November ended with modest index gains masking a deeper rotation beneath the surface, as markets wrestled with December Fed cut odds, AI fatigue, and how to position portfolios into year end.
As we put the finishing touches on Outlook 2026, here are several other key factors that will drive markets in 2026 that investors will want to keep in mind.
While US investors focus on growth, international markets may remain the best places to find value opportunities in 2026, says Franklin Mutual Series.
The reopening of the US government and the release of delayed economic data did little to calm markets. The long-awaited September jobs report finally arrived last week, showing job gains of 119,000, surpassing expectations but accompanied by downward revisions to previous months and a rise in the unemployment rate.
Clark Allen, Head of Product at Horizon, discusses the firm’s ETF entrance earlier this year and how its model portfolio business shapes product development. Mike Hagopian, Institutional Portfolio Manager at Fidelity, highlights the firm’s actively managed Enhanced ETF lineup, which aims to deliver outperformance and offer a thoughtful alternative to traditional passive investing.
Join us and the experts at Swan Global for a break down how active options strategies can enhance income, manage downside risk, and provide a strategic edge when repositioning portfolios for an uncertain 2026.
Let me introduce you to an approach I call the "Book of Life" methodology, a research-based strategy that transforms how new advisors build both their knowledge and their networks.
Three powerful demographic shifts — rising wealth, forward-thinking attitudes, and longer lifespans — are reshaping retirement. The emerging financial force of the future is women, and advisors who adapt now will lead tomorrow’s client relationships.
Financial wellbeing is not simply about income or net worth. Nor is it about happiness. It’s about a person’s ability to function financially with security, agency, and sustainability. Emotional enjoyment doesn’t override that, and wealth doesn’t guarantee it.
Boeing Co. expects to generate cash on an annual basis in 2026, marking a significant turnaround in the planemaker’s finances as it prepares to boost monthly production rates and pushes ahead with certification for the much-delayed 777X jetliner.
For two decades, the playbook for Big Tech was fairly simple and extremely successful: Create disruptive innovations, deliver blinding growth rates and keep a lid on spending.
Here’s how Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin treasury company Strategy Inc. is supposed to work: The firm raises funds to buy Bitcoin; that buying drives up the price of Bitcoin; the share price of Strategy follows suit. Rinse and repeat
The decision to attend college was a no-brainer during the second half of the 20th century. It almost assured higher earnings and job security. Tuition wasn’t even very expensive. None of this is true now.
If there’s one thing Democrats and Republicans have agreed on in recent years, it’s to ignore the rapidly deteriorating finances of Social Security and keep its unsustainable benefits intact. The longer they dither, the worse the problem will get.
The US dollar (USD) has weakened over the last few months, fueling strong emerging-market (EM) stock and bond returns in 2025. Now, with more clarity around tariffs and the record-long US government shutdown resolved, will the greenback strengthen and flip the script on EM? We don’t think so.
In today’s complex financial landscape, taxable US institutions face unique challenges in balancing their investment objectives with tax efficiency. They simply cannot afford to overlook the impact of taxes on their portfolios.
Rob Tayloe discusses fixed income market conditions and offers insight for bond investors.
In the ten years prior to the onset of COVID, the consumer prices index rose at an average annual rate of 1.7%. Since the onset of COVID the overall CPI has risen at a 4.2% annual rate. Inflation peaked at about 9.0% back in 2022 but is still hovering between 2.5 and 3.0%, which is above the Federal Reserve’s official target of 2.0%.
State Street Investment Management (SSIM) has been the investment advisor for the Select Sector SPDR ETFs since 1998. It will now take over the distribution and marketing for these funds. The move brings 11 ETFs in-house under the SSIM umbrella to unify its product offerings and enhance the investor experience.
US Federal Reserve officials would rather “stick to their knitting” than confront the complex forces that are reshaping the economy. Unless the next Fed chair shakes the institution out of its complacency, continued policy-induced volatility and intensifying political attacks are all but guaranteed.
The recent Thanksgiving week provided a crucial snapshot of the changing economy, highlighted by a shift in holiday shopping to early online sales and a significant drop in the 10-year Treasury yield below 4%.
Yields on the bond market have incrementally adjusted to introduce a new variable: a fiscal premium. Yet, this is not a new form of risk; it represents a new form of information. Investors still believe they will get repaid; they just believe they are entitled to a higher return to facilitate it.
No matter how long you delay taking Social Security, it likely won’t cover all your living expenses. But that doesn't mean you should take it early.
History shows that the starting points of technological revolutions are not invariably followed by large stock market selloffs. The historical precedent we draw from Carlota Perez's 2002 book, "Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital," coupled with the macrohistory.net data, provides some guidance.
The Benetton family’s holding company Edizione is setting up an alternative investment firm with about €3 billion ($3.5 billion) in assets under management as it seeks to grow its private markets.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will pay $2 billion to buy Innovator Capital Management, a deal that combines the bank with an issuer of a relatively new type of exchange-traded fund that has caught the attention and ire of some on Wall Street.
In today’s markets, mentioning the “B-word” will get you thrown into the “permabear” camp, and everyone immediately assumes you mean the end of the world: death, disaster, and destruction. Yes, bear markets have terrible short-term impacts, but they also allow the system to reset for healthier growth in the future.
My friend David Bahnsen wrote a brilliant analysis in his weekly Dividend Café of the private credit market a few weeks ago and it really took off. I got his permission to share it with you today. This is a basic primer on the risks in the private market and something as an investor you should be familiar with.
While outright defaults in the private credit sector remain low, analysts are increasingly concerned about the deteriorating outlook for repayment problems. When factoring in "selective defaults"—like borrowers adding interest to the loan (PIK loans) or extending maturities—the true default rate climbs to a significantly higher 4.6%.
When new homes start selling at a discount to re-sale houses, it’s time to sit up and pay attention. Apollo Global Management’s Chief Economist Torsten Slok noted the anomaly in a recent note , the first time it’s happened in more than five decades.
In the ranks of the world’s 20 best-performing stock markets this year, every second index is European.
Whether in sports or financial markets, averages often grab headlines, but they can conceal as much as they reveal. Variation—including the dispersion of metrics like credit spreads for high-yield bonds—is the real story.
This has been a bumpy year for the US economy. Although there was a massive boom in AI-related investments in 2025, policy-induced uncertainties and disruptions to official data releases clouded the picture.
U.S. stocks, as measured by the S&P 500 Index, are on pace for 14% growth in earnings for Q3 2025. This marks the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth and comes in well ahead of analysts’ Sept. 30 estimates of 7%.
Despite the increasing need for retirement income security, many defined contribution (DC) plan sponsors hesitate to adopt new lifetime income solutions due to concerns over fiduciary liability and plan flexibility.
Following a rocky start to the year, the municipal bond market has shown strong performance in Q3 2025, outperforming broader bond indexes due to factors like easing oversupply and growing demand.
This article argues that the Federal Reserve's decade of ultra-loose monetary policy following the 2008 crisis, including nearly ten years of near-zero rates, has warped the perception of a "normal" interest rate environment.
Despite an intra-year drawdown of 18.9%, the S&P 500 is poised for a strong 2025, currently up about 14%. This pattern of experiencing a large correction on the way to significant annual gains is common; since 1980, the average yearly drawdown has been over 14% while the index gained an average of 10.7%.
Nvidia's strong earnings initially squashed AI bubble fears but a deep dive into its financials, revealing high customer concentration, triggered a major tech sell-off.
As investors start to take sides in the AI race, Sam Altman’s buddies are getting burned.
The Federal Reserve's balance sheet has significantly shrunk from its peak of nearly $9 trillion in 2022, shifting the reserve environment from "abundant" to "ample." While some advocate for further reduction, arguing it would increase market volatility and allow for lower rates, this move would necessitate a major operational change in how the Fed conducts monetary policy and would not dramatically lower short-term rates.
Kostas Bintas, the high-profile head of metals at Mercuria Energy Group Ltd., has renewed his bullish prediction for copper prices as he warned that a rush to ship metal to the US risks draining the rest of the world’s inventories.
The article argues that the oil market is mistaken to predict long-term prices will remain near the current $60-per-barrel level through 2030, believing oil will be more expensive due to tightening supply/demand balance.
This article questions if the high valuation multiples are justified, arguing that investors will soon need to see actual cash flow results from this massive CapEx bonanza.This aggressive spending has caused their collective free cash flow growth to turn negative, raising concerns since stock valuation is based on future free cash flow.
Despite the "America First" focus of the current administration, international markets, particularly emerging markets (EM), have outperformed domestic financial markets. This surprising trend is highlighted by the strong performance of EM debt and equities, driven primarily by U.S. dollar weakness and corresponding monetary easing by EM central banks.
This month, the global investment community is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the world’s first fixed income ETFs, the iShares Core Canadian Short Term Bond Index ETF (XSB) and the iShares Core Canadian Universe Bond Index ETF (XBB).
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), a crucial hub for managing global risk, experienced a nine-hour trading halt due to a data center fault on Friday, disrupting markets from S&P 500 futures to crude oil. This major outage underscores the CME's integral role in global market machinery, where its platforms handle volumes exceeding 26 million derivatives contracts daily.
Nasdaq’s International Securities Exchange proposed quadrupling the daily trading limit for options tied to BlackRock Inc.’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF as demand from investors increases.
This article argues that the pursuit of high returns by institutional investors, like insurers and pension funds, through illiquid and opaque private market investments is a repeating mistake that risks underfunding future liabilities.
The dominance of Jensen Huang and Nvidia in the AI hardware market is facing a significant challenge, signaling a shift in the industry's power dynamic. This is driven by news of Google potentially selling billions of dollars in its own Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) to Meta, following a similar major deal with Anthropic.
