Artificial Intelligence

The U.S. Federal Reserve delivered on consensus expectations by raising its policy rate by 25 basis points (bps) at its September meeting.

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.

A rising S&P 500® might suggest few opportunities for tax-loss harvesting. But unusually wide dispersion among individual stocks is telling a different story—and potentially creating new opportunities for direct indexing.

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.

The 2026 U.S. midterms are rapidly approaching, with major implications. Muni bonds, in particular, may be impacted.

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.

The shortened Labor Day trading week brought little cheer for stock and bond investors. Coming off a long weekend that saw increased hostilities between the US and Iran, oil prices pushed higher, topping $100/barrel. Gas and diesel prices also spiked: diesel hit an all-time high of $6/gallon, while regular gas jumped to a Labor Day record of $4.15/gallon.

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.

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.

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.

From the 2020 pandemic to today’s oil shocks, we’re often reminded in recent years that inflation can flare up unexpectedly. We’ve also likely entered an era in which higher inflation may linger for some time. As a result, bond-heavy and income-oriented investors may need to shore up their inflation defense, which we think should combine strategic positioning with tactical maneuvering.

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.

A rate hike on Wednesday is now very likely but would also be unusual, and perhaps dangerous, at least as far as the past generation of monetary policy goes.

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.

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.

As policymakers adapt to new leadership, navigate a challenging geopolitical backdrop and contend with meaningful internal debate over the path of interest rates, the stakes remain high. Below, we discuss what to expect from next week’s Federal Reserve (Fed) meeting and provide perspective on the recent rise of Treasury yields to multi-year highs.

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.

Occasionally, we are confronted with decisions where there are no easy options. The prevailing circumstances bound our choices, and we may face criticism no matter what we do. Collectively, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) finds itself in just such a situation as it prepares for its upcoming meeting.

There is so much going on, it is hard to know where to begin. The data is all over the place. I had a long and epic dinner in New York with David Bahnsen, Rene Aninao, and Brian Syztel which has my mind buzzing with ideas and new concepts.

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.

With a handful of stocks attracting most of the recent headlines, it’s easy to forget that investors continue to find opportunities across a broad range of sectors.

While the name is new, Syzygy is not. Syzygy, formerly Research Affiliates, will extend our multi-decade sub-advisory relationships in asset allocation and long-only active equities and expand into other active diversification strategies in the coming quarters.

In this article, Russ Koesterich argues that momentum remains supported by strong earnings growth, making the factor attractive despite market risks.

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.

Before Friday’s jobs report, it was roughly a toss-up in the financial markets whether the Fed would raise rates at the next meeting in mid-September. Now, the odds favor a rate hike and it’s not hard to see why.

LPL Research analyzes rising U.S. debt, Treasury yields, and fiscal trends, highlighting implications for markets and investors.

Equity markets can be as difficult to forecast as the weather, yet investors often assume future return patterns will predictably follow recent trends. In today’s turbulent market climate, we think fundamental research can help investors build conviction in long-term company forecasts that may be obscured by the AI-driven cloud cover.

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.

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.

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.