Alternative Investments

The new investment case for global power, security and affordability. The phrase “energy transition” has served as a useful political and cultural shorthand, but it has become a misleading framework for capital allocation. Franklin Templeton Institute explodes new opportunities for investors—and where shifts in thinking may be needed.

One of my favorite movies was the Coen Brothers movie, No Country for Old Men. It is the story of a guy who makes off with $2 million stolen by someone else. The ‘someone else’ is a super mean guy with a powerful blow gun. They are both being chased by a policeman. It was the best picture of 2007 and won four Oscars.

Municipal bonds might still offer attractive tax-advantaged income and relatively stable credit quality for investors who understand the risks.

Stocks have recently hit new highs, supported by strong earnings growth, but the bond market is sending a more cautious signal.

The recent global bond sell-off may be more than a temporary repricing. Rising government debt, persistent inflation risks and shifting economic expectations could keep longer-term yields elevated relative to the post-financial-crisis era.

In this video The Most Powerful Growth Stock, Chuck Carnevale, co-founder of FAST Graphs and known as “Mr. Valuation,” examines NVIDIA through the lens of growth, valuation, financial strength, and long-term return potential. He explains why growth investing is still value investing when a company’s future earnings justify the price being paid.

ETFs are increasingly breaking down the wall between public and private markets. Asset managers are finding ways to “ETF-ize” private equity and pre-IPO holdings — giving retail investors liquid, fractional access to growth opportunities historically restricted to institutional and accredited buyers. As companies stay private longer, the most explosive growth phases of high-profile startups often occur off public exchanges.

When it comes to personal finance, conventional wisdom says the best way to live is debt-free. There are many important reasons why this is tried and true, but for high-net-worth individuals, lending can be an optimal way to access cash in the near term without sacrificing long-term gains on your assets.

Fed policymakers unanimously voted to raise rates 25 basis points, the first hike since 2023, and vowed to fight inflation. Another hike is seen this year, but 2027 is in question.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decided to raise rates by a quarter-point, bringing the new fed funds trading range to 3.75%–4.00%. The money and bond markets had been pricing in a potential rate hike at this gathering, and Warsh & Co. ultimately determined that such a move was warranted. That said, the ‘rate hike’ story does not end here.

Last December we published Riding the Wave: The Anatomy of Booms & Bubbles. In it, we argued that the AI spending boom would continue through 2026 without tipping into ‘bubble’ mania, and that the right posture was to stay overweight stocks while favoring US assets. Nine months on, we think that call has aged well.

Single-stock leveraged ETFs were unusual when they first arrived in the U.S. market just four years ago. Today, it might be hard to find a stock without one. Issuers are aggressively pushing beyond megacap tech into niche equities, pre-IPO registrations, and even experimenting with leverage levels and frequency.

With so much attention focused on what the Fed might do at its policy meeting this week, it’s a good time to look back at history to get a sense of how stocks might respond should policymakers hike rates as the market now expects. LPL Research had been characterizing the rate decision as a coin flip until Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s hawkish comments at the Jackson Hole meeting and the strong August jobs report.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for August was generally in line with expectations. However, a slightly hotter-than-expected core CPI reading buoyed expectations of a rate hike at the Federal Reserve meeting in September.

The August employment report was much stronger than expected and reinforces my view that the U.S. economy remains remarkably resilient. Payrolls increased by 162,000, above every estimate, while revisions added another 55,000 jobs to the previous two months.

AI-driven healthcare innovation is creating strong investment opportunities by improving efficiency, expanding access, and delivering better patient outcomes.

A week of rising oil prices and higher interest rates sent stocks lower across the board as investors increasingly priced in the likelihood that the Federal Reserve (Fed) will begin a rate-hiking cycle at its September 16 meeting. Following the August Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, futures markets implied an 88 percent probability that the Fed will, or at least should, raise rates at next week's meeting.

Discover how autocallables provide steady income and downside risk protection in volatile markets, and how autocallable ETFs can help.

Chris Galipeau discusses high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.

In our final chapter for this series, we will dig into that exact question. Unfortunately, there is good and bad news, and it can be summed up in a single sentence.

Is the AI infrastructure buildout one big trade in credit? So far, the market seems to think so. Spread dispersion – differences in borrowing costs among issuers – across the financing chain remains limited despite sharp differences in underlying risk. This contrasts with equities, where performance has become increasingly differentiated.

Last week, the refining margin on European gasoil, the benchmark that sets the price of diesel and heating oil across much of the world, closed at roughly $94 a barrel over Brent crude, according to Bloomberg data. That figure is normally somewhere between $12 and $18.

Every few months, a new essay declares that the US debt trap has finally sprung. The latest one making the rounds from The Economist is well written and genuinely unsettling. It argues that Washington has borrowed so recklessly that the Federal Reserve no longer dares to raise interest rates. Doing so, the piece warns, would detonate the whole structure and send financing costs spiraling out of control.

Some investors are questioning how much further this year’s rally can run with the S&P 500 Index up 12.3% through the first eight months of the year. Encouragingly, history suggests that strong starts tend to persist; when the S&P 500 has gained more than 10% through August it has advanced from September through December in 25 of 28 instances, an 89% positive hit rate.

Don't let September's macro headline noise fool you. Today’s economic backdrop won’t likely trigger a broad market freeze like 2022, but there will be winners and losers. Cash-rich mega-caps, AI infrastructure plays, and scaled market leaders (the SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI tier) command their own gravity.

U.S. equities were little changed on the week – the S&P 500 rose 0.1 per cent, the NASDAQ gained 0.4 per cent, and the Russell 2000 added 0.12 per cent – but those modest moves masked a far more turbulent week in the global rates markets.

As wealth management firms scale, sustained organic growth increasingly depends on strong business leadership. Firms that build scalable client acquisition strategies, develop talent and create operational infrastructure can position themselves to grow beyond founder-led models and capitalize on the industry’s long-term opportunities.

History suggests slower Fed tightening tends to support stronger market returns and firmer economic growth, while faster hikes typically deepen drawdowns.

Portfolio Managers Jonathan Coleman and Aaron Schaechterle outline why they believe momentum in small-cap stocks relative to large caps can continue, highlighting favorable earnings growth prospects, appealing relative valuations, and other structural tailwinds.

2026 began with 10-year Treasuries right around 4%, which many viewed as a comfortable place. The comfort came from some simple math—2 plus 2 equals 4. The long-term real yield on the 10-year Treasury was around 2% and the Fed’s inflation target is 2%.

With so much attention focused on what the Federal Reserve (Fed) might do at its policy meeting next week, it’s a good time to look back at history to get a sense of how stocks might respond should the Fed hike rates as the market (barely) expects.

Benchmark-Free has been a flagship strategy for half of GMO's history. As we approach our 50th anniversary in 2027, Ben Inker reflects on our first 25 years of Benchmark-Free investing.

For much of the past decade and a half, investors saw little reason to favor bonds over equities. Yields were low and returns were muted, especially in passive strategies. Equities seemed to offer a much clearer path to long-term capital appreciation. For many investors, bonds were, at best, ballast: a dull but generally stable component of a broader portfolio. Then the experience of 2022 had investors questioning even that view, as areas of high quality fixed income generated equity-like losses that eroded much of the prior decade’s real return.

The August employment report was much stronger than expected and reinforces my view that the U.S. economy remains remarkably resilient. Payrolls increased by 162,000, above every estimate, while revisions added another 55,000 jobs to the previous two months. The workweek increased by one-tenth of an hour, the household survey was extremely strong, and the participation rate finally moved higher.

On Friday, the August U.S. employment report surprised to the upside, with 162,000 jobs added during the month. Year to date, the labor market has shown impressive resilience, with hiring also becoming more balanced across sectors than in previous years.

Brent crude oil rose above $100 a barrel for the first time since July, while the U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crossed $95, with varying impacts on energy ETFs. The price surge followed escalation in the Middle East conflict, including U.S. military strikes on five Iranian oil tankers and Houthi attacks on Saudi energy facilities.

Labor Day signals more than summer’s end. It marks a return of focus to the economic and market forces that will shape the remainder of the year. From resilient earnings and record AI spending to rising bond yields and the midterm elections, there is no shortage of forces shaping the market outlook.

If you’re planning on driving anywhere this Labor Day weekend, be prepared to pay the highest gas prices ever for this time of year. The national average hit $4.14 per gallon on Thursday, an approximately 30% increase from last year, according to AAA.

To kick off our fourth season of the Alternative Allocations podcast series, I sat down with John Bowman, CEO of CAIA Association, to explore the massive changes underway across our industry. John and I discussed CAIA’s seminal paper “The World Rewired,” and the implications for private markets.

The Federal Reserve has spent the past four years trying to cool price increases through higher interest rates. The federal funds rate is still well above its pre-pandemic average, mortgage rates remain elevated, and borrowing costs for households and businesses are considerably higher than they were in the era of ultra-low interest rates.

Oil prices climbed further Tuesday, with Brent crude rising 1% to $97.95 a barrel and briefly touching $99.46, according to the Associated Press. The benchmark has climbed from around $72 over the past two months. Fighting tied to the war with Iran has clouded hopes for reopening the Strait of Hormuz to tankers.

The S&P 500 gained 2.7% in August 2026 and four indexes hit all-time highs, but only five of eleven sectors rose and the Fed’s speech at Jackson Hole put a rate hike back on the table.

The U.S. ETF market reached $16.4 trillion in AUM in August 2026, driven by record product launches and a defensive shift to Treasuries.

Chris Galipeau discusses high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.

If you look deeply into a speculative bubble, you can already see the collapse. If you look deeply into a market collapse, you can already see the bull market. The road up and the road down are the very same road. Even so, aside from knowing that our investment position presently requires a safety net regardless of shorter-term conditions – we have utterly no opinions, preferences, or scenarios about the market outlook even a month or a quarter from now.

Before I discuss why I disagree with the “AI bears,” I want to state that I respect their opinions, have evaluated their concerns, and have simply derived a different set of conclusions. That is an important statement, because this particular group of “AI bears” includes some of the sharpest risk minds in the business, and they have been early to almost every warning that later mattered.

It's been 40 years since I began my career on Wall Street and the lessons I learned along the way from some all-time investment greats always hold true.

The “K-shaped” divide endures even as it evolves. Higher-income households keep benefiting from equity gains, home price appreciation, and solid earnings, while lower-income households face mounting pressure from elevated costs and tighter credit. But recent data suggest the story is becoming more nuanced.

Cerulli projects a $2 trillion surge in advisor-held alternatives over five years, as interval funds reshape how RIAs access private markets.