Practice Management

The US economy grew less than expected during the second quarter of the year, up 1.5% quarter over quarter, dragged down by strong growth in imports. However, final sales to private domestic purchasers increased by 3.9%, underscoring the strength in domestic demand, which continues to rely too heavily in AI investment spending and strong spending from high-income consumers, or what has been called the K economy.

As companies race to capitalize on the AI boom, water security is emerging as a material risk across the value chain. While data centers attract headlines, semiconductor fabrication remains one of the value chain’s most water-intensive activities, requiring reliable supplies of high-purity water.

There are 38% fewer companies listed on U.S. exchanges today than at the peak in the mid-1990s. The forces behind that decline—regulatory burden, the abundance of private capital, and the quiet disappearance of mid-sized public companies—are structural, not cyclical.

Following historic inflows, momentum in the covered call ETF market continues unabated. Yet first-generation buy-write products were often viewed somewhat narrowly as high-yield income vehicles built on sacrificing equity upside for immediate cash flow. While early strategies proved the massive appetite for yield, they also exposed key advisor pain points — from steep NAV erosion in bull markets to tax-inefficient distributions.

Fixed income can serve several important purposes within an investment portfolio, including income generation, capital preservation, diversification, and supporting future cash flow needs. Unlike growth assets, an individual bond generally provides a defined schedule of interest payments and a stated maturity date.

Energy markets have reached a precarious moment, with the path of prices over the remainder of the year – and potentially beyond – hinging on two key questions.

Oil markets have entered a period of heightened volatility. Geopolitical tensions, shifting supply expectations, and uncertain demand forecasts continue to weigh on investor sentiment. This environment can make traditional energy investing challenging. However, it also increases interest income generation strategies like the Amplify Energy & Natural Resources Covered Call ETF (NDIV).

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.

U.S. equities finished lower last week as investors weighed an escalating conflict with Iran against renewed concern over the scale of AI-related spending. The technology-heavy NASDAQ Composite was the worst performer, falling 2.1 per cent, while the S&P 500, an index of the largest U.S. companies, declined 0.6 per cent.

Private equity has become easier than ever for individual investors to buy. Founders, executives, physicians, and business owners now regularly see private funds offered through banks, wealth platforms, feeders, evergreen vehicles, or registered interval funds. However, just because these funds are more readily available, and at lower minimums, does not mean they should immediately be invested in.

Artificial intelligence is a transformative new technology, but we believe that it’s likely to follow a familiar pattern. From spreadsheets to the internet, innovations have historically given early adopters an edge—for a time. In our view, the ability to maintain that advantage depends much more on how effectively an asset manager integrates it throughout the organization.

A continued escalation in the Middle East, where the Iranian-backed Houthis joined the conflict in an attempt to disrupt Saudi Arabian crude shipments that pass through the Red Sea via the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, drove oil prices higher, while new tariff announcements and Alphabet's earnings release created headwinds for equities.

Leverage, ratings arbitrage, liquidity transformation, and a growing willingness to embrace complexity and illiquidity are becoming more visible across parts of the financial system.

With the US-Iran conflict nearing the five-month mark, equity markets have mostly shrugged off the latest escalation. On one hand, that’s understandable – a healthy economy and record corporate profits continue to support the market’s fundamentals. But a note of caution is warranted.

For many years, globalization felt like a one-way street. Supply chains stretched effortlessly across continents. Companies built “just-in-time” systems that assumed goods, data, and capital would flow smoothly around the world. Investors could buy a global index fund and feel reasonably confident that they were capturing the benefits of ever-closer integration.

On July 28, Morgan Stanley launched two new spot crypto ETFs on NYSE Arca. The Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust (MSSE) and the Morgan Stanley Solana Trust (MSOL) provide spot price exposure to underlying ethereum (ETH) and solana (SOL), alongside additional distributions from staking yields.

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.

June may have proven to be a difficult month for silver investors, but it’s likely far too soon to give up on the precious metal. To better understand this, it’s important to contextualize why silver’s price is struggling and why the metal’s long-term opportunities are still there.

Oil has staged an impressive rebound this month as the conflict between the U.S. and Iran has re-escalated. The memorandum of understanding signed on June 17 created a 60-day window for negotiations, but the diplomatic opening lasted only a few weeks. Both sides subsequently accused the other of violating the peace agreement, and military operations have resumed.

Pensions are as healthy as they’ve been for a long while. Maintaining tried and true investment strategies has led the way to current funding levels and may support pension stability for years to come.

In this midyear global outlook summary, the authors revisit Vanguard’s economic and market outlooks and assess how our views have evolved since the start of the year.

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.

Election season often follows a familiar script. Investors debate congressional control, speculate on policy outcomes and search for clues about what markets might do next.

Inflation remains above target, especially the Federal Reserve’s preferred core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation measure, as choppy data have challenged the view that disinflation will proceed smoothly.

Investors continue to benefit from two powerful tailwinds: strong stock-market performance and bond yields that remain attractive compared with much of the post-financial-crisis period. Higher yields have improved the income generated by fixed income portfolios and given investors more flexibility to balance income, liquidity, and interest rate risk.

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.

In the Warsh Fed's new era of two-way risk, bonds offer something rare: potential downside risk mitigation that investors get paid to hold.

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.

The first half of 2026 was shaped by market-moving headlines. The conflict in the Middle East was the most significant story, triggering a short-term market sell-off.

For a Federal Reserve (Fed) chairman committed to reducing noise coming from the institution and/or to changing how the Fed communicates, his first attempt to do so was not very promising. Just after Chair Warsh’s first press conference, we argued that inflation was not a choice, as he suggested during the press conference.

Financial markets were eventful this week, with key inflation reports, Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Warsh’s first semiannual testimony to Congress, renewed Middle East tensions, and the start of earnings season all helping shape the narrative.

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.

Decades of data across global markets reach the same verdict: the more frequently retail traders trade, the worse they perform. The infrastructure has never been more inviting. The losses have never been more documented. Here are some key statistics we will dive into further.

For physicians, major financial decisions may rarely affect just one area of their financial life. The real potential risk is failing to understand how those decisions impact everything else.

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.

Entering Wednesday, the Russell 2000 and S&P SmallCap 600 indexes were up an average of 20.8% year-to-date, confirming small-cap stocks are back with a vengeance. Arguably overlooked in that scenario, some vibrant ETFs represent higher-quality approaches to smaller stocks.

For many investors and families, tax planning may become a year-end exercise squeezed into November and December. But by the time the calendar turns to the fourth quarter, many of the most effective opportunities are already limited.

Tax-aware long-short strategies are no longer the exclusive domain of institutional investors. As separate account delivery has expanded access, more advisors are asking whether tax-aware long-short belongs in their clients’ portfolios. Here are five practical considerations to help you decide.

The good news is real. The easy trade is not. Growth has held up, artificial intelligence investment is showing up in earnings and capital spending, and fixed income is offering yields that create serious cushion for portfolios.

Our baseline outlook still sees the Fed on hold through 2026 amid gradually easing price pressures. But Waller’s comments suggest that after a string of firmer Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation prints, the Fed now places greater emphasis on responding if inflation surprises sharply to the upside or proves more persistent than expected, regardless of which factors are driving the inflation. And this raises the stakes for incoming inflation data throughout the year.

Midyear is a useful moment in investing—not because it tells us where we are going, but because it offers a clearer view of how little we truly knew at the start. Six months is often enough time for confident forecasts to meet reality, for consensus narratives to fray, and for the distinction between what sounded plausible and what proved durable to come into focus.

The rules governing global commodity markets are starting to witness a profound shift, which is putting critical minerals at the forefront of policy. On a recent episode of ETF Guide’s Metals in Motion, Justin Tolman, Senior Portfolio Manager and Economic Geologist at Sprott Asset Management, discussed this dynamic.

General Douglas MacArthur once remarked that “rules are mostly made to be broken.” He was at odds with U.S. President Harry Truman over the conduct of the Korean War, feeling that the restrictions placed on his forces weren’t supportive of success.

After a difficult start to the year, investor sentiment reached a low point near the end of March as concerns around inflation, geopolitics, and rising interest rates weighed on risk assets.

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.

Regardless of how inflation is measured or debated, households continue to feel the cumulative effect of higher prices. The cost of goods and services have risen at a high pace over the past several years, and wage growth has not always kept pace evenly across households.

After a wild last 12 months in a technology stock boom – and more recent volatility – the question du jour, in our view, is not whether AI is transformative.

Every major geopolitical crisis has two types of effects: those that occur during the crisis itself and those that remain on a long-term basis, perhaps even permanently. The US-Iran conflict is no exception.

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.

While tariff uncertainty hasn’t completely disappeared, it has diminished, and firms are feeling less uncertain about the future.

Over the past few weeks, data has continued to point to a U.S. labor market that is healing after showing signs of weakness starting in late 2024 and persisting for nearly the entirety of 2025—a condition that spurred the Fed to cut rates even as inflation remained stuck above its 2 percent target.

As we move toward the mid-term elections, many are making the argument that “democracy is at risk.” We get politicians making this argument, but when supposedly sober political and economic analysts start to make it, we do get worried.

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.

Despite geopolitical headwinds, the broader macro backdrop remained constructive in the first half of the year. Economic growth proved resilient, consumers kept spending and the S&P 500 gained 10%. That favorable mix drove strong earnings growth, with S&P 500 earnings rising 27% year over year in 1Q26, led by the tech sector.

Discover the top 10 most-read charts from the first half of 2026, covering historic market valuations, record margin debt, recession indicators, and global index performance.

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