Investors and advisors have numerous goals to meet with their portfolios. Some investors full send their portfolios to produce as much capital appreciation as possible. Others, especially those at or near retirement age, look for current income and ballast to steady their financial ships.
Artificial-intelligence-related investment is one of the trends likely to sustain the rise of emerging market equities in 2026, as policy support also contributes to a favorable backdrop.
As we step into 2026, the financial landscape is shifting rapidly—new legislation, evolving markets, changing interest rates, and changing family needs may all shape the choices you make today.
With silver and gold both surging significantly higher over the past couple of weeks, a correction was inevitable. When an asset price quickly rises, at some point, it will ultimately become oversold. Investors book profits, and the price corrects.
Emerging-market stocks posted a strong start to 2026, following a $7.2 trillion annual rally, as Asia’s expanding role in artificial intelligence lifted Chinese technology shares to their biggest gains since September and pushed benchmarks in South Korea and Taiwan to record highs.
The S&P 500 Index climbed at the open on Friday as investors bought tech stocks ahead of next week’s massive CES conference and cheered signs President Donald Trump was easing up on tariff policies.
Gold and silver rose as 2026 trading kicked off, building on their best annual performances since 1979.
US Treasuries rose on the first trading day of 2026, getting off to a positive start after notching their best annual return in five years.
Investors were rationally exuberant in 2025. US consumers remained remarkably resilient, keeping the world's largest economy out of recession. The tariff blizzard waxed and waned, eventually settling at levies still compatible with maintaining global growth, albeit at an anemic level.
The most-read practice management articles of the year touch on topics ranging from helping clients retiring early get suitable health insurance to dealing with conflicting political views held by clients or colleagues.
Trillions of dollars hang in the balance of two questions that dominated this year and loom perilously large over the next. “Will the artificial intelligence bubble burst?” and “Will China beat the US?”
The Federal Reserve delivered a widely anticipated rate cut in December, signaling caution about growth risks while maintaining a “wait and see” stance.
U.S. equities were little changed on Friday in a quiet, low volume session following the Christmas holiday, with a lack of major catalysts keeping trading subdued. All three major indexes finished modestly lower on the day, snapping a short rally, but still closed the week with solid gains.
RiverFront’s Investment Team is proud to present the summary of our 2026 Outlook, which will be released this Friday, December 19th. In 2025, the tech-heavy US stock market rode a wave of AI awareness and spending.
On this special episode of the “ETF of the Week” podcast, VettaFi’s Head of Research, Todd Rosenbluth, reviewed some of his biggest takeaways for the ETF industry in 2025 with Chuck Jaffe of Money Life.
The U.S. economy appears poised for a measured and confident expansion into 2026 driven by a stabilizing monetary policy, corporate strength, and resilient household income growth. Our outlook suggests a supportive environment for risk assets, particularly domestic equities, while favoring specialized strategies in fixed income.
Thematic ETF assets climbed 49.6% through the first 11 months of 2025, reaching $467.93 billion by the end of November, according to research from ETFGI.
Step aside, artificial intelligence. Another transformative technology with the potential to reshape industries and reorder geopolitical power is finally moving out of the lab: quantum.
In 2025, Advisor Perspectives’ most-read commentaries mainly centered on uncertainty around U.S. equities and on record-high valuations, in particular. Key themes included the bleak forecast for U.S. equities and the opportunities presented by non-U.S. stocks. Other articles weighed in on the risks around private equity that await retail investors delving into the space and on the investment potential of utilities due to AI and the shift to clean energy.
Franklin Templeton Institute believes tax-free municipal bonds continue to be well positioned in the current market environment.
When it comes to interpreting the economy we put a premium on sobriety. One good piece of economic data doesn’t mean a boom, nor does one bad report mean a bust.
We examine what’s driving gold’s ascent — from central bank reserves to portfolio hedging — and why it can play a strategic role for investors.
Micron Technologies (MU) rose 10% the week of December 15th, after the company markedly beat Q1 FY26 revenue and earnings expectations. The company is a key player in memory and storage products for many technology sectors, including AI data centers.
Like previous generations, most young people are going to end up owning homes. The housing market is in transition, and despite the current lack of affordability, there’s compelling evidence that we’re grinding back toward more normal levels.
Retirement dominated 2025’s top articles, featuring insights from William Bernstein and Allan Roth among others. Key highlights include critiques of retirement calculators, Vanguard’s expectations for the next decade, Roth IRA strategies, and the nuances of dividend investing for long-term portfolios.
At the big banks and the boutique investment shops, an optimistic consensus has taken hold: the US stock market will rally in 2026 for a fourth straight year, marking the longest winning streak in nearly two decades.
Bitcoin briefly topped the $90,000 mark on Monday before tumbling, leaving traders waiting on a potential breakout after the token missed a Santa rally that sent stocks to record highs.
Silver surged above $80 an ounce on Friday, capping a meteoric rally that drove the metal’s price up 176 percent over the year. What is driving silver higher at such an unprecedented rate?
SoftBank Group Corp. agreed to acquire private equity firm DigitalBridge Group Inc. in a deal valuing the data center investor at $4 billion including debt.
The weekly leading economic index (WLEI) is a composite for the U.S economy that draws from over 20 time-series and groups them into the following six broad categories which are then used to construct an equally weighted average. As of December 12th, the index was at 6.71 with 3 of the 6 components in expansion territory.
As we pass the halfway mark of the 2020s, comparisons now abound between our current decade and the roaring 1920s. F. Scott Fitzgerald best captured the opulence of the Flapper Era in The Great Gatsby, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.”
There is a rising market risk in 2026 that is largely overlooked as we wrap up this year. Optimism about 2026 is running high. Currently, investors are pricing in strong economic growth, robust earnings, and a smooth path of disinflation. Notably, Wall Street estimates suggest a significant acceleration in corporate profits...
The sovereign debt of developed market (DM) countries for decades was largely presumed to float free of governance and societal risk factors endemic to the sovereign issues of emerging markets (EM) countries. Global Bond Portfolio Manager Bill Campbell says this luxury is no longer the case.
Plenty of headlines were written as the One Big Beautiful Big Bill Act (OBBBA) made its way through U.S. Congressional debates earlier this year. For the advisor community, many were likely wondering how the OBBBA would affect their portfolio strategies. To be more specific, which investing themes could be boosted by this U.S. policy maneuver?
Global power demand is surging, energy security is the new macro imperative and innovation across grids and generation is redefining what “secure power” means for investors.
When the year began, a billionaire with close ties to the White House was a lock for the most newsworthy tech titan of 2025. But 12 chaotic months later, Larry Ellison, not Elon Musk, can justifiably lay claim to the title.
Bitcoin’s 30% slide from its all-time high is creating conditions financial advisers say are likely driving more tax-loss harvesting in digital assets than in previous years.
Nvidia Corp. agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence startup Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products.
Gold, silver and platinum jumped to all-time highs to extend a historic end-of-year rally for precious metals, with support from escalating geopolitical tensions and US dollar weakness.
What will 2026 be like? There are reasons to be optimistic, as many were a year ago. Here are five of them.
There are numerous hedging tools, each with its own benefits and drawbacks. One increasingly popular choice is the inverse exchange-traded fund (ETF), a vehicle designed to move opposite its benchmark and offer a straightforward way to target downside protection in a portfolio.
The “active” in active ETFs simply means there is not an underlying index. This somewhat obvious statement, made last February in my predictions column, was intended to dispel the misconception that active somehow means more risk or more tracking error, which certainly is not the case.
South Korea has been the top performer in 2025 in emerging markets equities through December 15, generating a 70.9% return in U.S. dollar terms. It has outperformed peers as well as developed markets, including the U.S.
Participants’ financial well-being is our top priority, and we know that they’re struggling with emergency savings, so we’re offering a way for participants to save with confidence—the Vanguard Cash Plus Account.
As we get ready to close out 2025, one stand-out trend in the U.S. Treasury (UST) market has been the steepening of the yield curve. The question now is whether this trend will continue into 2026, and if it does, how should investors position their bond portfolios?
AI remains the economy’s most powerful growth engine, but our Small Cap Growth team believes several other areas are also likely to deliver significant upside in the near-to-medium term.
Finding ways to effectively diversify a multi-asset portfolio allows investors to maintain their strategic equity allocation while managing risk. We may be entering a period when bonds can, at least in part, start to once again fulfill that function.
In a recent episode of the Money Metals podcast, host Mike Maharrey sits down with Peter C. Earle, PhD, of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) to unpack what the gold standard actually is—and why it still matters in a world of fiat money.
2025 was a good year for most fixed income markets but we’re approaching 2026 with caution. All-in yields are still attractive for most markets, but spreads (the additional compensation for owning riskier debt) are low, suggesting investors aren’t getting paid to take on a lot of credit risk right now.
As the dollar weakens and the migration to international equities continues, investors might still be on the fence when it comes to getting exposure.
