A study, reported in the Harvard Business Review, claimed that likability was not important to the sales process.

Predicting spot exchanges is tricky, but there are still ways of adding value in currency markets, including through a disciplined approach we call currency factor investing.

The Federal Reserve raised short-term interest rates by another quarter point on Wednesday.

The economic signals and a host of geopolitical risks confronting investors suggest that 2023 could be as challenging as 20022 for both stocks and bonds.

Review the latest Weekly Headings by CIO Larry Adam.

I am drained having my colleagues and team members come to me with problems because of their frustration with my company.

Explore the power of factor investing and learn how to turn volatility into opportunity in 2023.

CIO Larry Adam outlines the positive events that are outweighing negative developments and looks at dynamics to focus on in the week ahead.

Portfolio Manager Andy Acker explains why the healthcare sector could offer an attractive combination of defense and growth in today’s market.

My “five-step investment process” provides an ongoing systematic framework for making portfolio decisions, and further incorporating financial planning and tax considerations into overall portfolio construction.

The extreme “tail” risk ahead may be disorienting.

Investors are zeroing in on key parts of the market for short-term dollar borrowing to determine if and how signs of systemic stress might be emerging after the biggest US bank collapse in over a decade.

My research confirms what academic theory predicts: There has been no historical alpha among dividend-paying stocks, including those with a history of increasing dividends. Investors are better served by “tilting” allocations to factors that have historically outperformed (e.g., value).

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this will be the “longest” letter I’ve sent you in a while, as there are quite a few pictures. It may also be the most wide-ranging.

We believe municipal bonds boast several key factors that position them as an attractive asset class in general, but especially so when markets are volatile.

Soft landing or hard landing? Recession or no recession? In my mind, there is no question more important.

I’m writing to ask why the advisory profession isn’t set up to provide more human-oriented support to advisors who are trying to transition.

I will explain what ChatGPT is beyond the headlines, and its capabilities and limitations. I will then share a use case in wealth management and explore whether it will replace human financial advisors.

Junior debt issued by banks is normally one of the riskiest types of fixed-income in the US and Europe. It’s typically not backed by collateral and in the event of a crisis it only gets paid back after other bonds.

Machine learning shows great promise for empirical asset pricing and has the potential to improve our understanding of expected asset returns.

Any of the variable spending strategies I analyzed will reduce sequence risk in retirement and allow for greater initial spending rates, potentially greater average spending amounts, and a generally more efficient spenddown of assets than the baseline constant inflation-adjusted spending rule.

We just finished up our annual report on the $20 billion club, and we've concluded that 2022 was a weird year for pension plans.

Medical Properties Trust’s dividend at the 2022 rate of $1.16 is safe even if Prospect, its third-largest operator, does not pay a single cent in 2023.

Maybe UFOs are carrying wealthy aliens wanting to buy a lot of stuff and boost our economy. More likely, those forecasting a no landing have a false sense of optimism that the economy will continue to be resilient.

This commentary reflects on the silver linings of the higher interest rate environment as well as explores the possible winners and losers under this new regime.

Being flexible with spending matters. My analysis shows that variable spending strategies – including floor-and-ceiling, guardrail, actuarial and other methods – can dramatically increase sustainable retirement spending.

Low-volatility strategies are often cited as an anomaly offering higher returns without a corresponding increase in risk. But the so-called low-volatility factor is well explained by other factors, and new research shows it does not reduce exposure to “systemic,” broad-economic risks.

There’s something of a ritual performed each time Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks to the press: A reporter asks Powell about financial conditions; he says they’ve tightened a lot; the Wall Street crowd snickers.

Research from Vanguard suggests that investing in commodities is the most powerful way to hedge against unexpected inflation.

I have no idea how AI will impact the advisory profession. However, I’m confident it will fundamentally change almost every aspect of what you do and how you do it.

US household debt soared by the biggest amount in two decades in the fourth quarter, with younger borrowers in particular struggling to make loan payments amid high inflation and interest rates.

Gold is nearing its strongest buy signal in four months as the U.S. dollar eases off a rally that’s carried the greenback to its highest point since early January.

Some commentators have argued that today’s market environment—characterized by rising rates and economic growth concerns—is a ripe environment for stock pickers.

U.S. inflation may not be moderating as quickly as many were expecting.

Tony Muhlenkamp provides examples to support the maxim by Ron Muhlenkamp that “Just because everybody knows something doesn’t make it true.”

History tells us it's a matter of when and not if tighter monetary will send the economy into a recession.

Mexico is downstream of shifting trade winds.

ETF Prime Host Nate Geraci is joined by VettaFi’s Dave Nadig and VanEck’s Jan van Eck to explore concerns around the growing concentration of corporate voting power among several large fund companies. Newfound Research’s Corey Hoffstein spotlights the Return Stacked Bonds & Managed Futures ETF (RSBT).

Some growth companies could very well outperform the broader market indices, even in a recessionary period.

It’s common for a mutual fund to outperform its benchmark over a short time horizon – a few years – as happened with Cathie Wood’s ARKK. But new research shows that mutual funds fail dismally when performance is measured over the long horizons that retirement-focused investors face.

This Super Bowl will also be remembered, I believe, as a major turning point in sports betting in the U.S. More than 50 million American adults are expected to bet on the game, the most ever and a remarkable 61% increase from last year.

The triumphant comeback of quant-investing strategies on Wall Street is suddenly on shaky ground as virtually all of 2022’s hottest market trends get derailed in the new year.

“Geopolitical recession” doesn’t exist as a defined term. But it should, according to Ian Bremmer. If relations among global powers were framed in economic terms, we would be in the “bust” phase of the business cycle, he said.

Northern Trust Asset Management (NTAM) is a leading global investment manager with $1 trillion in assets under management. It released “The Risk Report” late last year, which is an aggregated analysis of 280 institutional equity portfolios across the globe. The report revealed six common drivers of unintended investment results. As an investment manager that employs a quantitative risk-aware approach, NTAM regularly partners with investors and their consultants to provide them with a distinct analysis of underlying risk components impacting their portfolios’ ability to achieve intended outcomes. Of utmost importance to our Advisor Perspectives listeners and readers, the findings of the research are as applicable to portfolios managed by advisors for individual investors as they are to institutional investors. NTAM does indeed serve individual advisors through a number of offerings, including Northern Mutual Funds, FlexShares ETFs, and Diversified Strategist model portfolios. NTAM’s purpose in conducting the research behind the Risk Report was to help investors make needed adjustments consistent with NTAM’s core philosophy, which is that investors should get paid for the risks they take – in all market environments and in any investment strategy.

Ignoring the Federal Reserve’s determination to keep raising rates and hold them there is a wildly profitable trade on Wall Street right now. It’s trying to swim against the rising market that carries risks.

Cash flows into US sustainable funds plummeted last year as the broader market took a beating and anti-ESG crusaders targeted money managers including BlackRock Inc. for “woke capitalism.”

The most recent NFIB (National Federation Of Independent Business) is sending a strong signal of an economic recession.

ESG proponents sell the idea to investors that they can achieve both altruism and high returns. In the end, they fail at both.

The greatest anomaly is that despite decades of poor performance and the failure to effectively hedge exposure to conventional security classes, assets under management among hedge funds have grown from about $300 billion 25 years ago to about $5 trillion today.

A trading tool like portfolio insurance is poised to trigger a stunning display of market instability.