Large Cap Growth

Easing trade tensions and hopes the Senate could pass a budget gave stocks an early lift after Friday's record highs. The week is packed with jobs news and Powell talks tomorrow.

Readers of a certain age will no doubt recall President Ronald Reagan launching one of the most ambitious military buildups in American history.

Market breadth can help gauge strength or weakness. Methods include tracking the number of stocks trading above or below moving averages or making new highs or lows.

Thematic investing has experienced cycles of popularity over time. In less cautious market environments, investors often turn their attention to ambitious ideas — such as disruptive technologies or other transformative future trends — looking beyond traditional equity ETFs.

Market uncertainty needs a tailor-made approach to fixed income for advisors to construct the ideal portfolio for their clients. There’s an easier solution that encompasses an active management approach, various income sources, and low cost. It’s the Vanguard Multi-Sector Income Bond ETF (VGMS).

Until recently, commercial real estate appeared poised for a long-awaited rebound. However, 2025 has revealed a new reality: Uncertainty has become structural.

Until that US government debt-crisis moment arrives, which we will get through, things will muddle along.

Index futures inched upward premarket as the headline May PCE data landed in line with expectations, though the core data and annual figures were up slightly.

ETFs have surged in popularity thanks to their transparency, low costs and tax efficiency. But behind the scenes, a unique dual-market system powers their liquidity and accessibility.

Investors attempting to manage volatility in their portfolio often employ defensive equity strategies to define their optimal market exposure and risk profile. Such strategies are designed to help limit losses on the downside, while also allowing investors to participate in the market’s gains.

Target-date fund glide paths can be important tools for retirement planning. Advisors should focus on assumptions, transparency, and outcomes to ensure they align with participants' needs.

While both valuation and technical factors suggest to us that the dollar may continue to weaken in the near-term, we would caution investors against reading too much concerning the US’ long-term economic stability into further dollar weakness.

During our June 5th ROBO Global Webcast, we covered three key themes driving the robotics and AI investment landscape.

Inflation's trend has been favorable this year, but a growing conflict in Iran—combined with already-imposed tariffs—might put upward pressure in prices later this year.

The U.S. Dollar Index, when measured against a basket of other major currencies, has declined by approximately 10% this year through mid-June and is currently trading at its lowest level in three years.

Like all appetites, the consumer typically reaches some point of appeasement. That could be the case for central bank gold purchases, which have started to show signs of receding. But market experts do not see it faltering anytime soon.

When investors approach the financial markets, there’s a tendency to imagine that conditions can be judged as favorable or unfavorable based on one single measure or another. The fact is that market conditions at any moment in time are a composite of interdependent forces.

This week the news is about the Israel-Iran conflict. It’s terrifyingly real for those in the crossfire, while we who are safe naturally wonder what it means for us. As investors, we think about the economic and market effects. But are we seeing signal or noise?

Mid-2025 is approaching, and exchange traded fund demand continues its robust growth. Last year was a landmark year for the ETF industry, with industry net inflows for the first time surpassing $1 trillion and one ETF exceeding $100 billion in net inflows.

Market concentration rewarded passive investors who held market weights in the surging mega-caps. Since late 2014, passive index returns ranked in the 10th percentile of all portfolios in eVestment’s US Large Cap Growth Equity universe. In other words, only 10% of active managers outperformed.

AI is advancing at an astonishing pace and undermining the core businesses of tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Apple. But it is not only transforming the applications we use; it is also reshaping the very process of software development, threatening to render much of today’s tech sector obsolete.

The overall U.S. equity market has fully recovered from its April lows, landing in an essentially flat position as of 5/31/2025. However, it’s been a wild ride for many investors.

Equities have been on quite the roller coaster in 2025. Although the tariff situation has driven much of this volatility, we find ourselves in a similar spot to where we began the year.

Many small deals have done through, including ones from overseas, and an active calendar of corporate shareholder meetings could offer fresh insights into capital plans.

The question isn’t whether robots will transform global labor markets. It’s how quickly the transformation will unfold. This transformation presents both unprecedented challenges and remarkable opportunities.

The first half of the year has left investors with many questions about the path ahead for the economy and markets. Unfortunately, there haven’t been many concrete answers. Tariff announcements and trade negotiations have commanded the room.

Smart beta strategies have endured a prolonged stretch of disappointing results, falling short of investor expectations. This article explores the underlying causes of that performance and outlines why the conditions ahead could be more favorable.

The fund shines through as a prime option worthy of consideration among the vast alternatives present in the muni market. With their rare combination of credit quality and yield, munis are offering fixed income investors prime benefits in a still-uncertain bond environment.

Bonds hit a headwind in May as rates rose, but year to date, they have helped offset some of the volatility seen in stocks. See Table 2 for bond index returns for May 2025, Q1 2025, and YTD.

President Donald Trump’s announcement on Wednesday of a new trade agreement with China is the kind of headline that gives markets a sense of relief. As I overheard this week at Wealth Management’s EDGE conference, which I attended in Boca Raton, Florida, we may have dodged a recession.

This week’s market resilience in the face of rising geopolitical tensions underscores an important structural shift. The Israeli strikes and broader Middle East dynamics, while concerning, sparked only a modest reaction—a far cry from the volatility such events triggered in past decades.

Lately, the “deficit narrative” has dominated much of the financial media, particularly those channels that are continual “purveyors of doom.” In this post, we will discuss the “deficit narrative,” the likely outcomes, and why the cure for the deficit may be found in Artificial Intelligence.

Rampant uncertainty and ongoing market volatility in 2025 have done little to dampen the ETF industry, with innovative launches ongoing.

Separating the signal from the noise may be the hardest challenge investors face. We’re all surrounded by constantly changing but mostly unimportant information. Of the small part that really is important, we must decide if it affects our investments.

Fears of an impending recession may be fading, but economists are still expecting tepid GDP growth for the year.

Industrial robotics is no longer a niche topic reserved for factory optimization—it is becoming a key lever in national strategies for productivity, labor substitution and supply chain resilience.

In part one of our new series, AI Alpha, we explored the sweeping potential of artificial intelligence (AI) as a transformative force.

Summer re-runs are popular on TV, but a repeat of last August's "yen-carry" market upheaval isn't likely on the schedule. A shift in positioning by investors is one reason.

In the history of technological progress, there's often a critical misreading. We think the leap is in the product—the engine, the chip, the app.

With tariff news providing constant equity market fluctuations, the case for bonds becomes more compelling. The added uncertainty also punctuates the need for an active management strategy, which one particular Vanguard ETF offers.