Bitcoin recently had a scorching hot run. It has some crypto market observers believing new all-time highs are right around the corner. Additionally, it’s having the predictable, though still welcomed, effect of lifting some stocks with intimate ties to the largest digital currency.
History shows that when the Federal Reserve (Fed) is paused and easing, longer duration higher quality fixed income has outperformed riskier assets, as well as money market instruments.
The current speculative environment seems to increasingly resemble the Technology Bubble of 1999/2000. All bubbles eventually burst and the burst of the Tech Bubble led to the so-called lost decade in equities.
The Fed’s close monitoring and well-signaled tapering of QT should prevent disruptions to the short-term funding markets—despite converging risks.
Regarding the surprisingly strong employment data, Fed Chair Powell said the quiet part out loud. The media hopes you didn’t hear it as we head into a contentious election in November.
The chip sector comes into sharp focus ahead of a key earnings report, with signs of divergence in the sector.
One of the pleasant surprises of 2023 was how quickly inflation decelerated in major economies. Most of the good news came from falling goods prices.
Higher for longer. This was the key message to me from advisors and ETF industry folks at the Exchange conference when talking about fixed income.
What do passive ETFs really do? Many investors are used to the comfort of simply allocating to a big index and almost forgetting about it, only checking in every so often.
Walmart leads the way as major retailers start weighing in on a positive year for consumer spending. But will it hold true as individual companies report results?
We think market optimism can persist for now but stay nimble. We get more active in our long-term portfolios given a greater dispersion of returns.
A key economic mistake people make is thinking growth leads inflation. One reason they do that is because inflation is a monetary phenomenon. When money is too easy, first growth rises, and then inflation rises with a longer lag due to excess dollars in the system.
The challenges in banks' portfolios will work out over time.
Looking back, I believe the financial advisors who were most willing to adapt to changing times were generally more able to set themselves apart from the crowd and experienced a higher rate of success.
The real estate sector represents a mere 2.31% of the S&P 500. Just two sectors – materials and utilities – command smaller allocations in the benchmark domestic equity gauge. That low weight garnered by real estate stocks and REITs belies the popularity of those assets among investors.
With one month in the books for 2024, and markets still waiting for a sign from the Fed, many investors may be looking to shake up their portfolios. What worked in 2023, after all, may not necessarily work in 2024.
This year continues to follow in the footsteps of 2023, marked by increased investor optimism but ongoing uncertainty. For now, much remains unknown, and a higher January inflation print only proves the challenges that still lie ahead.
Patience is required when embracing long-dated bonds and corresponding exchange traded funds. In standard market environments, intraday price action for long duration Treasurys usually isn’t breathtaking. Nor are investors expecting it to be.
Relatively hot inflation reports might be blips, but they reinforce why the Fed's rate-cutting cycle might be more gradual, which could be a better backdrop for stocks.
Investors are turning toward active ETFs and away from mutual funds thanks to the ETF wrapper, per data from Trackinsight’s Global ETF Survey. The survey, which came out this week, showed growing investor favor toward active strategies.
While the bulls remain entirely in control of the market narrative, divergences and other technical warnings suggest becoming more cautious may be prudent.
Sentiment data is beginning to match relatively strong "hard" economic data.
Even at the risk of sounding like a parrot by repeating the same thing again and again, we think that it is, once again, appropriate at this time to do so: “One data point doesn’t a trend make.”
In this video, Chuck Carnevale, Co-Founder of FAST Graphs, a.k.a. Mr. Valuation, and Professor Nathan Mauck, will discuss insights on European dividend growth stocks. They will analyze several stocks, highlighting their consistent earnings growth, dividend records, and fair value multiples.
When consumers fall behind, the credit card bill goes unpaid.
The deceleration of the core PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures) inflation rate in the second half of 2023 catalyzed a pivot in monetary policy messaging and shifted market pricing for the path of policy rates in 2024.
Investors looking for a “story stock” need not look much further than semiconductor giant Nvidia (NVDA). Proving that lofty valuations aren’t detriments to the upside, the stock is higher by 46.72% year-to-date. Additionally, it is now the third-largest U.S.-based company by market capitalization.
WisdomTree’s Head of Distribution, Americas, Joe Grogan, sat down with VettaFi to discuss the firm’s message to advisors, its digital assets and tokenization capabilities, model portfolios, and more at the recent ETF Exchange conference.
If you’re a parent or grandparent, you may know of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” storybook series. Written in second person, they make “you” the hero.
More than just demographics, Head of Franklin Templeton Institute Stephen Dover and Investment Strategist Kim Catechis think education and government policy are of critical importance to economic growth.
Secure lifetime income is a top wish-list item for defined contribution plan participants, and it has benefits for plan sponsors too. But there are very different ways to deliver it.
A record month of issuance in January and still relatively high yields could be prime drivers of demand for corporate debt in the current market environment. With that, an all-encompassing approach to corporate debt is available in the Vanguard Total Corporate Bond ETF ETF Shares (VTC).
With added excitement surrounding artificial intelligence, the Magnificent Seven may be one of the easiest ways to play this trend without investing in obscure small-cap stocks.
Approximately 80% of all S&P 500 companies have reported fourth-quarter earnings as of today, and of those, 75% have reported earnings per share (EPS) above estimates. That’s well above the 10-year average, according to FactSet.
There's been a lot of focus, especially in the media, around things like renewable energy and electric vehicles. But if you think about the challenge of reducing emissions, we're going to have to do that across a diverse set of solutions, including things like heating and cooling, manufacturing, infrastructure, agriculture.
There is some conventional wisdom as it pertains to how interest rates affect stocks. For example, the real estate and utilities sectors are viewed as negatively correlated to 10-year Treasury yields. That explains why those sectors struggled last year.
January’s US inflation print came as an unwelcome spoiler for financial markets, dealing what looks like the final blow to hopes of a March interest-rate cut, sending bond yields back up and triggering a major one-day correction in equities.
The not-so-secret ingredient that’s been fueling gains for big tech since its fourth quarter has definitely been artificial intelligence (AI). The lack of AI tailwinds for Tesla could be pushing the company’s stock down further.
We are in the early days of an AI-driven productivity boom.
Stephen Dover, Head of Franklin Templeton Institute, recently hosted a discussion with Michael Buchanan, Co-Chief Investment Officer, Western Asset Management, and Brendan Circle, Portfolio Manager, Franklin Income Investors. The group considered the current market environment as it pertains to cash in client portfolios. Has cash reached a tipping point?
In the face of still elevated inflation, the U.S. consumer remains a force to be reckoned with. Obviously, that’s a plus for the consumer discretionary sector and ETFs such as the Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight Consumer Discretionary ETF (RSPD).
Japanese stocks were standout performers in 2023 after years of stagnation and deflation left Japan an unloved investment destination. Can the positive momentum continue in 2024? BlackRock’s Belinda Boa believes it can and sees the makings of a rags-to-riches story with staying power ― and abundant investment potential.
Many midstream companies provide guidance for the year ahead, but a select group also offer EBITDA growth guidance or targets for the next few years. Visibility to future EBITDA growth provides important context for dividend growth.
The consumer price index (CPI) for January showed that core inflation held steady at a rate of 3.9% last month, a small setback in a trend of moderating inflation in the U.S. Healing in global supply chains and a rebalancing of the U.S. labor market have helped to dramatically tame inflation over the past year.
Big tech’s strong fourth-quarter rally behind artificial intelligence (AI) has been well-documented, but the big question was whether it could sustain the run. So far it has, with the Direxion Daily Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & Automation Index Bull 2X ETF (UBOT) up almost 50% over the past three months.
Companies supporting efforts to create a more secure and stable world could provide equity investors with an attractive source of long-term returns.
The just-concluded Exchange conference brought together more than 1,800 people on-site in Miami. The advisor and ETF community came together to learn from one another and industry experts.
Over the past two years, we have had to revise a lot of numbers upward: the Fed hiked rates more than we expected, inflation has been sticky and growth has far exceeded expectations.
The coming 12 months are shaping up as the year of the interest-rate cut. After racing ahead with the most aggressive tightening campaign in decades during 2022 and 2023, central banks around the world are poised to begin easing monetary policy as inflation continues to retreat.
China's economy has disappointed most expectations over the past year. China's need to rebalance from investment to consumption is coming when tensions with the U.S. are elevated. This could create continued volatility. We believe China does have the levers to alleviate some key challenges.
