Retirement Income

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.

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.

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.

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.

Today we’ll consider the interaction between long-term interest rates, the Fed’s limited ability to influence them, inflation and the housing market. And because home prices are the biggest concern for many households, we’ll start with a look at the latest changes there. And then look at the Federal Reserve’s likely reaction.

Research Affiliates and PIMCO leadership analyze key 2026 midyear market shifts, warning of elevated U.S. and AI equity valuations.

During periods of elevated market stress, including those that see pinched corporate bonds, collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs) often outperform other corporate bond assets. Add to that, CLOs often emerge from those rough patches in strong form, delivering impressive returns a year after downturns.

Russ Koesterich explains gold’s recent fall and lays out his argument for why investors should continue to hold a modest position in their portfolios.

Electricity demand is surging all over the world. To meet this demand, vast investments in power generation need to be made, and grids need to be overhauled and expanded. Ramping up electricity generation and delivery is extremely expensive, and electricity prices have spiked up throughout much of the developed world.

In the Warsh Fed's new era of two-way risk, bonds offer something rare: potential downside risk mitigation that investors get paid to hold.

The prime culprit was renewed questioning of the artificial intelligence (AI) buildout given the increasing amount of capital investment needed to bring it to life and the corresponding costs for those who use the technology weighed against its potential productivity benefits.

A major milestone for the story of the stock market this year looms this evening. Alphabet (GOOGL) will report its earnings today after the bell. Reports suggest the firm will have big, positive news to share, so investors may have questions.

The relative cheapness of Treasuries versus interest rate swaps mechanically affects how corporate bond spreads are measured, but it appears to have limited influence on how corporate bond spreads actually behave.

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

The market received encouraging inflation news last week as both the CPI and PPI came in below expectations, as inflation pressures moderate. A negative monthly CPI print effectively removed any concern about an immediate Federal Reserve rate hike.

We’re back to reading tea leaves! Hooray! Next week the Federal Reserve will have its second meeting since Kevin Warsh officially took the helm. And, at this point, the outcome is far from certain, which is unusual given that ever since Ben Bernanke instituted “forward guidance” the market usually knew what to expect.

I’ve been writing about inflation more in recent months and quarters because inflation has become the major driver of the US macroeconomic landscape. This week, we take a deep dive into inflation and interest rates, and at the end, I talk about why I am buying gold for my grandkids.

Decades of data across global markets reach the same verdict: the more frequently retail traders trade, the worse they perform. The infrastructure has never been more inviting. The losses have never been more documented. Here are some key statistics we will dive into further.

It seems to be the end of the Great Moderation Era for the U.S. economy. The Great Moderation Era—which marked most of the two decades leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic—is drifting away into what we call the new Temperamental Era.

For physicians, major financial decisions may rarely affect just one area of their financial life. The real potential risk is failing to understand how those decisions impact everything else.

A handful of key economic data points dropped last week, painting a picture of an economy that is successfully downshifting from its recent inflation peaks even as consumers keep their footing.

For many investors and families, tax planning may become a year-end exercise squeezed into November and December. But by the time the calendar turns to the fourth quarter, many of the most effective opportunities are already limited.

Tax-aware long-short strategies are no longer the exclusive domain of institutional investors. As separate account delivery has expanded access, more advisors are asking whether tax-aware long-short belongs in their clients’ portfolios. Here are five practical considerations to help you decide.

Beyond the obvious differences such as contribution limits, ability to take loans and eligibility requirements, here are some other, lesser-known differences many savers may not be aware of.

In June we pointed out that Health Care looks cheap. Even though it has been rallying hard of late, the sector continues to trade at a 59% price-to-sales discount to the S&P 500, despite having an 18% return on equity (ROE) that is just a hair below the 19% ROE accorded the S&P 500.

Although economic conditions did not change much between the first and second quarters, investors were far more bullish in the second quarter.

After a difficult start to the year, investor sentiment reached a low point near the end of March as concerns around inflation, geopolitics, and rising interest rates weighed on risk assets.

The current level of stock market valuations remains – easily – the most speculative extreme in U.S. financial history, beyond both the 1929 and 2000 extremes. Our baseline estimate is that the S&P 500 has a material risk of losing something on the order of 75% over the completion of this cycle.

LPL Research examines how sticky inflation, Fed leadership changes, and AI-driven borrowing are shaping the fixed income outlook for 2026.

Historically, many in the pension industry viewed funding above the "plan termination level" as having little incremental value. Once a plan reached “plan termination level”, thought of as roughly 110% funding, conventional wisdom suggested additional surplus had little economic value because it is effectively "trapped capital."

It has been an eventful six months, and we are delighted that the Equity Dislocation Strategy has risen to the occasion. The Strategy generated a 9.05% net return in the first half of 2026, compared with a 1.3% return for MSCI ACWI Value minus MSCI ACWI Growth, a broad proxy for the value-growth spread.

Every year in early July, we update our interactive Periodic Table of Commodities Returns to reflect the performance of raw materials in the first six months of the year. Maybe I’m biased, but I believe it’s one of the clearest snapshots of the commodities landscape you’ll find anywhere.

Over the past few weeks, data has continued to point to a U.S. labor market that is healing after showing signs of weakness starting in late 2024 and persisting for nearly the entirety of 2025—a condition that spurred the Fed to cut rates even as inflation remained stuck above its 2 percent target.

Despite renewed geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, markets continue to display remarkable resilience. Major equity averages sit within striking distance of new all-time highs while oil, perhaps the biggest surprise of the year, remains anchored in the low $70s despite renewed hostilities.

The AI capex risk profile has gotten sharper since then, and the argument needs tightening in a few places. The bull case and the tail risk are now the same buildout, but they are running in different directions.

This week a number of articles caught my attention. The only thing that ties them together is their impact on the US and global economy. Economic anomalies: things we were not looking for but show up and force us to pay attention. Today in the summer heat, let’s take a look at a few of them.

Markets enter the second half of 2026 facing a familiar wall of worry—geopolitical conflict, oil prices, inflation, Federal Reserve policy, and questions around the durability of an AI-led equity rally. Yet the economic backdrop still looks resilient: growth remains solid, inflation has moderated, unemployment is reasonable, and market leadership appears to be broadening.

Russell Investments is getting new owners. An investor consortium led by B Capital, a global multi-stage investment firm, has agreed to acquire the asset manager from TA Associates and Reverence Capital Partners. The group also includes the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), according to a Thursday press release.

If there's one thing you should take away from it, it's this: these six measures rarely move together. When they have, twice in 250 years, the country entered a period of real upheaval. Right now, they're moving together again.

The action in Emerging Markets ETFs this year has been really interesting to watch. From record-breaking asset flows to impressive results, albeit massively dispersed, this category of funds has had quite a ride so far in 2026. What comes next could be equally interesting.

ClearBridge Investments: Although markets often pause to digest after large gains, history suggests these episodes usually prove fleeting, meaning major indexes could move higher in the second half of 2026.

Congress is in recess from June 30 through July 13 for the annual July 4 break, so it's relatively quiet in the nation's capital. But there is still plenty worth paying attention to.

Rising prices increase the value of collateral in every margin account, which automatically increases how much each investor can borrow under Reg T. Debt rises BECAUSE the market rose, not the reverse. That single fact is what breaks the ratios we’re about to examine, and it lies at the core of why margin debt risk is so often misjudged.

AI may reshape the labor market in ways that are difficult to predict, and it won’t be the first time this has happened. In the short term, the labor market appears to have stabilized and there are some early signs of acceleration.