With corporate bond spreads widening and Oracle Corp.’s credit default swap spiking to a multi-year high, Wall Street is getting worried that a flood of debt sales from Big Tech is overwhelming buyers and could blow up credit markets.
Financial planning helps families organize, save, and invest intentionally. It turns goals into a roadmap, budgeting for major purchases, setting aside for retirement, and aligning investments with life milestones. But at some point, the question shifts from how to grow wealth to how to protect and structure it.
This year has certainly been a significant one for me. For the markets and the economy, it has been a big year as well. Rate cuts and no recession have been positive for stocks and bonds.
As wealth continues to grow along with soaring equity markets, and technology enables customization and choices once reserved for a select few investors, financial advisors are tasked with constantly evolving to maintain their value position.
Interest rates are undergoing one of the steepest reversals in half a century. In 2020, governments could borrow for 30 years at just over 1%. Fast forward to 2025 and U.S. 30-year yields have risen above 5% for the first time since 2007.
According to market theory, persistent outperformance shouldn’t exist. However, companies with high and stable profitability, strong balance sheets, and disciplined capital allocation have demonstrated the ability to deliver superior returns with lower risk over time.
Multi-strategy hedge funds have been around for more than three decades. Will they make it to a half century? Ray Dalio, founder of 50-year-old hedge fund Bridgewater Associates has his doubts about this thriving subsector of asset management.
The trade dispute with the U.S. is proving to be a 'full-blown blizzard' for Canada, threatening to freeze cross-border commerce in a deeply integrated relationship. Despite the majority of goods remaining duty-free, new tariffs—reaching 35% in key sectors—have caused a sharp decline in Canadian exports, pushing the nation toward recession.
At Vanguard, we are always working to make our target-date funds (TDFs) better. That means regularly reviewing our glide-path design and diving into specific asset allocation topics to ensure that our strategies evolve with the market and continue to meet our clients' needs.
Corporate America delivered another exceptional earnings season, with third-quarter S&P 500 earnings growth tracking over 13% and achieving one of the highest beat rates ever recorded. Companies successfully adjusted to shifting macroeconomic pressures, including tariffs, as expectations continued to rise. The impressive results were bolstered by robust revenue growth and significant investment from mega-cap technology firms.
Although most economists have issued dire warnings about the damage tariffs and other ill-advised policies would cause, the US economy’s aggregate indicators have remained quite robust. Some of the costs may simply have been postponed, but rapid advances in AI could well offset them when they fall due.
The 20th century Baby Boom was one of the most powerful demographic events in the history of the United States. We've created a series of charts to show seven age cohorts of the employed population from 1948 to the present.
Today, one in three of the 65-69 cohort, one in five of the 70-74 cohort, and one in ten of the 75+ cohort are in the labor force.
The labor force participation rate (LFPR) is a simple computation: You take the civilian labor force (people aged 16 and over employed or seeking employment) and divide it by the civilian non-institutional population (those 16 and over not in the military and or committed to an institution). As of September, the labor force participation rate is at 62.4%, up from 62.3% the previous month.
This impressive performance, fueled largely by the prominent allocation to the "Magnificent Seven" tech stocks, highlights the strong adoption of ETFs and VOO's role as the premier choice for U.S. equity exposure amidst a challenging macro environment. This success helped the entire ETF industry surpass its previous trillion-dollar record.
This article argues that a grateful mindset is a powerful strategy for improving financial and investment decision-making, citing research that links gratitude to better outcomes and overall well-being.
Some clients don’t want to expose everything and may find it annoying to be asked deeply personal questions. I do think, with some work, everyone can come around to share more about themselves if they are approached correctly. Here are some suggestions.
You don’t need a massive budget or an in-house team to market effectively. You need a focused, sustainable approach designed for small firms like yours. Here’s what that looks like in action — and how to start seeing results without burning out.
Referrals aren’t dead; they’ve evolved. When clients know you are there for more than their investments and when every moment reinforces the value you bring to your clients, referrals become a natural outcome.
Google, once seen as lagging after the launch of ChatGPT, is now surging in the AI race with its new Gemini 3 model winning praise and driving investor confidence.
Investor certainty about a Federal Reserve interest rate cut in December has surged to approximately 80%, driven by signals from Fed officials and recent mixed economic data, especially regarding the labor market.
As investors shift away from volatile artificial intelligence stocks, the health-care sector has emerged as the clear winner this month, with the S&P 500 Health Care Index up 10%. This rotation, fueled by aggressive buying from hedge funds and mutual funds, reflects investor interest in defensive value amid concerns over an AI stock bubble.
Jeff Schulze, Head of Economic and Market Strategy at ClearBridge Investments, discusses key spending, employment and other policy factors he is following as we look forward to 2026.
Like ducks on a pond, markets often appear calm on the surface while churning furiously underneath. For financial markets, above the surface, attention has focused on equity market valuations and record-tight levels of credit spreads, but a deeper look reveals even more extreme dynamics below.
In a recent episode of the Money Metals podcast, host Mike Maharrey sits down with Jordan Roy-Byrne, CMT, MFTA, editor and publisher of The Daily Gold, to unpack where gold and silver are in the current cycle.
Yes, we may be in the second market bubble of this century. Alternatively, the market may be pricing in a shift as fundamental as the transition to either electricity or the internet. Either way, investors must think clearly, act deliberately, and avoid the kind of blind speculation that turned past booms into bloodbaths.
Investors are needy. Insatiable, really. But it makes sense: If an investor buys a share of a company, they’re going to want some benefit from it.
Kalshi Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer Tarek Mansour got my attention when he claimed last week that prediction markets could rival stock exchanges in a few years. Of course, this does not mean that people will buy and sell stocks on Kalshi, but that prediction markets will be where information is aggregated and prices set, with the New York Stock Exchange and its ilk relegated to processing orders.
The release of OpenAI's ChatGPT three years ago sparked an artificial intelligence mania on Wall Street, fundamentally reshaping the stock market landscape. This AI-driven frenzy has minted new market leaders, made the S&P 500 significantly more concentrated, and served as the dominant driving force behind the current bull market in US stocks.
Emerging market (EM) equities have seen exceptional outperformance in 2025, with major countries like South Korea and Brazil posting massive gains. The primary driver of this trend has been a weakening U.S. dollar, which historically encourages capital flow outside the United States. The critical question now for investors is whether this dollar weakness marks the start of a multi-year downtrend or is simply a temporary correction.
Today’s massive and still-growing investments in AI and its accompanying infrastructure could well pay off like the internet did, following the investment boom of the late 1990s. But, for now, the gains from AI look more muted, and the macro downsides larger, than in the case of the dot-com bubble.
This article reviews historical and contemporary attempts by world leaders—from Nixon's price controls to European energy subsidies—to contain costs, ultimately illustrating the limits of policy intervention in combating inflation. While some measures provided temporary relief, the persistent challenge of high prices remains a central political concern.
On this episode of the “ETF of the Week” podcast, VettaFi’s Head of Research, Todd Rosenbluth, discussed the Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLU) with Chuck Jaffe of Money Life. The pair discussed several topics related to the fund to give investors a deeper understanding of the ETF.
JD Gardner, Founder of Aptus Capital Advisors, goes inside the decision to launch the lowest-cost buffer ETFs and the outsized role investor behavior plays in long-term returns. Stacey Morris, Head of Energy Research at VettaFi, spotlights the latest leaders and laggards in energy ETFs and what could drive the sector in the months ahead.
Despite facing rising tariffs and trade barriers globally since the U.S.-China trade war began in 2017, Chinese exports have surprisingly continued to grow. Total annual exports have expanded by 58% since 2017, reaching a staggering $3.58 trillion, which is a performance far better than many analysts predicted given the severity of the trade conflict.
This article explores gold's role as a distinct, independent alternative asset class, discussing its diversification benefits, and practical ways for investors to gain exposure.
Retail earnings ahead of Black Friday show a clear split: value-focused discounters like TJX and Walmart are thriving, while Target and home improvement stores struggle with consumer pullback on discretionary items. This shift reflects broader economic pressure, as consumers trade down due to high prices, weakening income sentiment, and increased reliance on credit.
Advisors spend hours gathering information via different systems that should already be talking to each other. But by the time they make sense of it, the market has moved on. I’ve seen even well-established firms face this problem because their systems rarely communicate smoothly.
Treasury yields edged lower, with the 10-year nearing 4%, as data affirming labor-market weakness and remarks from Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran bolstered expectations for an interest-rate cut next month.
Wall Street’s macro traders are headed for their best year since 2009 as clients rushed to place bets on changing interest rate policies by central banks around the world.
Meta Platforms Inc. is in talks to spend billions on Google’s AI chips, the Information reported, adding to a monthslong share rally as the search giant has made the case it can rival Nvidia Corp. as a leader in artificial intelligence technology.
The ALPS Electrification Infrastructure ETF (ELFY) is drawing investor attention as U.S. electricity demand heads for its fastest growth in decades, driven by artificial intelligence data centers, manufacturing reshoring, and expanding electric vehicle infrastructure.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang turned heads earlier this month when he told the Financial Times he believes China will win the artificial intelligence (AI) arms race due to the country’s expanding power capacity and lack of regulatory bottlenecks that slow things down here in the U.S.
Amid concerns that the traditional 60/40 investment mix no longer works, financial experts are recommending a 20 percent allocation to gold as a necessary portfolio adjustment. This shift is driven by the fact that gold is increasingly viewed as the most reliable hedge against inflation and government spending, unlike bonds which have lost their safe-haven status. Consequently, investors are initiating a "quiet revolution" by moving billions into gold ETFs.
Bitcoin miners are landing contracts with some of the world’s largest technology companies. This happens as they pivot from cryptocurrency mining to artificial intelligence infrastructure, according to recent research from CoinShares.
This article explores the future of stablecoins as an everyday payment instrument by drawing parallels to the free-banking era (1837–1863) in the United States, when commercial entities issued their own, often chaotic, banknotes.
The article argues that making productive use of AI requires strong critical thinking, statistical, and analytical abilities, a necessity challenged by weakening standards in math and reading in educational institutions.
From a purely economic standpoint, imposing taxes on credit unions or ending taxes on banks would have the same outcome. If Congress were serious about fairness, either option would be a logical choice.
In this new series, Chuck Carnevale, co-founder of FAST Graphs and widely known as “Mr. Valuation”, begins the process of constructing a F.I.R.E. Dividend Growth Portfolio from the ground up. F.I.R.E., which stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early, is built on the idea of creating enough growing income to eventually support early retirement.
Returns from emerging market bonds hinge on five factors, our economic research suggests. And for the first time in two decades, four of these are now favourable, heralding a new phase of outperformance for the asset class.
