A growing number of corporate leaders, buckling under the stress and uncertainty of the AI age, are looking for a very human solution: A chief of staff.
Something unusual is happening in the US equity market. AI infrastructure winners continue to power market gains, yet more stocks are moving against the S&P 500. That doesn’t necessarily signal widespread fundamental weakness, though it may reflect AI-driven market imbalances creating opportunity beyond today’s leaders.
A record inflow hit the largest US-listed South Korea exchange-traded fund, as investors seeking exposure to SK Hynix Inc. piled into the ETF as a proxy at a time when the chipmaker’s new American depositary receipts trade at a substantial premium to its local shares.
Halfway through the year, the U.S. equity market performance is broadening. That said, market concentration remains incredibly high, while equity and bond correlations sit in positive territory — conditions that scream a call for diversification. Investors are heeding that call, many with alternatives ETFs.
Entering Wednesday, the Russell 2000 and S&P SmallCap 600 indexes were up an average of 20.8% year-to-date, confirming small-cap stocks are back with a vengeance. Arguably overlooked in that scenario, some vibrant ETFs represent higher-quality approaches to smaller stocks.
President Xi Jinping used the rise of China’s AI models to stake his claim on shaping the technology’s global rules, even as their growing power stirs security concerns in Washington and Beijing alike.
A country drowning in energy shouldn't also feel like it's running out of electricity. In other words: before we ask whether America can make more things again, we should probably ask whether America can power the production.
On July 15, Direxion launched the Direxion Daily SK Hynix Bull 2X ETF (SKHL), seeking to replicate double the daily performance of the South Korean semiconductor manufacturers Sk Hynix (SKHY). The fund provides leveraged exposure to the world’s leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips. It boasts an expense ratio of 97 basis points.
At any rate, the value of the trophy reflects the value of gold. It’s almost certain that when they play the next World Cup in 2030, the trophy will be worth even more. Or I should say, the value of the dollar we price the trophy in will be less.
As the forces shaping bond markets become more local, the opportunities become more global. From energy stress to fiscal policy to advances in AI, today’s defining market forces are likely to play out differently across regions, sectors and issuers.
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.
Apple Inc. is again the biggest company in the world after wresting the title from Nvidia Corp., which has held it since May 2025.
Big Pharma has a $300 billion problem, and biotech developers with promising drugs are becoming the fix. Major drugmakers are spending at a pace not seen since 2019 to replace medicines that will soon lose patent protection.
The good news is real. The easy trade is not. Growth has held up, artificial intelligence investment is showing up in earnings and capital spending, and fixed income is offering yields that create serious cushion for portfolios.
The S&P 500 started and ended the week on a sour note, ultimately resulting in a 1.6% loss.
The yield on the 10-year note finished July 17, 2026 at 4.55% while the 2-year note ended at 4.18%.
Official recession calls are the responsibility of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, which is understandably vague about the specific indicators on which they base their decisions. There is, however, a general belief that there are four big indicators that the committee weighs heavily in their cycle identification process.
Home values fell for a second straight month in June, according to the Zillow Home Value Index. Additionally, after adjusting for inflation, real home values dropped even more sharply, hitting their lowest level in over five years.
Small-cap stocks remain the cheapest corner of the U.S. market. That’s true even after posting their best first-half performance in more than three decades, according to Morningstar’s Q3 2026 stock market outlook.
Consumer sentiment reached its highest level since February, driven by easing gas prices. The preliminary July reading for the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index came in at 54.4. This marks a 9.9% (4.9 points) increase from June and beat the expected reading of 51.0.
The bonds sold by hyperscalers to fuel their artificial intelligence ambitions have become a drag on investor portfolios from London to Tokyo.
Industrial production rose less than expected in June, increasing 0.1% after May's 0.1% growth. This was lower than the expected 0.2% growth and marks a 1.1% increase compared to one year ago.
Housing starts in the US surged in June after a sharp drop a month earlier, driven by a rebound in apartment construction.
Building permits fell 3.0% in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.367 million. The latest reading missed the forecast of 1.400 million.
Housing starts jumped 19.0% in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.427 million, beating forecasts driven by a massive surge in multi-family units.
Investors love an oligopoly. Imagine an industry dominated by a few large, long-standing players. They can earn outsized profits in boom times and avoid crashes thanks to rational capital spending. The existential questions, though, are whether these firms might turn on each other, and is the industry’s entry barrier high enough.
Our baseline outlook still sees the Fed on hold through 2026 amid gradually easing price pressures. But Waller’s comments suggest that after a string of firmer Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation prints, the Fed now places greater emphasis on responding if inflation surprises sharply to the upside or proves more persistent than expected, regardless of which factors are driving the inflation. And this raises the stakes for incoming inflation data throughout the year.
As prediction markets draw record trading around events like the World Cup, Jump Trading Group is betting the once-niche contracts are becoming a lasting corner of Wall Street.
Midyear is a useful moment in investing—not because it tells us where we are going, but because it offers a clearer view of how little we truly knew at the start. Six months is often enough time for confident forecasts to meet reality, for consensus narratives to fray, and for the distinction between what sounded plausible and what proved durable to come into focus.
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.
Gold and silver traded in a volatile fashion over the past several days as investors weighed conflicting signals from the Federal Reserve, economic data, and geopolitical developments in the Middle East.
David Solomon, decked out in full academic garb, bobbed his head happily and wagged his index finger to the beat of his own AI-generated music.
Private debt is increasingly valued for its potential to help insurers operationally and strategically: support liability matching, improve portfolio design, diversify underlying exposures and, when underwritten well, add resilient excess return.
The rules governing global commodity markets are starting to witness a profound shift, which is putting critical minerals at the forefront of policy. On a recent episode of ETF Guide’s Metals in Motion, Justin Tolman, Senior Portfolio Manager and Economic Geologist at Sprott Asset Management, discussed this dynamic.
A hawkish pivot by the Federal Reserve and resilient U.S. growth could keep the dollar strong, but its gains could be limited by any narrowing of the U.S. interest rate advantage.
In the week ending July 11th, initial jobless claims were at a seasonally adjusted level of 208,000. This represents a decrease of 8,000 from the previous week's figure and was lower than the forecast of 216,000.
Discover the top 10 most-read charts from the first half of 2026, covering historic market valuations, record margin debt, recession indicators, and global index performance.
Netflix Inc. has been one of the worst stocks in the market over the past 12 months as concerns about the video-streaming giant’s plans and prospects refuse to go away. Now, investors worry that its earnings report after the close will confirm those fears.
Dr. Illah Nourbakhsh, Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, brings his research expertise to a frank conversation about which jobs physical AI will genuinely displace, which are more resilient than the headlines suggest, and how families can make smarter decisions about education and career planning in a world where the robots are already showing up for work
Hoisington Investment Management Co., the bond manager known for its bullish stance on US Treasuries going back more than 30 years, has turned bearish.
Is it a bubble or isn’t it? That’s what everyone seems to be asking about the US stock market. I say it isn’t. A bubble to me is when price becomes disconnected from any rational, articulable value, the way people chased opaque schemes in the Roaring 1920s or the blind faith in new internet companies in the 1990s.
Nominal retail sales were up 0.22% month-over-month and up 6.72% year-over-year in May. However, after adjusting for inflation, real retail sales were up 0.64% month-over-month and up 3.15% year-over-year.
Builder confidence edged lower in July as ongoing affordability challenges continue to affect the housing market. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Housing Market Index (HMI) fell 2 points from June to 34 this month, marking the 27th consecutive negative reading.
The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) pending home sales index sank 5.4% in June to 72.5, the lowest level since January.
Captain Ahab never caught Moby Dick, but Morgan Stanley shows how tracking billionaire tech whales like Elon Musk can eventually land a fortune. Not long ago, the bank appeared to have shot itself in the foot as lead lender on the disastrous $44 billion buyout of social media platform Twitter, now known as X.
The Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index showed activity expanded significantly in July, with the index jumping 31.1 points to 41.4. This marks the highest level for the index since November 2021 and was more than triple the forecast of 12.7.
U.S. headline retail sales increased for a fifth straight month, rising 0.2% to $768.6B in June, while core retail sales fell unexpectedly by 0.2%.
Bitcoin's closing price edged higher this week, rising almost 3% to move just below $65,000. However, BTC is currently down approximately 26% year-to-date and sits about 48% below its October 2025 record high.
General Douglas MacArthur once remarked that “rules are mostly made to be broken.” He was at odds with U.S. President Harry Truman over the conduct of the Korean War, feeling that the restrictions placed on his forces weren’t supportive of success.
