Commodities

Geopolitical risks are still lingering in the background, but the story lately has been all about earnings. A strong 1Q26 season, paired with a steady drumbeat of upbeat management commentary, has helped push the S&P 500 to 21 record highs this year.

The market continues to demonstrate remarkable resilience. Lower oil prices, easing Treasury yields, and the relentless buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure are still providing a favorable backdrop for risk assets.

If you’re not familiar with the name Leopold Aschenbrenner, you should be. A 24-year-old wunderkind, Aschenbrenner was hired by OpenAI in 2023 to work on the company’s “superalignment” team, essentially trying to figure out how to keep AI systems safe once they become smarter than the people building them.

Economies around the world aren’t just reliant on AI investments for growth. The appreciation of AI stocks has supported spending, which is following “K-shaped” patterns. A significant correction to the valuations of tech leaders would therefore be even more likely to result in recession.

Vocabulary is a power builder. Every time I use the word “hegemonic” in a conversation, I see my listeners’ eyebrows go up as if to say, “what does this guy know that I don’t?” Then again maybe they’re just signaling that I’m full of more than baked beans.

J.P. Morgan Asset Management has expanded its alternative lineup with the launch of the JPMorgan Managed Futures Plus ETF (JPFP) on the Nasdaq. The actively managed fund combines a core U.S. equity allocation with a systematic managed futures strategy spanning equities, bonds, currencies, and commodities.

New York City is facing one of the most significant fiscal challenges in recent memory. The NYC Comptroller has projected a $2.2 billion budget shortfall for FY2026, growing to a $10.4 billion gap in FY2027 (Source: New York City Comptroller, January 2026). That is a two-year deficit of roughly $12.6 billion.

For the last eight years, GMO’s Asset Allocation team has held a differentiated view on Japanese equities. Long before Japan re‑entered the global investment narrative, we argued that the country was undergoing slow but durable structural changes aimed at improving corporate governance, growth, and capital efficiency. These reforms were never expected to deliver quick results. Instead, we expected them to compound quietly over time.

The essential feature of a useful alternative asset isn’t that it’s unusual or exotic, but that its returns aren’t tightly linked to the risks that already dominate the portfolio. The value of an alternative asset comes from the way it interacts with the other assets in the portfolio.

The dollar is supposed to be dying. We’ve heard that argument for the better part of a decade, and it’s getting louder, not quieter. Dollar dominance isn’t fading. In fact, the events of late April 2026 just delivered the loudest counter-signal in years.

Equities extend gains as earnings and semiconductors lead markets higher. Consumer confidence remains subdued despite economic resilience. Inflation is easing gradually but remains above the Fed’s targey.

Recent Federal Reserve communications have turned more hawkish, reflecting concern that persistent supply-driven price pressures could begin to feed into inflation expectations. But unlike in prior cycles, today’s environment is not defined by supply shocks alone.

What is unusual about today, and I mean genuinely unusual, historically unusual, is that the people building the equivalent of Newcomen's engine today know exactly (or think they do) what they are building. They are not just pumping water. They “know” the vast potential.

The reality is, the American people wouldn’t accept the level of taxation necessary to maintain the warfare/welfare state. There would be a tax revolt. So, the government resorts to a less obvious tax.

Many debates in defined contribution (DC) circles focus on fees, new asset classes, and ever more complex solutions. But the biggest improvement available to plan participants may come from something far simpler: how their fixed income is managed.

U.S. equities moved higher last week, with the S&P 500 advancing 0.9 percent – its eighth consecutive weekly gain and the longest such streak since 2023. The Russell 2000 fared even better, rising 2.7 percent.

Risk appetite remains firmly intact as optimism surrounding a potential resolution to the war with Iran continues to improve investor sentiment. The S&P 500 has now advanced for eight consecutive weeks, with price action remaining remarkably resilient throughout the recovery.

As globalization gives way to reshoring and resurgent resource nationalism, emerging markets may offer fresh alpha opportunities through their ability to supply the raw materials required to fuel the AI boom.

Commodity market trends: Commodity markets have been on an impressive, and volatile, run so far this decade, with leadership oscillating between energy and precious metals. Not surprising, after commodities’ “Lost Decade” of the 2010s, given the asset class tends to move in long capital cycles.

Recent market volatility and the conflict in Iran have understandably pushed many emerging market investors to the sidelines. But periods of uncertainty have historically offered attractive entry points into emerging market debt (EMD), particularly when underlying fundamentals are improving and asset flows are likely to increase.

Since early April, U.S. stocks have rallied sharply despite an ongoing war, rising inflation fueled by soaring oil prices (near $100/barrel), higher bond yields (up 0.6 to 0.7 percentage points), and frothy valuations (21 times projected earnings vs. a historical average of 17 times for the S&P 500 Index).

On the surface, last week looked engineered to embarrass our positioning. The dollar index climbed to a six-week high above 99.3 by Friday and finished the week roughly flat at those levels.

An unexpected rap on your front door is sometimes cause for anxiety. You are not sure who or what is out there, wanting to get in.

It’s the first word that comes to mind to describe Q1 2026 U.S. company earnings. S&P 500 earnings growth is looking set to reach 28% year over year (yoy), more than double the consensus estimate of 12% at the start of the reporting season.

The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has transitioned from an equity market narrative to a defining force in fixed income. Hyperscalers (Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOG/L), Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), and Oracle (ORCL)) are shifting from internal cash flows to substantial bond issuance to fund massive data center, graphics processing unit (GPU), and power infrastructure buildouts.

US growth stocks underperformed in early 2026 amid AI disruption fears and an unresolved conflict in the Middle East. But these stresses could create favorable conditions for selective, diversified investors to unlock long-term growth potential in a rotating market.

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

Private credit is more inherently complex than the traditional bond market. In comparison, private credit information comes at a deficit. That’s because private credit loans are essentially bespoke agreements between a lender and a private borrower.

Gold has dropped more than 11 percent from its all-time high of just over $5,102 an ounce in January, and selling pressure continues to dominate the market. A well-established mainstream narrative is driving the bearish sentiment.

Despite these higher costs, a projected 45 million Americans are expected to travel at least 50 miles from home this weekend, setting a new record. Close to 40 million will drive while some 3.7 million will fly.

You don’t have to go very far to find lots of negative commentary in the popular press about the current state of the US economy. High gas prices (due to a “war of choice”) are squeezing consumers’ budgets, and so the economy is headed for a ditch.

Yes, we have been there before, only to be disappointed. But the market smells a real settlement to open Hormuz, and WTI oil briefly dipped below 90 for the first time in weeks. If an opening occurs, expect the market to continue its march upward, as the momentum trade gathers strength.

Despite headwinds from rising oil prices, fundamentals have remained strong. The S&P 500 has notched 18 record highs year to date and, more importantly, surpassed our prior target of 7,250. Following a standout 1Q earnings season, we are raising our 2026 earnings per share (EPS) estimate to $326 from $300.

On May 26, 1896, Charles Dow calculated a simple arithmetic average of 12 industrial stocks and arrived at a closing value of 40.94. Now, exactly 130 years later, that same benchmark has crossed the historic 50,000 threshold.

New AdvizorPro data shows RIAs broadened their ETF lineups in Q1 2026, leaning into real assets, active managers, and defense strategies.

Last Friday closed with the 10-year Treasury yield at 4.60%, a one-year high, and the doom commentary about rising interest rates was waiting before the bell even rang. Hyperinflation. Bond market breakdown. Paradigm shift. A 1981 fair-value retest.

Since the post-COVID recovery began, U.S. nonfinancial corporations have generally managed capital conservatively. They have kept credit metrics stable and, in many cases, actively improved them. That discipline was not entirely voluntary: The sharp adjustment in funding costs triggered by the Federal Reserve’s 2022–2023 rate hiking cycle raised the bar for incremental borrowing and pushed management teams toward balance sheet restraint.

During the American cigar craze of the 1990s, a couple of my neighbors purchased humidors and began collecting. The holy grail for them was Cuban Cohibas, banned from import by longstanding U.S. sanctions.

Artificial intelligence (AI) might be the talk of the town these days, but quantum computing is the quiet thunder rumbling in the background. It just got much louder with the U.S. White House commiting to roll out a massive $2 billion funding package distributed across nine quantum computing companies.

I have often written about one of the few indicators in economics that has earned its reputation over the years, and for good reason. It has preceded virtually every US recession since World War II. I’m talking about the inverted yield curve.

Now, that prospect feels much farther off. Indeed, as government debt grows and macroeconomic pressures and inflation reemerge, investors face a complicated rate environment. Dividends can provide a solution.

In this second quarter update, Western Asset believes global fixed-income markets face a more complex backdrop as geopolitics, rapid AI adoption and private credit scrutiny intersect.

Some institutional investors who had grown accustomed to outperforming the broader private equity composites are finding they have not done so consistently in recent years. Their diagnoses of the problem often center on specific decisions or biases they made in their recent manager selection, whereas a likely culprit is a falloff in the persistence of outperformance among private equity managers.