In investing and life, spending your time on critical variables and what is really important directionally pays dividends. AI can legitimately reduce “task time” in the investment business, but it does not replace experience and judgement. Not having double-digit bodies running around also helps one focus.
After underperforming for much of the last decade, emerging-market (EM) equities rebounded nicely in 2025. Is it too late to invest? We don’t think so. With valuations still attractive and earnings growth forecasts looking up, this could be the right time to give the developing world a closer look.
When I was preparing to write my December memo about artificial intelligence, Is It a Bubble?, I gained a great deal from speaking with some interesting techies in their thirties and forties. It’s stimulating to explore fresh territory and an absolute requirement for staying current as an investor.
Money – everybody wants it, but few actually have it. As shown in recent financial statistics, the “wealth gap” in America continues to grow between the “haves” and the “have-nots.”
Gold’s sharp swings and a new Federal Reserve chair are not separate stories. In a recent episode of the Money Metals podcast, Mike Maharrey sat down with Axel Merk, President and Chief Investment Officer of Merk Investments, to connect the dots between market turbulence and what may be a structural shift at the Fed.
Is inflation rising or falling? Is unemployment solid or are there significant issues? Given the massive revisions of labor data, how can we base decisions on employment numbers? And what happens when the various collected data conflicts with themselves?
Investment strategy is never easy, but we have started this year with a remarkable confluence of shifting factors: technological, economic and geopolitical. Understanding how they will play out and interact becomes crucial to asset allocation.
Many software stocks have been under pressure in recent months, as investors have started to perceive them as vulnerable to emerging artificial intelligence technology. As highlighted in the “6-Month Price History of the S&P Software and Service Index” chart, software stocks have declined roughly 27% from their September 2025 high.
Today, the Supreme Court stripped away the Trump Administration's power to impose sweeping tariffs through emergency authority—but the battle over US trade policy is far from over.
The article from the Wall Street Journal titled “Why My Generation Is Turning to Financial Nihilism” by Kyla Scanlon argues that Gen Z is embracing high-risk financial behavior out of despair and detachment, but the data shows something very different.
Before turning your investment perspective upside down, let’s define how most investors think about value and growth stocks. For some reason, investors often assume that growth and value are mutually exclusive. They are not, as we will explain.
At their most recent meeting, the Federal Reserve and Chair Powell told us that the risks of weakening labor and higher inflation had declined. It painted a nice picture of a soft landing, but wasn’t a recipe for immediate rate cuts.
The historic election victory in Japan for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has granted Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi the strongest mandate in the country’s postwar era and raised hopes of a shift toward growth-oriented policy.
This past week, I had the privilege of attending the 2026 Harvard Presidents’ Seminar alongside some of the nation’s top executives and thought leaders. One of the most compelling speakers was Ambassador Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia.
The Federal Reserve System has a critically important role in the economy, but it is designed to act slowly. The modern economy isn’t slow at all. Things change before Fed officials even notice them, much less understand them. That’s why Kevin Warsh’s nomination as Federal Reserve chair is so important.
For nearly two years, markets were driven by the same speculative narrative that “this time is different.” Speculative narratives are not only seductive but also contribute to investment behaviors that obscure reality. Speculation disguised as investing is a losing proposition.
LPL Research examines how the Fed is entering 2026 amid constrained conditions and as growth and inflation meet an unsustainable fiscal trajectory.
Municipal credit remains strong in 2026 with high reserves and sector resilience. Still, policy changes and economic pressures ahead warrant attention.
At GMO, we have always defined a bubble as a two-standard deviation divergence of the price of any asset class above its long-term real price trend. The U.S. stock market has now been in bubble territory for a prolonged period. Sooner or later, the bubble will burst and the price will return to its historic level.
The near-perfect timing of gold breaking through $5,000 while silver sliced through $100 has grabbed the market’s attention.
Concerns over accelerating inflation persisted throughout 2025. However, these anxieties were unwarranted as wage and price increases slowed in response to eight influential factors that also suggest that last year’s disinflation will persist in 2026.
Recently, stock market numbness closes the trading day. No wholesale crash, just a little wobbling for now with positive numbers for half of January. But I have a sense it’s in need of a cane to steady its momentum.
Long trips rarely end at the airport. We arrive, but our internal clocks lag behind; the first day back is spent acclimating to the new landscape. The global economy enters 2026 in much the same way. Shifting rules of commerce, political stoppages and patchy data have left decision makers disoriented.
As we enter 2026, the U.S. economic momentum continues based on the foundation of a solid private sector with fiscal and monetary policies also contributing to growth. As we refine our global asset allocation, we maintain a diversified overweight stance on U.S. equities despite relatively high valuations.
Year-end S&P 500 price targets implicitly assume continuity and fail to recognize volatility and macro forces that affect markets throughout any given year.
Seven hundred billion dollars. That’s the figure being floated as the potential price tag for acquiring Greenland, according to recent reporting. Call me skeptical, but I don’t think anyone’s cutting a $700 billion check anytime soon. For comparison’s sake, that’s more than half of the Defense Department’s entire 2024 budget.
Following strong 2025 returns, high quality fixed income continues to offer attractive yields and global diversification at a time of stretched equity valuations and tight credit spreads.
At the heart of value investing is the concept of buying an undervalued stock that appears to be mispriced by the market and holding that stock until its intrinsic value is reached. Investors determine intrinsic value in several ways, including analyzing a company’s financial statements, evaluating management, and identifying competitive advantages.
Big banks begin reporting tomorrow with JPMorgan Chase. Fundamentals may need to be robust to match the sector's recent Wall Street gains, and loan demand could get a close look.
What happened in Venezuela last weekend may turn out to be the most consequential energy and geopolitical event of the decade. In a swift, coordinated operation that stunned the world, U.S. forces captured Venezuela’s longtime socialist dictator, Nicolás Maduro.
“Party like it’s 1999” is a phrase made famous by the musician Prince’s 1982 song, which experienced a renaissance amid Y2K fears and has since entered the lexicon meaning to celebrate intensely because the future is uncertain.
The removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro under “Operation Absolute Resolve” has materially improved the country’s outlook by breaking a long-standing political and economic impasse that had prevented reform, external engagement and debt resolution.
Now that 2025 has come to an end, let’s take a look at the top 10 most-read charts of the year.
Miles Lewis, Chip Skinner, Kavitha Venkatraman, Steven McBoyle and Francis Gannon talk about what they see in store for US small-cap stocks in the coming year.
Here we consider an area that is less explored: the ability to implement systematic strategies like trend following within an overlay program. We see a natural opportunity for integrating overlay and trend strategies, given that both have similar architecture as predominantly rules-based derivatives strategies.
We’ve reached the 100-year milestone for our dataset that we began collecting in the 1970s. We'll review key data from the prior century to gain perspective on that period and consider what it could mean for the future.
A plan-based benchmark changes the advisor’s role from portfolio reporter to progress partner. Instead of reviewing performance against a market index, the discussion can focus on metrics such as cash flow resilience, adherence to the risk budget, and after-tax outcomes.
Silver was the best-performing commodity last year, up an astounding 145%, but precious metals as a whole delivered solid returns. Gold, silver, platinum and palladium all responded positively to a number of factors, from rising geopolitical tensions to changes to global trade to the accelerating energy transition.
In 2025, the prices of precious metals rose sharply, with silver prices recently surging past $80 per ounce. Of course, when precious metals rise, there is always the same group of commentators (mostly paid newsletter writers and physical metal dealers) to declare that a financial analysis is underway.
This week, President Donald Trump ordered a blockade of oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, dramatically escalating U.S. pressure on the Maduro regime.
Over the last couple of years, inflation alarmists such as Paul Tudor Jones, James Grant, and Jeff Gundlach have all said that inflation is returning with force. In different ways, they each stated that they would not own Treasury bonds due to the expectation that inflation would rise as the dollar declined due to the ongoing deficits.
This article explores the tension between individual economic outlooks and the institutional desire for collective stability in a highly scrutinized environment.
Mark Twain said, “History never repeats itself, but it rhymes!” Time magazine just came out with its “Person of the Year.”
Understand how a recession is defined and how to avoid common investment mistakes during recession-driven stock market downturns.
What were the key takeaways from last month’s numbers? Our corporate bond specialists look back at the market’s performance and provide incisive commentary to help you make sense of what drove the market—and what may be on the horizon for fixed income investors.
What will really determine whether your firm has success using AI or any technology is whether employees and advisors trust the way these tools are explained, implemented, and managed.
One of the most important roles of a financial advisor is to help retired clients determine how much they can afford to spend each year. It might be a good idea for advisors to ascertain whether their client’s spending goals are actually consistent with a retirement paychecks approach.
A generation ago, a single income could support a family, buy a house and pay for a vehicle or two in the driveway. Today, even two high earners are struggling to purchase a new home.
International stocks could be poised for another strong year in 2026 due to accelerating global growth, attractive valuations and the potential for dollar weakness.
The dot-com bubble burst in 2000. Now, 25 years later, anxiety abounds about the potential for a similar AI bubble burst and resultant crash.
