Global Markets

U.S. equities finished lower last week as investors weighed an escalating conflict with Iran against renewed concern over the scale of AI-related spending. The technology-heavy NASDAQ Composite was the worst performer, falling 2.1 per cent, while the S&P 500, an index of the largest U.S. companies, declined 0.6 per cent.

Private equity has become easier than ever for individual investors to buy. Founders, executives, physicians, and business owners now regularly see private funds offered through banks, wealth platforms, feeders, evergreen vehicles, or registered interval funds. However, just because these funds are more readily available, and at lower minimums, does not mean they should immediately be invested in.

Artificial intelligence is a transformative new technology, but we believe that it’s likely to follow a familiar pattern. From spreadsheets to the internet, innovations have historically given early adopters an edge—for a time. In our view, the ability to maintain that advantage depends much more on how effectively an asset manager integrates it throughout the organization.

South Korea and Taiwan are grabbing the majority of financial news headlines when it comes to international exposure, but a peek inside Latin America reveals potential opportunities. Brazil, in particular, could be offering investors ample value in both equities and bonds beyond those aforementioned countries already benefiting from the artificial intelligence (AI) buildout.

A continued escalation in the Middle East, where the Iranian-backed Houthis joined the conflict in an attempt to disrupt Saudi Arabian crude shipments that pass through the Red Sea via the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, drove oil prices higher, while new tariff announcements and Alphabet's earnings release created headwinds for equities.

Kevin Warsh’s second meeting as Fed Chair saw no change in rates and minimal edits to the Fed Statement, but included a press conference giving insight into what the Fed is focused on.

Considering that the Federal Reserve has been meeting this week, it’s safe to say that inflation is likely front-and-center on the minds of many advisors and investors. After all, energy prices and supply chain constraints have kept inflationary pressures far more persistent than the Fed would like.

In the current macroeconomic landscape marked by higher-for-longer interest rates, investors looking to optimize their short-term capital allocations may want to consider collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) as a higher-yielding potential alternative to traditional cash proxies like money market funds.

Leverage, ratings arbitrage, liquidity transformation, and a growing willingness to embrace complexity and illiquidity are becoming more visible across parts of the financial system.

The US economy grew 2.0% in 2025 and it looks like it is growing another 2.0% this year. Real GDP grew at a 2.1% annual rate in the first quarter and, as we set out below, it looks like it grew at a 2.0% rate in the second quarter.

The market encountered its stiffest test in months last week as rising oil prices, higher bond yields, and renewed scrutiny of AI capital spending combined to pressure many of the year’s biggest winners. Easing tensions over the weekend have buoyed stocks. If the Strait of Hormuz was opened, I believe the market would be 5% to 10% higher.

As the Q2 earnings season kicks into high gear, market sentiment around the AI trade is undergoing a critical sanity check. Alphabet’s second quarter results last week served as a barometer for how Wall Street is weighing artificial intelligence investments against current profitability.

With the US-Iran conflict nearing the five-month mark, equity markets have mostly shrugged off the latest escalation. On one hand, that’s understandable – a healthy economy and record corporate profits continue to support the market’s fundamentals. But a note of caution is warranted.

Without the support of rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, it’s been a lethargic year in terms of performance by municipal bonds and the related ETFs, but that doesn’t mean advisors and fixed income investors should ignore this bond segment.

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

On a recent episode of the Money Metals Podcast, host Mike Maharrey welcomed veteran market strategist Gregory T. Weldon, publisher of the Global Macro Strategy Report, for a wide-ranging discussion on precious metals, inflation, Federal Reserve policy, artificial intelligence, and global macroeconomic trends.

For many years, globalization felt like a one-way street. Supply chains stretched effortlessly across continents. Companies built “just-in-time” systems that assumed goods, data, and capital would flow smoothly around the world. Investors could buy a global index fund and feel reasonably confident that they were capturing the benefits of ever-closer integration.

Discover Aberdeen’s closed-end funds (CEFs) for high yields, illiquid assets, long-term investments, and resilient income for 2026.

If you own treasuries, you need to make two separate decisions rather than one blended bet. The liquidity sleeve holds the bill exposure and does the work people mistakenly ask the long end to do. The duration sleeve stays deliberately small, sized as recession insurance rather than as a conviction call on falling inflation.

US earnings are set to grow briskly in 2026, but much of the expected gains are being driven by expanding profit margins that may be hard to sustain. Equity investors should ask whether portfolios are exposed to businesses with durable demand and profitable reinvestment—or merely a favorable margin cycle.

The structural backdrop for U.S. inflation increasingly suggests that the long run equilibrium range is migrating from roughly 1.5–3.5% toward 3.5–4.5%, with a significant risk of episodes of inflation above 5%. An important core reason is the steady erosion of the disinflationary architecture that dominated the 1990–2020 period, even as various cyclical pressures also play a role.

The motivation for today's report comes from the growing number of articles warning about the possibility of an AI bubble. The truth is that nobody knows whether a bubble exists today in artificial intelligence or whether one may emerge in the future.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that tariff tensions between the United States and the rest of the world won’t be going away any time soon. Last Friday, the U.S. imposed a series of tariffs on 60 different trading partners, including China, Canada, and the European Union.

On July 28, Morgan Stanley launched two new spot crypto ETFs on NYSE Arca. The Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust (MSSE) and the Morgan Stanley Solana Trust (MSOL) provide spot price exposure to underlying ethereum (ETH) and solana (SOL), alongside additional distributions from staking yields.

Brent crude crossed above $100 a barrel this week, all due to a 20-mile-wide stretch of water some 6,500 miles away from the U.S. Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—the Persian Gulf bottleneck that carried roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil before the fighting started—has fallen to virtually zero.

As markets place a greater premium on shareholder-friendly capital allocation, companies that consistently combine buybacks with dividends may be better positioned to outperform.

I am not right as often as I would like. And feeling bad about being right occurs very, very rarely. But now is one of those times. I was not surprised when the ceasefire between the United States and Iran broke down long before it was due to expire.

As advisors face outflows to client income and one-time distributions, organic growth via client pickups can prove a useful asset, according to a recent report.

A wave of new active ETFs is reshaping the fund landscape, and advisors now need extra care when screening funds for their models.

June may have proven to be a difficult month for silver investors, but it’s likely far too soon to give up on the precious metal. To better understand this, it’s important to contextualize why silver’s price is struggling and why the metal’s long-term opportunities are still there.

The second-quarter earnings season is in full swing. So far, the results are landing in line or better than the upwardly revised Wall Street estimates. That’s the opposite of how this usually works. Analysts normally trim their forecasts as a year wears on. In 2026, they’ve done the opposite.

Oil has staged an impressive rebound this month as the conflict between the U.S. and Iran has re-escalated. The memorandum of understanding signed on June 17 created a 60-day window for negotiations, but the diplomatic opening lasted only a few weeks. Both sides subsequently accused the other of violating the peace agreement, and military operations have resumed.

In this video, Chuck Carnevale, co-founder of FAST Graphs, revisits one of investing’s most persistent concerns: how should investors prepare for the next recession or bear market? Updating an article and video he originally published in 2021, Chuck explains why he believes investors should prepare for market downturns, but not fear them.

Health care stocks came alive in the second quarter, benefiting from relatively low valuations and a late rotation away from some high-flying tech names. The sector returned 9.5% for the period, good enough to tie for fourth among the S&P 500® Index's 11 sectors.

Pensions are as healthy as they’ve been for a long while. Maintaining tried and true investment strategies has led the way to current funding levels and may support pension stability for years to come.

The equity bull market is expected to continue through the second half of 2026, supported by resilient U.S. growth, AI investment and solid earnings.

In this midyear global outlook summary, the authors revisit Vanguard’s economic and market outlooks and assess how our views have evolved since the start of the year.

The ETF market saw a push in capital away from the concentrated U.S. tech sector to defensive broad market exposure, short duration bonds, and commodities. The shift in flows is amplified by the semiconductor market pullback, interest rate uncertainty, and ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

Emerging markets are quietly having their best decade in a generation, and most global investors still don’t own enough. The case for investing in emerging markets today is not the tired characterisation of a high growth, low valuation opportunity.

Healthcare systems across the country are facing a difficult reality. Costs are rising faster than revenues, balance sheets are under pressure, the pacing of private market allocations are harder to manage, and liquidity has become an important topic for many organizations.