifts in thinking may be needed.

A rising S&P 500® might suggest few opportunities for tax-loss harvesting. But unusually wide dispersion among individual stocks is telling a different story—and potentially creating new opportunities for direct indexing.

Most people have had that moment when they’re walking along outside, enjoying a sunny day, and suddenly something long and twisty on the ground catches their eye. Before they even know what’s happening, their whole body jumps and their brain shouts, “Snake!”

Janus Henderson launched a new international equity ETF on Wednesday, according to a Janus Henderson press release. The Janus Henderson International Core Alpha ETF (JINT) seeks long-term growth of capital across developed markets outside the U.S.

Single-stock leveraged ETFs were unusual when they first arrived in the U.S. market just four years ago. Today, it might be hard to find a stock without one. Issuers are aggressively pushing beyond megacap tech into niche equities, pre-IPO registrations, and even experimenting with leverage levels and frequency.

With so much attention focused on what the Fed might do at its policy meeting this week, it’s a good time to look back at history to get a sense of how stocks might respond should policymakers hike rates as the market now expects. LPL Research had been characterizing the rate decision as a coin flip until Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s hawkish comments at the Jackson Hole meeting and the strong August jobs report.

From the 2020 pandemic to today’s oil shocks, we’re often reminded in recent years that inflation can flare up unexpectedly. We’ve also likely entered an era in which higher inflation may linger for some time. As a result, bond-heavy and income-oriented investors may need to shore up their inflation defense, which we think should combine strategic positioning with tactical maneuvering.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for August was generally in line with expectations. However, a slightly hotter-than-expected core CPI reading buoyed expectations of a rate hike at the Federal Reserve meeting in September.

A week of rising oil prices and higher interest rates sent stocks lower across the board as investors increasingly priced in the likelihood that the Federal Reserve (Fed) will begin a rate-hiking cycle at its September 16 meeting. Following the August Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, futures markets implied an 88 percent probability that the Fed will, or at least should, raise rates at next week's meeting.

Chris Galipeau discusses high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.

In our final chapter for this series, we will dig into that exact question. Unfortunately, there is good and bad news, and it can be summed up in a single sentence.

Last week, the refining margin on European gasoil, the benchmark that sets the price of diesel and heating oil across much of the world, closed at roughly $94 a barrel over Brent crude, according to Bloomberg data. That figure is normally somewhere between $12 and $18.

As policymakers adapt to new leadership, navigate a challenging geopolitical backdrop and contend with meaningful internal debate over the path of interest rates, the stakes remain high. Below, we discuss what to expect from next week’s Federal Reserve (Fed) meeting and provide perspective on the recent rise of Treasury yields to multi-year highs.

In Part III, the focus will center on practical applications of this discipline. In particular, how advisors can integrate the methodology into modern asset allocation, and why it offers an evolutionary leap for passive investing that’s available through exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Some investors are questioning how much further this year’s rally can run with the S&P 500 Index up 12.3% through the first eight months of the year. Encouragingly, history suggests that strong starts tend to persist; when the S&P 500 has gained more than 10% through August it has advanced from September through December in 25 of 28 instances, an 89% positive hit rate.

The recent employment report provided reassurance that the US labor market remains resilient. The economy added 162,000 jobs in August; the previous two months’ gains were revised higher by a combined 55,000, and the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%.

One or a few high-performing stocks can provide a big boost to portfolio values. But they’re hard to come by and often struggle to maintain their momentum over time. Because these stocks increase portfolio concentration, investors must balance the risk of overexposure against the tax cost of diversifying. A thoughtful, tax-aware plan may help bring portfolios back in line.

Don't let September's macro headline noise fool you. Today’s economic backdrop won’t likely trigger a broad market freeze like 2022, but there will be winners and losers. Cash-rich mega-caps, AI infrastructure plays, and scaled market leaders (the SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI tier) command their own gravity.

U.S. equities were little changed on the week – the S&P 500 rose 0.1 per cent, the NASDAQ gained 0.4 per cent, and the Russell 2000 added 0.12 per cent – but those modest moves masked a far more turbulent week in the global rates markets.

With a handful of stocks attracting most of the recent headlines, it’s easy to forget that investors continue to find opportunities across a broad range of sectors.

History suggests slower Fed tightening tends to support stronger market returns and firmer economic growth, while faster hikes typically deepen drawdowns.

Portfolio Managers Jonathan Coleman and Aaron Schaechterle outline why they believe momentum in small-cap stocks relative to large caps can continue, highlighting favorable earnings growth prospects, appealing relative valuations, and other structural tailwinds.