By this measure, money market fund assets are at a 25-year low.

Deep declines are usually followed by rebounds that leave emerging market stocks with gains by year end, as the structural tailwinds are driven by steadily expanding middle classes. Meaningful, consistent exposures to the asset class are key to capitalizing on the long-run double-digit returns.

We believe there are three positives, three negatives and three wildcards for stock market performance in the fourth quarter. We expect the balance of these factors to result in further gains for global stocks.

As major U.S. stock indices hit new all-time highs, one of the key uncertainties is whether the House, the Senate, or both could flip to the Democrats on Nov. 6. The infographic below takes a look at what's up for grabs, the current forecasts, and what history offers us on midterm elections and the stock market.

We have heard the statement, “Nobody can consistently time the stock market’s ups and downs;” and, for the most part we agree with that. However, if one listens to the message of the market, one can certainly decide if one should be “playing hard,” or not playing so hard.

Last week, James Rickards posted an interesting article discussing the risk to the financial markets from the rise in passive indexing.

I’ve been getting lots of questions lately about the merits of owning TIPS versus nominal bonds. With that in mind, today I’ll discuss how to determine the more appropriate strategy.

If you’re looking for something new to worry about, imagine how it would impact your firm if the independent custodians were to decide that instead of charging your clients a variety of fees for their services, they would charge you an asset-based fee that would cover everything. The custodial costs would suddenly come out of your pocket.

The consensus view is that the US will not head into recession until later in 2019, perhaps not even until 2020. But it is important to remember that fiscal stimulus simply pulls consumption forward. We currently are benefiting from that phenomenon, as the economy is strong and consumer and small business owner sentiment is as high as it has been in years. But while fiscal stimulus can elongate economic expansion, it does not negate the business cycle. The piper always gets paid.

Economic progress continues in the United States, making the current expansion likely to be the longest since World War II. While investors might be expecting signs that the economy’s momentum is losing its mojo because of its duration, the data coming in is some of the strongest we have seen in this cycle.

Well, “you did it,” as the senior index followed most of the other indices to new all-time highs. We have repeatedly written that this was going to happen given the Advance-Decline Line’s continuing new highs, as well as the stock market’s strong breadth.

When it comes to US high-yield bank loans, we don’t mince words: we think the risk rarely justifies the potential reward.

High-yield returns have been great lately, as technical flows, fundamental factors and good economic growth align. But tight spreads, lofty net leverage and event risk don’t make for smooth sailing ahead.

Without Googling, try to guess who said the following quote: “If everybody indexed, the only word you could use is chaos, catastrophe. The markets would fail.” Give up?

Retirement isn’t the sort of thing you can just jump into. Rather, it requires thoughtful planning and a modest amount of basic knowledge. Unfortunately, Americans seem to be sorely lacking in this regard.

In this issue, Research Affiliates discusses the funds’ long-term outcomes relative to peers, views on emerging market currencies and recent research centered on momentum.

After nearly 48 years in this business, we have seen a number of cycles and developed a long-term perspective. We have often spoken about the difference between a “secular bull market” and what many consider to be a bull market because it is up 20%+. The reciprocal is that a 20%+ decline represents a bear market.

Behemoths like Amazon and Uber have transformed industries, putting smaller competitors out of business. Could the same fate await smaller financial planners? Many analysts have predicted massive consolidation in our industry, resulting in a landscape where a few “Goliaths” make it impossible for the small “Davids” to compete. Is this thesis accurate and, if so, what should advisors do to protect themselves?

If active management persistence is not significantly greater than should be expected at random, investors cannot separate skill-based performance (which might be able to persist) from luck-based performance (which eventually runs out).

No fee model is 100% free of conflict, but retainer or flat fees are close to achieving that goal – and are very popular. Yet it is hard to make both the advisor and client equally happy. How do advisors set this up in a way that sustains their practice in alignment with the value they provide, yet charges the client fairly?

As short-term rates move higher and the Treasury yield curve flattens, many investors are thinking about how to earn income while also protecting themselves against rising rates. In this post, we'll discuss why municipal floating-rate notes -- an often-overlooked part of the market -- may be an attractive option for these investors.

Being wrong and admitting it, what a novel idea, yet as Bernstein states, “It helps to know that being wrong is inevitable and normal, not some terrible tragedy, not some awful failing in reasoning, not even bad luck in most instances. Being wrong comes with the franchise of an activity whose outcome depends on an unknown future.” Indeed, the real trick is to be wrong quickly for a de minimis loss of capital.

In the span of human history, retirement is a fairly new idea. Only a few generations ago, most of our ancestors could expect to work until the end of their lives. We are happy to report this is no longer the case. Improving longevity brings the opportunity for retirement, but also the responsibility for preparing. Unfortunately, many Americans have not handled this responsibility very well at all.

If the efficient markets hypothesis is questionable at the stock level, it’s more so at the index level. As the number of indices skyrockets, the number of companies declines, and passive flows grow, active price discovery becomes more and more valuable.

The Endless Summer (1966) is the crown jewel to ten years of Bruce Brown surfing documentaries. Brown follows two young surfers around the world in search of the perfect wave, and ends up finding quite a few in addition to some colorful local characters (Endless Summer).

The “dog days” of summer are ending, and September and October frequently have “re-introduced” investors to volatility. This may prove especially true as we head into what looks to be a divisive and brutal mid-term election cycle.

The U.S. government must determine how to deal with the negative consequences of some of the last decade’s most successful internet-based businesses. Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon grew up as strangers and have developed monopolies in search, social media and in e-commerce.

US stocks continue to pose big questions for investors. After nine years of strong gains, concerns about market conditions are rife. But we think US stocks are more attractive than perceived for three main reasons.

As yields increase, short-maturity bond funds can offer both higher income potential and a cushion against interest rate risk. Karen explains the mechanics, in part three of her Rising Rates series.

For Templeton and Price to execute a “new era” approach today, we believe they would likely advocate avoiding the S&P 500 Index, mutual funds and ETFs, emphasizing growth stock investing and they would be very careful with ownership of anything related to technology. Price recognized that growth eras don’t continue forever and Templeton went wherever he thought he could make great money buying companies at depressed prices with positive economics. We believe our eight criteria for common stock ownership will shepherd us through this “new era.”

Trade tensions have spooked investors in recent months, including those in India’s stock market. Franklin Templeton Emerging Markets Equity’s Sukumar Rajah weighs in on the positive economic fundamentals he and the team see, and why they think India’s equity market should be able to weather recent challenges.

Gold prices moved up close to 2 percent today, and gold stocks climbed even higher following comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. During his speech at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, Powell reiterated the central bank’s commitment to raise interest rates gradually while the U.S. economy continues its strong performance.

This memo covers three ways in which securities markets seem to be moving toward reducing the role of people: (a) index investing and other forms of passive investing, (b) quantitative and algorithmic investing, and © artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Read Harold Evensky's latest Newsletter. 

We have used the “Not Afraid” story many times over the past 48 years, but we dredged it up again this morning because of the many questions about “being afraid” we got in Boston two weeks ago and New York City last week.

US equities have returned to their January all-time highs. Several new momentum studies suggest that equities are likely to gain more into year-end. Despite the gains over the past 5 months, investor sentiment is not frothy. US equities now have a topping pattern in place: the momentum high in January has been followed a price high in August.

My good friend Marc Lichtenfeld from the Oxford Club has always been savvy in following such strategies. I invite you to learn from his investment journey in this special Q&A.

Do Active Managers Provide Higher Factor Exposure than ETFs? Investors can express factor views via smart beta ETFs or mutual funds. Some mutual funds offer higher factor exposure than smart beta ETFs. Given higher fees, strong views on expected factor performance are required.

John Barr manages the Needham Aggressive Growth Fund (NEAGX), which had an annualized return of 10.51% over the prior 15 years, versus 9.42% for the S&P 500, for an outperformance of 109 basis points. In this interview, he discusses the outlook for his fund.

So, as most of you know we were on a road trip last week. We flew into Albany, New York on Sunday only to be greeted with hotter temperatures than what we left in Florida. The mountain drive to Manchester, Vermont was spectacular, but hereto the temperatures were hotter than Florida.

The number of publicly listed companies in the U.S. has fallen steadily since 1997. More companies have delisted, in fact, than gone public in every year of the past 20 years except one, 2013. Put another way, the pool is getting smaller even while the population and economy are expanding.

Most investors believe that all passively managed funds in the same asset class are virtual substitutes for one another. The result is that, when choosing a specific fund, their sole focus is on its expense ratio. That is a mistake for a wide variety of reasons. The first is that expense ratios are not a mutual fund’s only expense.

We don’t know how long ago we met Frederick “Shad” Rowe, but we are glad we did, because our conversations with him have been net worth changing.

It is no secret that the U.S. stock market has been completely addicted to discounting the future success of the most popular technology stocks. Momentum-based growth investing has had many bouts of success in the past, but this is the first episode in an era where indexed mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs) were the largest aggregate owners of the largest capitalization companies.

Stock indexes have been able to move higher as the balancing act between economic growth and investor concerns continues—but how long will it last?

The decade after the financial crisis has been marked by low inflation and investment spending, lagging income growth and a strong U.S. dollar. We expect these trends to reverse direction and potentially surprise investors who aren't prepared.

A landmark study looked back at more than 100 years of data and 23 countries to determine if there are reasons to believe the cross-sectional patterns in factor returns will persist, or whether they were just anomalies that tended to disappear after publication.

“Do you have the mental fortitude to accept huge gains?” is a line from The Elliott Wave Theorist’s Robert Prechter in an era gone by. But it is as true today as it was when first penned in the 1970s. And to do that, one has to ignore the ticker and hold stocks through a long market swing.

Turkish asset prices have plummeted this year, bringing their valuations to historically low levels. That presents potentially attractive opportunities to investors looking for quality stocks at bargain-basement prices. Yet some selloffs don’t necessarily end with stocks and bonds at oversold levels if their prices largely reflect current or near-term risks, both company specific and macroeconomic.