Today's release of the publicly available data from ECRI (Economic Cycle Research Institute) puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 138.1, down 0.1 from the previous week. Year-over-year the four-week moving average of the indicator is now at 3.46%, up from 3.02% the previous week. The company's Weekly Leading Index annualized growth indicator (WLIg) is at 8.0, up from last week, its highest since February 2013.

Unless you have no choice and need the income, deciding when to begin Social Security requires thoughtful consideration. It needs to be incorporated into your overall plan for providing yourself with retirement paychecks for literally the rest of your life.

When investors see India's major urban areas, they see a lot of people but that does not describe the real story behind Indian demographics.

Bank of America started tracking the performance of active managers in 2003, and 2016 has—thus far—been the most difficult year on record for active managers: only 18 percent of large cap managers have outperformed the Russell 1000® through June 30. The Russell 1000 Value has beaten the Russell 1000 Growth, but the companies with the highest returns this year have had a peculiar profile.

It’s been nearly two years since oil prices began their historic collapse. Now that prices have stabilized, how have the hardest-hit areas held up? And what should investors consider when assessing a municipal bond’s oil risk?

As we have mentioned in our recent pieces, investors are very conscious of the seen risks (especially exogenous risks) in the investment markets. Under the assumption that the seen risks are accurate and well known, let’s look at a few of the unseen risks in the stock and bond markets over the next two to three years which could frustrate investors.

To me, interest rates and their future direction seems to be obsessively discussed and debated by many investors. So much so, that I often get the impression that many investors believe that interest rates coupled with Federal Reserve policy are the primary drivers of our economy. From my perspective, interest rates and Federal Reserve monetary policy are contributing factors to economic growth and stability. However, I would stop short of considering them of primary importance.

In his quarterly letter today to GMO's institutional clients, co-head of asset allocation Ben Inker observes, "over the last six or seven years... the performance divide has not been between low-risk assets and high-risk assets or between liquid assets and illiquid assets, but between long-duration assets and short-duration assets" ("The Duration Connection"). He advises, "the characteristics that made [short-duration risk assets] disappoint may well prove a blessing if discount rates start to rise."

Growth-style investing has outperformed value by a wide margin over a majority of the last decade. Similar periods of style-based outperformance are quite common throughout the history of the U.S. stock market, but growth’s extended dominance of its rival should prompt investors today to ask a couple of questions: How far along are we in this growth investing cycle? Is growth’s outperformance over value likely to reverse?

Long-term Treasury securities have outperformed the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index for the past 10 years. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) has gained an average 7.27% over the past decade, according to Morningstar Inc. But the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF has gained an average 9.31% during the same period.

ETF Securities are pioneers in specialist investments, having developed the world’s first gold exchange-traded commodity. I spoke with Maxwell Gold, director of investment strategy at ETF Securities, on July 15.

New portfolio-risk tools have been created specifically to integrate with FinaMetrica and map a client’s risk tolerance with an actual (and revised) portfolio. I looked at two such tools to see if they can help advisors improve client results – or if they can help win new business. Here’s what I found out.

Since the 1990s, there has been a movement—a very, very small movement, and mostly foreign—to produce the data needed to evaluate the social responsibility of corporations, by integrating measures of their social responsibility into financial reporting.

Increasingly growing in popularity, factor-enhanced investing combines the benefits of index-based investments with active exposure to key “factors” that strive to improve risk-adjusted returns compared with traditional market cap-weighted indexes. In the first of this presentation series, Brandon Thomas, Chief Investment Officer at Envestnet | PMC, explains the markets, factors, and how factor-based strategies work.

There’s a field in one of our data sets that rarely sees much play, being driven primarily by only the most extreme combination of overvaluation, overbullish sentiment, and overbought conditions we’ve identified across history. It’s one of a variety of such syndromes we track, and I’ve simply labeled it “Bubble,” because with a single exception, this extreme variant has only emerged just before the worst market collapses in the past century.

Populism is not new, and its current incarnation is certainly not its most extreme expression. Wikipedia describes populism as “a political position which holds that the virtuous citizens are being mistreated by a small circle of elites...the elites are depicted as trampling in illegitimate fashion upon the rights, values and voice of the people.”

Today's release of the publicly available data from ECRI (Economic Cycle Research Institute) puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 138.1, up 1.1 from the previous week. Year-over-year the four-week moving average of the indicator is now at 3.00%, up from 2.53% the previous week. The company's Weekly Leading Index annualized growth indicator (WLIg) is at 7.5, up from last week, its highest since February 2013.

How to pick smart-beta strategies using methods similar to those for selecting active managers.

One of Russell Investments’ Multi-Asset Portfolio Managers takes a look what potential opportunities there may be for investors amid the current event-driven volatility.

Interest rates have been in a freefall for the better part of the past two decades. Moreover, the yield on the 10-year US Treasury, which is the flagship interest rate benchmark, has mostly been below 2% since the beginning of 2012. The 10-year Treasury note did reach 3% by the end of 2013 but has promptly fallen ever since to its current level of 1.59 percent.

In dominant ‘top-down, bottom-up’ approaches, portfolio strategies often meet at eclectic intersections: points joining benchmark indexes, structural nomenclature assignments and company-specific business segment operations. The structural inefficiencies embedded within performance benchmarks at these junctures result in measurable tiering effects on peer group analytics and, subsequently, valuation.

How can the best performing retirement strategies be combined with annuities, pensions, Social Security and different ‘tilts’ to allow clients to best choose between capital preservation and income stability?

The newest breed of multi-factor strategic beta ETFs weight factors strategically in order to seek better investment outcomes than equal-weighted multi-factor ETFs. We think these ETFs represent an important step in the evolution of strategic beta investing.

The United Nations climate accord signed in Paris last December committed 195 countries to the first universal agreement to dramatically rein in greenhouse gases. We think it’s reckoning time for investors.

The enemy is coming. Having absorbed Japan to the west and Europe to the east, negative interest rates now threaten North America from both directions. The vast oceans that protect us from invasions won’t help this time.

Today's release of the publicly available data from ECRI (Economic Cycle Research Institute) puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 137.0, up 0.3 from the previous week. Year-over-year the four-week moving average of the indicator is now at 2.54%, up from 2.12% the previous week. The company's Weekly Leading Index annualized growth indicator (WLIg) is at 6.9, up from last week.

John Hathaway, manager of the Tocqueville Gold Fund (TGLDX) writes in his latest investor letter that "the precious metals markets have clearly turned the corner, becoming flat-out bullish following the extensive and painful correction from August 2011 to year-end 2015. Despite the impressive year-to-date advance, we believe this cycle is still in its infancy, and that it promises to be extremely powerful."

Here at the mid-point of 2016 it is worth noting the remarkable turn of events, both inside and outside of the financial world in which we, as professionals, occupy. The last six months have been “bookended” by great (more or less) market tumult: first with plummeting energy prices and confidence in Chinese markets in the first quarter calling into question the direction of US and Global economies, and second, by the stunning vote of British citizens to divorce themselves from the union they’ve shared with the 27 other members of the European Union for the last 40 years.

Perhaps the most important step that emerging markets have taken to reduce their vulnerability to financial crises is the remarkable deepening of domestic financial markets over the past decade. In many countries, the development of a reliable domestic investor base has benefited from the rise of a broad middle class.

International monetary policy cooperation could pose a threat to the credibility and public support.

Two recent announcements from Fidelity Investments, well-known for its actively managed mutual funds, show that it intends to strengthen its competitive positioning and grow its market share in the index fund business. I spoke with Colby Penzone, the senior vice president for Fidelity’s Investment Products Group, about those announcements.

To financial advisors, exposure to emerging markets is a means of gaining essential diversification for clients’ portfolios. At a time when growth is muted in the U.S. and elsewhere, emerging markets have the potential to drive returns, further helping clients achieve their investment objectives. But committing to emerging markets hasn’t been easy, on either advisors or their clients.

In the lead-up to the referendum on the UK’s continued membership in the European Union (EU), certain British bookmakers were offering strong odds on bets the UK would opt to exit, anticipating an approximate 25% probability of a leave win. At the same time, both sides were running neck-and-neck in the polls, rationally implying around a 50% chance of a leave vote result. This is an obvious example of a mispriced bet.

The global economic outlook has experienced a downward shock in recent weeks, largely as a result of the “Brexit” referendum where British citizens voted to exit the European Union, coupled with deterioration in China that has led it to accelerate the depreciation of its currency. That combined deterioration, coupled with expectations of further central bank easing, has resulted in a plunge in global interest rates, with $20 trillion of government debt (primarily in Japan and Europe) now sporting negative yields. The plunge in yields has also affected U.S. Treasury securities, where the 10-year Treasury bond yield dropped as low as 1.32% last week. This advance in asset prices isn’t a reflection of economic health. To the contrary, it is a yield-seeking race to the bottom resulting from a downward shock to the global economy.

This week’s calendar includes a pretty normal schedule, but not the most important economic reports. There will be an abundance of FedSpeak, with questions about last Friday’s employment data. Despite this, the real story will be the start of earnings season. Expectations are pretty low. Statements about the outlook are always important, but that is especially true right now. The financial media will be asking: Can the profit outlook sustain the rally in stocks?

Today's release of the publicly available data from ECRI (Economic Cycle Research Institute) puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 136.7, up 0.4 from the previous week. Year-over-year the four-week moving average of the indicator is now at 2.12%, up from 2.10% the previous week. The company's Weekly Leading Index annualized growth indicator (WLIg) is at 6.8, down from last week.

There are a variety of economic models that are supposed to predict the probabilities of recession. While I don’t agree with the methodologies employed or probabilities of impending economic weakness as depicted by the following two models, I think the results of these models should be monitored.

As the financial markets adjust to the aftershocks of the historic U.K. referendum vote, spectators aren’t the only ones left scratching their heads. After the referendum, financial markets have begun to adjust, moving beyond the initial emotional response. So, as the dust begins to settle, many are left asking, “Now what?”

Social Security is facing a long-term funding issue—albeit a relatively small one at this point—not because of mismanagement or waste, but because of something far more mundane: demographics.

A combination of commodity futures and broad stocks seems to provide better return per unit of risk than natural resource equities.

We wish we had a dime for every recession forecast we've heard in the past seven years. Like someone with hypochondria, fearful forecasters feel economic doom and gloom is right around the corner after every dip in economic data or shift in economic policy.

Market expectations are that The Federal Reserve is unlikely to raise rates this year in light of weak growth and the deteriorating financial conditions associated with Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, known as Brexit. We expect the U.S. economy and stock market to continue producing mixed results. One silver lining is that sluggish growth has kept interest rates low and inflation at bay.

I do think we’re at a most extraordinary valuation metric across many bond markets that again goes further than just any possible impact on the United Kingdom. For Europe, this situation amplifies the negative growth shock.

This week’s calendar includes plenty of data and a holiday-shortened week. The employment report looms, with many worried about a repeat of the weak May results. With Brexit apparently digested and the Fed on hold, I expect some attention to the possible upside. The financial media will be asking: Is it time for the summer rally?

If nothing else, this alone should be seen as a positive consequence of Brexit. It’s too early to tell what direction the EU will take post-Brexit, or whether any material policy changes will be made, but it seems as if the cries of resentment and frustration that have risen up from England and Wales (and, to a lesser extent, Scotland and Northern Ireland) have not fallen on deaf ears.

These are confusing times in both the United States and Europe. The forthcoming U.S. presidential election has two unpopular (according to the polls) candidates running against each other. One is viewed as untrustworthy and the other as dangerously extreme. In the U.K. the “Leave” vote was a shocker. Britain is the second largest economy in the Union, and its departure creates concern about whether others will follow. Because of that there may be an effort by EU leadership to achieve the separation quickly. Some worry that the EU will punish Britain for its decision, as a warning to other countries considering defection. I hope not.

Today's release of the publicly available data from ECRI (Economic Cycle Research Institute) puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 136.4, unchanged from the previous week. Year-over-year the four-week moving average of the indicator is now at 2.11%, up from 2.08% the previous week and the fourteenth week in positive territory. The company's Weekly Leading Index annualized growth indicator (WLIg) is at 7.2, up from last week and its highest since early May of 2013.

ETFs have grown in popularity, and there are now multitudes of cap-weighted ETFs that cover most segments of the market. But do most investors really understand the portfolio exposures they bear when investing in cap-weighted index ETFs? I would argue the answer is likely no.

According to Vanguard, advisors can potentially add 3% each year to client returns. That’s after fees, expenses and taxes. So how can you add 3% more each year than the average advisor?