Water utilities are selling bonds at a record pace to upgrade aging pipes and meet tougher regulations as they prepare for a potential pullback in federal funding.
Start with the disconnect itself. If you only looked at the Michigan headline, you’d assume the country was in a depression. However, when you look at what people are actually doing, the picture changes completely.
One of the key questions for investment professionals is whether oil prices will return to pre-war levels once the Middle East crisis is resolved. At the same time, many are asking why oil prices are not higher, especially since the latest geopolitical deal recently pushed crude to its lowest level since the initial attack.
The questions in our inbox have gotten louder lately. Are we reliving 1999? Has the tech rally reached the dangerous ‘Euphoria’ bubble stage we first discussed in our 2026 Outlook? And is the recent surge in initial public offerings (IPOs)— led by SpaceX on Friday— diluting existing holders just as valuations were already drawing scrutiny?
Compliance risks happen when AI-enabled workflows expand faster than their governance model. It becomes a blind spot when AI solutions are built faster than the organization’s ability to map them against the right regulatory, operational, and data-governance controls.
What prediction markets add is something equities never offered: a way for thousands of people to sell small bits of information — a logistics clerk’s observation, a local journalist’s hunch — that are individually worthless and collectively a forecast.
The U.S. initial public offering (IPO) market appears to be entering one of its most consequential periods in years. After a long drought following the 2021 issuance boom, a healthier macro backdrop, improved risk appetite, and a long queue of mature private companies have reopened the new-issue window.
Gold has always had a way of testing investors’ expectations. Just when the headlines appear most supportive—inflation is rising, geopolitical risk is escalating and confidence in fiat currency is being questioned—gold can suddenly move in the opposite direction.
Several ETFs have added exposure to Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX) after the aerospace giant completed the largest initial public offering in market history. Trading on the Nasdaq, SpaceX surged 19% from its initial $135 offering price to close at $160.95 per share, notching a historic $2.1 trillion valuation. Actively managed ETF vehicles were able to use their operational flexibility to add positions in SpaceX at its debut.
VettaFi’s core mission is to provide the index and distribution solutions that help asset managers build, grow, and navigate the markets with precision. Last week we took a massive, transformational step forward. TMX VettaFi signed a definitive agreement to acquire RAFI Indices from Research Affiliates, the undisputed pioneer of fundamental indexing and smart beta strategies.
Given all the interest and hype over the SpaceX IPO, many advisors and investors have been increasingly gravitating towards thematic ETFs that focus on the space industry. Given that the SpaceX IPO is the largest IPO in history, this should not come as a surprise to anyone.
Discover how Capital Group’s active CGGR ETF navigates this mega-cap divergence to uncover secular growth beyond tech.
That’s SpaceX out of the way. Next, investors will have to absorb the artificial-intelligence titans behind the Claude and ChatGPT chatbots, Anthropic PBC and OpenAI.
In addition to a greater range of chips supporting AI development, several factors could cause the current cycle to last longer than expected.
While owning a significant amount of a successful stock can be incredibly lucrative – especially in a company on the rise – the more you own of a single equity, the more closely your personal financial fate is tied to its performance.
Equity issuance is all the rage. The SpaceX (SPCX) IPO on Friday, Alphabet’s (GOOGL) up-sized secondary announced last week, and a slew of other major go-public names over the remainder of 2026 (Anthropic, OpenAI) buck the years-long trend of intense buybacks and shareholder-friendly activities by the world’s most valuable companies.
Every dollar in a growth equity index reflects two decisions: which companies to own and how much of each to hold. Indexes form intricate systematic rules to make the first decision. The second decision—position sizing—is usually determined by market-cap weighting.
LPL Research analyzes bond markets as yields rise, exploring Fed policy expectations, inflation trends, and whether bad news is already priced into Treasuries.
Equity markets should remain supported by strong earnings and capital investment trends through 2026, but market concentration and macro risks leave less room for error.
In Part 1, we explored why Dollar Dominance Remains Alive and Well. Today, we will explore the stronger-dollar trade, the one macro trade that nobody is sized for.
The Numbers Are Staggering – The Magnificent Seven stocks now carry a combined market cap larger than the GDPs of Germany, Japan, India, and the UK combined. Meanwhile, 2025 tech-sector capital expenditures rivaled the peak-year spending of the Manhattan Project, rural electrification, the Apollo moon shot, and the Interstate Highway System — all at once.
While job growth has reaccelerated, supporting consumption, the underlying income picture is less encouraging.
Probably the most popular insight to make its way from finance theory into everyday usage is that "diversification is the only free lunch" in investing. The idea dates back to Harry Markowitz in 1952. He, and those building on his work, demonstrated that in an efficient market, investors shouldn't earn extra return for bearing company-specific risks that can be diversified away.
2026 is heading toward a four-peat of double-digit returns on U.S. stocks, but it will require P/Es to remain high — investors need to remain optimistic. In the past, when P/Es were high, investor fear kicked in and P/Es declined, causing stock market losses. Time will tell, but diversification is a reasonable strategy no matter the outcome.
Our broad message for the second half of 2026 is this: Income still matters, but investors should be selective. Despite the recent rise in Treasury yields, we suggest investors favor a below-benchmark average duration with their bond holdings, favoring short- and intermediate-term maturities.
Ride the momentum wave. Discover how tech-fueled factors propelled momentum and high-beta ETFs to historic, benchmark-crushing gains.
When it comes to systematic investing, numbers tell only part of the story. Traditional quantitative models rely on prices, earnings, and balance sheet data, but words matter too.
The U.S. economy appears resilient, judging from key economic measures. AI-driven capex continues to power investment, support equity markets, and sustain a wealth effect that has propped up consumption. Real GDP growth remains positive. Private sector balance sheets are in generally good condition and many higher income and wealthy households have benefited from equity markets gains.
We are expecting inflation in energy prices and a decline in interest rates when the poop hits the AI mania fan. For these reasons, we are overweight in oil stocks and home builders. These industries prospered in the 1970s, once the stock market mania broke in late 1972!
Even if the Middle East war does find a lasting settlement, the specter of inflation appears poised to hang over the markets. Indeed, while employment data had, up until recently, been the primary focus for investors, arguably, inflation reports have now moved into the ‘leaderboard’ position.
Learn what's in store for the remainder of 2026 and the challenges that lie ahead in our mid-year outlook for U.S. stocks and the economy.
A strong business isn’t always a winning stock at every moment, and 2025 was a good reminder of that. Developed market equities finished the year up more than 20%, but quality stocks lagged. That’s why Parametric favors a multifactor approach to capture factor risk premia.
Get ready for a magnificent month, and then some. Mega-cap tech stocks dominate the corporate event calendar in June, already highlighted by NVIDIA (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote address at Computex 2026 in Taiwan earlier this week, one of many major conferences.
Last week, several Fed members signaled the central bank may have to raise interest rates to cool price inflation.
The top ETF launches of the past decade were the focus on this week’s ETF Prime. Host Nate Geraci and Cynthia Murphy, director of research at VettaFi, counted down the 10 most successful debuts by current assets. Murphy noted that the S&P 500’s roughly 13% annualized gain over that span helped shape many of the performance stories on the list.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is negotiating to pay razor-thin fees to Wall Street firms handling its IPO — but banks are still likely to rake in about $500 million from the record-setting market debut.
If you’re not familiar with the name Leopold Aschenbrenner, you should be. A 24-year-old wunderkind, Aschenbrenner was hired by OpenAI in 2023 to work on the company’s “superalignment” team, essentially trying to figure out how to keep AI systems safe once they become smarter than the people building them.
The ETF landscape includes a wide variety of innovative, intriguing funds that look to meet investor goals. From equities to fixed income, all kinds of strategies offer intriguing spins on areas like income and dividends.
The essential feature of a useful alternative asset isn’t that it’s unusual or exotic, but that its returns aren’t tightly linked to the risks that already dominate the portfolio. The value of an alternative asset comes from the way it interacts with the other assets in the portfolio.
The assumption that muni equals tax-free is deeply embedded in how the asset class gets discussed and presented. But for high-net-worth clients in high-tax states, the gap between partially exempt and fully exempt is material enough to be worth a conversation.
Many debates in defined contribution (DC) circles focus on fees, new asset classes, and ever more complex solutions. But the biggest improvement available to plan participants may come from something far simpler: how their fixed income is managed.
The next IPO wave may create a different kind of portfolio challenge for institutions already holding private stakes in companies like SpaceX and OpenAI.
Equity investors are facing monumental questions about their allocation strategies in a new market regime. Market concentration has risen sharply, valuations have climbed to record highs in parts of the market and factor volatility has dominated returns.
An abundance of cash in US funding markets appears to be driven by deeper structural shifts that are unlocking billions of dollars in balance-sheet capacity at the biggest banks, Wall Street strategists say.
The push for international equities diversification continues amid shifting global macroeconomic conditions. These days, investors have more options when it comes to international exposure. Given the current market uncertainty, they may want to put quality at the forefront of their decision-making process.
US growth stocks underperformed in early 2026 amid AI disruption fears and an unresolved conflict in the Middle East. But these stresses could create favorable conditions for selective, diversified investors to unlock long-term growth potential in a rotating market.
Despite these higher costs, a projected 45 million Americans are expected to travel at least 50 miles from home this weekend, setting a new record. Close to 40 million will drive while some 3.7 million will fly.
On May 26, 1896, Charles Dow calculated a simple arithmetic average of 12 industrial stocks and arrived at a closing value of 40.94. Now, exactly 130 years later, that same benchmark has crossed the historic 50,000 threshold.
Rare earth elements are critical to global defense systems, electrification, data centers, and the future of artificial intelligence. How can investors hedge against geopolitical risks and tariffs? In this episode of ETF of the Week, host Chuck Jaffe sits down with Todd Rosenbluth, to break down Sprott Rare Earths Ex-China ETF (Ticker: REXC). Discover why this specialized materials fund might be in the perfect position to complement your equity portfolio and safeguard your supply chain investments.
Chasing performance by deviating from a benchmark has long been the hallmark of active managers. But it may be time for a rethink. Our research suggests that investors allocating to core equities should consider refreshing the criteria they use to identify portfolio managers that can consistently beat their benchmarks.
