The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision essentially wipes the Fiduciary Rule off the books. But, that doesn’t mean everything returns to the way it was before the Rule.

In the history of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, a 16th seed has never, ever, beaten a one seed...until this year. But, on Friday, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) beat the University of Virginia – not just a number one seed, but the top ranked team in the USA.

Last year, I made a number of bold predictions about how the advisory profession is evolving, and what firms are going to have to do to stay ahead of the curve. How have my predictions held up? Here are three transformations that will force every advisory firm to adapt.

GE retaught investors the great lesson that things that cannot go on forever don’t. Hopefully, ExxonMobil investors will heed that lesson.

It’s been a week and I’m starting to recover from my post-SIC high. It’s a weird feeling. I love SIC, yet processing it all takes time. Imagine one of those brain maps that shows the neurons opening new pathways. That’s what SIC does. It opens connections that I didn’t previously have.

You can be forgiven, for missing what I believe is the most significant development of the past few days. On Wednesday, the Senate, in a bipartisan vote, quietly approved plans to roll back key banking rules in 2010’s Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank).

We’ve written about the American steel tariffs in each of the last two weeks. But there remain some important points to make on the topic of trade.

We may come to view February 2018 as a turning point for the U.S. economy. For the first nine years of the current expansion, fiscal policy was constrained and trade policy was measured. During the past month, the two have moved with more force, raising important questions about the outlook.

Many income-oriented investors may not be appropriately positioned for the current market environment, with increasing inflation and looming tariffs poised to lead to significant underperformance.

Growth and value investing are often seen as competing styles, with one outperforming or underperforming the other during different periods of time and market cycles. While the approaches may differ, Stephen Dover, head of equities at Franklin Templeton Investments, and Norm Boersma, chief investment officer of Templeton Global Equity Group, say growth versus value doesn’t have to be an either-or proposition.

Are Fidelity Investments’ target date funds too risky? We evaluate the short and long-term risks for a typical participant.

A big part of Amazon’s success came from not being taken seriously by its competition. But now, fear of Amazon has reached paranoia levels. The laws of economics, however, still apply to Amazon’s announced health care venture.

The current recovery started in June 2009, 105 months ago, making it the third longest recovery in U.S. history.

Today, I’m going to recap one of this year’s new speakers, Karen Harris from the Macro Trends Group at Bain & Company. She has done some ground-breaking research on job automation and the future of work. Much like geopolitics, these factors define the parameters in which other trends develop, so I made Karen one of our day 1 lead-off speakers. As you’ll see below, her presentation was even more enlightening than I expected.

The Nasdaq closed at a new all-time high (ATH) on Friday. It has risen 6 days in a row. A number of studies suggest that it should continue to rise further, and that SPX should follow it, probably also to a new ATH. That is the near term set up as equities enter March options expiration week.

No doubt you’ve heard before that bull markets don’t die of old age. I can’t say for sure what will end this particular business cycle—no one can—but we’re seeing huge shifts in monetary and fiscal policy right now that investors can’t afford to ignore. As I often say, government policy is a precursor to change.

The White House has announced a new set of broad tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. The measure is surprising in its scope, its targets and its break from the long-prevailing trends of international trade.

The macro data from the past month continues to mostly point to positive growth. On balance, the evidence suggests the imminent onset of a recession is unlikely.

Ron and Jeff Muhlenkamp explain that recent tax cuts and deregulation should help keep the economy moving. Asset markets, on the other hand, could be affected by monetary tightening as the Federal Reserve and other central banks reduce or reverse their easy money policies.

Everyone seems to be a commodities bull lately. PIMCO is no exception: Our latest Asset Allocation Outlook suggests an overweight to real assets, including commodities.

Volatility came roaring back in February as the S&P 500 notched its first negative monthly return in more than a year. The S&P 500 Managed Risk Index reduced its equity allocation for the first time in 18 months. The U.S. bond market notched its second consecutive negative monthly return as the yield curve tilted higher and credit spreads widened, diminishing its diversification benefit.

While it seems US politicians rarely see eye-to-eye on anything, the fact that America’s aging infrastructure needs attention is one issue that has attracted clear bipartisan agreement. Yet, it’s unclear who is going to foot the bill for the sweeping improvements that seem to be needed.

Before every talk, I ask participants to send me their most pressing concerns. At, or near, the top of every list is “justifying fees.” That concern will grow as technology invades every aspect of the advisory industry. But you have a secret weapon that few advisors will use effectively to respond to this challenge.

In the first few months of 2018, some US companies and multinationals have raised their dividends by 10% or more—a higher percentage increase than we’ve seen in a few years.

Here at BackEnd Benchmarking we have recently released the 4th quarter 2017 edition of The Robo ReportTM. In this report, we took an in-depth look at two-year returns of seven different portfolios with a full two years’ worth of data.

We view the events of late January and early February as healthy – the final “death spasm” of market reliance on central bank policy, and a return to more normalized market conditions – volatility returns, earnings and fundamentals matter, and a reminder that stocks can go down sometimes as well as always up.

A few weeks ago, I caught myself pulled in by an old James Bond classic, The World is Not Enough, starring Pierce Brosnan. In the movie, an oil heiress, Elektra King, is kidnapped. While in captivity, she becomes a victim to Stockholm Syndrome and plots with her captor to destroy an oil pipeline running to the Bosphorus Sea. There is a scene in the movie that encapsulates where we are in today’s stock market environment.

The US doesn't face "secular stagnation" caused by outside or uncontrollable forces, like foreigners (and bad trade deals), technology that steals jobs, or Unions that are too weak. Growth is slow because government has grown too big.

Path dependency is a very important concept. It’s something we constantly think about, and thus, we’ll take a small detour to explore it.

Italian general elections were held on March 4, 2018. The election results point to a hung parliament, with no party or coalition winning enough votes to form a government.

This week, the White House signaled its intention to place punitive tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum. Markets and analysts reacted quickly, and negatively.

President Donald Trump’s proposed tariff on imported steel and aluminum, at 25 percent and 10 percent, is much more than a shot across the bow. Indeed, this could be the official kickoff of the trade war we all anticipated. The protectionist trade policy, announced this week as the president met with metals executives, raised fresh inflation worries and had an immediate impact on capital markets.

Target-date funds played a big part in helping defined contribution (DC) plan participants stay invested through February’s market turmoil. And history does repeat: in the severe 2008–09 financial crisis, these funds kept many participants positioned to take part in a lengthy bull market.

Read the latest Evensky & Katz / Foldes Newsletter by Harold Evensky.

Now that we've had a correction, where are we likely headed next? In this letter to clients, Erik Conley looks at the prospects for more new highs and the likelihood of more downside to come.

In Part I of this report we outlined the geopolitics of Italy and its political economy. This week, we continue the report with an analysis of the upcoming elections and Germany’s impact on the EU, concluding with potential market ramifications.

The opening months of 2018 have seen volatility return to global financial markets, but we think it is important to stress US economic fundamentals have remained broadly the same. After an unusually long period of calm in many markets, the reappearance of volatility at some point seemed likely, even if the speed of market gyrations has been unsettling for investors.

We look at options “insurance” the same way we look at any asset: It can make sense at one price but make no sense at another. As you will see, at today’s price they make a lot of sense.

Looking long-term, there are mounting risks involving debt that make gold appear very attractive right now as a safe haven and portfolio diversifier.

Forecasting the direction of real estate prices requires the same disciplined approach as for other goods and services. Here are three reasons why commercial real estate supply exceeds market demand, and the implications for your clients and their REIT investments.

We respectfully disagree with BlackRock’s stance on U.S. and European equities. Here’s why.

Matthews Asia CIO Robert Horrocks says current stock valuations favor Asia amid an increase in market volatility globally.

We suspect the slope of the linear regression line is not as steep as those who use P/E to attempt to predict future returns believe.

After falling into their first correction in two years, US equities regained half of their loses in just 6 days. The rebound has been strong enough and persistent enough to suggest that it has further to run. Sentiment and volatility backwardation support that view. However, a low retest over the coming weeks is still a viable risk.

Today marks the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, China’s most important holiday. The fire rooster struts off-stage, clearing the way for the loyal earth dog. According to CLSA’s tongue-in-cheek Feng Shui Index, health care, consumer and paper products are favored to outperform early this year, followed by internet, utilities and tech leading into the summer.

U.S. inflation data for January came in stronger than expected. What effect could this have on future Fed interest rate increases?

It takes significant effort to assert and defend what John Stuart Mill called the freedom of mind. And there is a real chance that, once lost, those who grow up in the digital age – in which the power to command and shape people’s attention is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few companies – will have difficulty regaining it.

Corrections during bull markets have had a strong propensity to form a double bottom. Since 1980, only 16% of corrections have had a "V bounce" where the low was never revisited. The current bull market has been different. Since 2009, about half of the corrections have had a "V bounce." So what happens this time? It's a good guess that if sentiment quickly becomes very bullish, then a retest of the recent low is probably ahead.

We expect US interest rates to be range-bound in the first half of 2018, but with a risk of higher yields in the second half. Our rates view is driven by our analysis of growth, inflation and monetary policy in the US and globally.

A monthly review of market-moving events across countries and asset classes, and what investors can expect going forward.