Innovative ETFs

South Korea and Taiwan are grabbing the majority of financial news headlines when it comes to international exposure, but a peek inside Latin America reveals potential opportunities. Brazil, in particular, could be offering investors ample value in both equities and bonds beyond those aforementioned countries already benefiting from the artificial intelligence (AI) buildout.

Without the support of rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, it’s been a lethargic year in terms of performance by municipal bonds and the related ETFs, but that doesn’t mean advisors and fixed income investors should ignore this bond segment.

Discover Aberdeen’s closed-end funds (CEFs) for high yields, illiquid assets, long-term investments, and resilient income for 2026.

The motivation for today's report comes from the growing number of articles warning about the possibility of an AI bubble. The truth is that nobody knows whether a bubble exists today in artificial intelligence or whether one may emerge in the future.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that tariff tensions between the United States and the rest of the world won’t be going away any time soon. Last Friday, the U.S. imposed a series of tariffs on 60 different trading partners, including China, Canada, and the European Union.

Brent crude crossed above $100 a barrel this week, all due to a 20-mile-wide stretch of water some 6,500 miles away from the U.S. Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—the Persian Gulf bottleneck that carried roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil before the fighting started—has fallen to virtually zero.

A wave of new active ETFs is reshaping the fund landscape, and advisors now need extra care when screening funds for their models.

The ETF market saw a push in capital away from the concentrated U.S. tech sector to defensive broad market exposure, short duration bonds, and commodities. The shift in flows is amplified by the semiconductor market pullback, interest rate uncertainty, and ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

Healthcare systems across the country are facing a difficult reality. Costs are rising faster than revenues, balance sheets are under pressure, the pacing of private market allocations are harder to manage, and liquidity has become an important topic for many organizations.

It may seem premature to focus on the November US midterm elections. Polls will shift, economic data will evolve and unexpected events will reshape the political landscape in the months ahead.

Semiconductor exchange-traded funds have gained more than 25% this year. Intel Corporation’s (INTC) second-quarter earnings report after today’s close could test whether that rally continues.

Small-cap and mid-cap stocks are outrunning large caps in 2026, and one portfolio manager says the shift has room to run.

Making his first appearance on Capitol Hill since becoming Fed Chair in May, Kevin Warsh delivered the chair's semi-annual testimony on monetary policy and the state of the economy to the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services on July 14 and the Senate Banking Committee on July 15.

AI continues to evolve. Early offerings in the 2010s around machine learning, natural language processing, and predictive analytics helped ignite the Big Data era and allow for the ingestion and processing of both structured and unstructured data at previously unimaginable speeds and volumes.

Last week’s dominant story was the sharp unwinding of the momentum trade that has carried the market for months. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) declined 10 per cent over the week and is down 21 per cent from June’s peak. Bear markets are defined as drawdowns of 20 per cent or more.

The prime culprit was renewed questioning of the artificial intelligence (AI) buildout given the increasing amount of capital investment needed to bring it to life and the corresponding costs for those who use the technology weighed against its potential productivity benefits.

According to Bankrate’s Mortgage Rates, the national average for a 30-year fixed mortgage is 6.61%. That’s uncomfortably high and a major headwind to many prospective homebuyers, particularly those in the first-time category.

A Roland Berger study finds family offices moving capital into infrastructure and private equity while retreating from riskier bets abroad.

As we move into the second half of 2026, U.S. large-cap stocks may be on pace to deliver their fourth straight year of double-digit gains, with the S&P 500 Index up 11.4% through July 10, 2026.

Whenever I speak at investment conferences, I like to point out that we invest in a number of publicly traded airports. I even list them: Spain’s Aena. Aeroports de Paris. Zurich Airport. Airports of Thailand. Two of the world’s largest operators, Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste and Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico, trade in Mexico.

I have been tracking the ETF industry for a long time. I remember when the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) made history as the very first ETF to hit the $100 billion mark. Since then nearly two dozen have joined SPY.

Markets are embracing the idea that we are in an AI supercycle. Investors are betting on a multi-decade technological shift, similar to the internet, that will transform industries, computing, and infrastructure.

Halfway through the year, the U.S. equity market performance is broadening. That said, market concentration remains incredibly high, while equity and bond correlations sit in positive territory — conditions that scream a call for diversification. Investors are heeding that call, many with alternatives ETFs.

On July 15, Direxion launched the Direxion Daily SK Hynix Bull 2X ETF (SKHL), seeking to replicate double the daily performance of the South Korean semiconductor manufacturers Sk Hynix (SKHY). The fund provides leveraged exposure to the world’s leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips. It boasts an expense ratio of 97 basis points.

Big Pharma has a $300 billion problem, and biotech developers with promising drugs are becoming the fix. Major drugmakers are spending at a pace not seen since 2019 to replace medicines that will soon lose patent protection.

Small-cap stocks remain the cheapest corner of the U.S. market. That’s true even after posting their best first-half performance in more than three decades, according to Morningstar’s Q3 2026 stock market outlook.

Friday, July 10, may have been ordinary for those outside the investment community, but for folks engaged with the market, it marked an opportunity to gain exposure to the second most valuable company in South Korea. On Friday, SK Hynix (SKHY) became available to U.S. investors via the Nasdaq.

For decades, traditional index-based ETFs have served as the low-cost foundational anchor for core allocations, consistently demonstrating that outperforming a broad market index is an uphill battle.

When it comes to space stocks, Elon Musk’s SpaceX (SPCX) is clearly the big kahuna. After all, the company just completed the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history, rapidly joining the $1 trillion-plus market capitalization club in the process. However, the broader space economy extends beyond a single company.

The tech-heavy NASDAQ benefited from a semiconductor rebound and renewed enthusiasm for AI infrastructure names. The Dow, weighted more toward “old economy” stocks than high-growth names, captured none of last week’s gains.

The Fed's recent shift into a more hawkish mode creates concern about banking profits later this year, but second-quarter results are seen strong thanks to IPOs, mergers.

Fixed income investors continue to grapple with an uncertain macro environment, dominated by higher-for-longer interest rates and a new-look U.S. Federal Reserve, in which rate hikes may be forthcoming. Rather than make a directional bet on interest rates to combat duration risk, consider floating-rate ETFs, a compelling option.

Every year in early July, we update our interactive Periodic Table of Commodities Returns to reflect the performance of raw materials in the first six months of the year. Maybe I’m biased, but I believe it’s one of the clearest snapshots of the commodities landscape you’ll find anywhere.

If you knew you were standing inside a stock market bubble, you wouldn’t be standing in it for long. You’d sell. So would I, and so would everyone reading this. And if spotting market bubbles was something everyone could do in real time, the bubble couldn’t form in the first place.

Morningstar data shows most active strategies lag passive indexes, but selective active fixed income ETFs can generate alpha.

The Federal Reserve’s plans for interest rates in the second half of 2026 appear very much up in the air. That said, advisors and fixed income investors may want to renew their focus on short duration bonds and related ETFs.

Markets enter the second half of 2026 facing a familiar wall of worry—geopolitical conflict, oil prices, inflation, Federal Reserve policy, and questions around the durability of an AI-led equity rally. Yet the economic backdrop still looks resilient: growth remains solid, inflation has moderated, unemployment is reasonable, and market leadership appears to be broadening.

For investors who have been tracking this space, the signing is a continuation of a policy architecture that has been assembling with surprising speed.

The small-cap stock rally we highlighted back in April has continued over the past few months, driven by factors such as robust U.S. economic growth disproportionately benefiting smaller, domestically focused businesses and the AI capital spending boom spreading to smaller tech and energy companies.

As economies become increasingly electrified and power demand grows, the transmission, storage and infrastructure needed to support reliable electricity delivery are evolving. In our view, these trends are creating attractive opportunities across the technologies and infrastructure that underpin the energy transition.

During the June 30, 2026, World Cup round of 32 match between France and Sweden at the 82,500-capacity MetLife Stadium, the logistical scale of a global mega-event was on full display. Moving 80,663 fans safely through a sprawling transit corridor and securing a massive open-air venue demands complex engineering. Underpinning the operation is a capital-intensive ecosystem of physical AI, advanced sensors, and automation software.

Royce Investment Partners: In this second quarter recap, Francis Gannon discusses how US small-and micro-cap stocks have continued to lead the US equity market in a robust period for equities.

The shortened trading week brought the second quarter of 2026 to a positive close. Stocks ended slightly lower for month, but closed the quarter on a nice uptick. The US and Iran resumed peace talks, helping stocks push higher.

Stocks staged a powerful recovery in Q2. The S&P 500 gained 15% and closed near record highs as oil round-tripped back to pre-conflict levels, AI enthusiasm returned, and the rally broadened well beyond the handful of names that led the market for three years.

ETF Database saw a massive surge in readers this past June. The most popular pieces focused on everything from breaking SpaceX IPO news to the technical mechanics behind top-performing ETFs.

Close to 40 years ago, I moved from Canada to the U.S. after acquiring a controlling interest in U.S. Global Investors. I’ve built my entire life and career here, and in all that time, I’ve never stopped marveling at my adopted country.

While the Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged at the latest meeting, investors increasingly speculate that rate hikes are on the table in 2026.