Private credit’s very bad month started on March 2, when Blackstone Inc.’s BCRED revealed what was at the time its largest investor redemptions ever. It was bookended on April 2, when Blue Owl Capital Inc. said two of its funds faced massive withdrawal requests of 22% and 41%, forcing the firm to largely block the exits.
In the first phase of the generative AI boom, the winning strategy was straightforward: own the physical bottleneck. Alphabet’s plan announced this week to raise $80 billion suggests that the next phase may hinge on something else—the ability to finance AI capacity at scale without undermining returns.
Some of that tension is also being felt by their clients, advisers say. Along with the anticipation of a life-changing windfall, the initial public offering is eliciting more complicated emotions, as well, ranging from apprehension to confusion.
The largest ski resort in the US, in a corner of Utah long popular with wealthy travelers and second-home buyers, is expanding — and turning to the municipal bond market to help pay for it.
The top-performing non-leveraged ETFs of 2026 span a distinct blend of digital assets, next-generation semiconductor technology, and localized international equity plays. For advisors assessing portfolio allocations heading into the second half of the year, these performance figures highlight a sustained risk-on appetite among investors.
Elon Musk can still enchant investors with his vision of the future. Any questions about SpaceX’s record-breaking initial public offering — be it about the valuation, the company’s trajectory or technical execution — were brushed aside as the retail marketing for the deal got under way.
Get ready for an absolute blockbuster of a summer, and then some. While mega-cap tech stocks have been busy hogging the headlines on the corporate event calendar, a quiet transformation has been taking place just off the exchange floors. The IPO market, which spent the better part of the last few years stuck in a defensive crouch, has officially smashed the accelerator to start 2026.
It’s May 2026 and once again civilization and financial markets have made it 5-ish months into a new year without self-combusting like a Spinal Tap drummer. It is important to note that dozens of people and stocks spontaneously combust every year, but despite the increasing universality of AI, it’s “just not really widely reported.”
As a symbol of economic vibrancy and opportunity, it’s hard to beat the public market. Its storied venues, where everything from butter to trillion-dollar tech companies are bought and sold, are a foundation of the modern world.
The top-performing non-leveraged ETFs of 2026 span a distinct blend of digital assets and localized international equity plays.
The first phase of the artificial intelligence investment trade was relatively straightforward: if you wanted to capture the AI boom using familiar names, you bought semiconductors.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon plans to discuss the upcoming SpaceX initial public offering with thousands of the bank’s high-net-worth clients, part of an unprecedented nationwide push in coordination with the rocket maker’s leaders.
The IPO market may be entering one of its largest cycles in years, but the next wave may be defined less by breadth than by scale. Instead of hundreds of companies listing, a smaller group of AI and strategic infrastructure leaders could reset the market on their own.
Despite rising global yields and renewed inflation concerns, equities moved higher in May on the back of a strong US earnings season and continued momentum in AI-related stocks. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 8.4% for the month, while the S&P 500 rose 5.3% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 2.9%.
Emerging markets offer important exposure to economic growth through rapid industrialization, natural resource endowments, and strong demographic dynamics.
Even if the Middle East war does find a lasting settlement, the specter of inflation appears poised to hang over the markets. Indeed, while employment data had, up until recently, been the primary focus for investors, arguably, inflation reports have now moved into the ‘leaderboard’ position.
Learn what's in store for the remainder of 2026 and the challenges that lie ahead in our mid-year outlook for U.S. stocks and the economy.
A strong business isn’t always a winning stock at every moment, and 2025 was a good reminder of that. Developed market equities finished the year up more than 20%, but quality stocks lagged. That’s why Parametric favors a multifactor approach to capture factor risk premia.
Get ready for a magnificent month, and then some. Mega-cap tech stocks dominate the corporate event calendar in June, already highlighted by NVIDIA (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote address at Computex 2026 in Taiwan earlier this week, one of many major conferences.
Wellington Management Co. agreed to buy the asset-management division of Hartford Insurance Group Inc. as the Boston-based investment firm pushes ahead with a wealth expansion.
Space ETFs have seen strong inflows coupled with standout performance, capturing significant market attention. For investors, the rapid pace of capital deployment into the space economy underscores a compelling investment opportunity. For this edition of Bull vs Bear, writers Zandile Chiwanza and Elle Caruso Fitzgerald debate the use cases for space ETFs in portfolios.
As billions of dollars leave Bitcoin and Ether funds, money is flowing into a corner of crypto that promises something investors have long struggled to find in digital assets: a clearer path from economic activity to token value.
A key source of demand for corporate bonds may be fading now that managers of company pension funds have more than enough money on hand to pay their retirees.
US equities continued to climb higher in May, with the S&P 500 Index rising 5.1%. Further de-escalation of geopolitical tension in the Middle East has paved the way for the market’s 19.5% advance from the late-March lows.
Private markets have become integral to modern portfolios, with many investors searching for higher returns and diversification, including from public markets. But recent fund redemptions have reinforced that illiquidity isn’t theoretical, raising questions about the benefits of giving up liquidity. We see several—but investors must understand the trade-offs.
For the dollar-denominated investor weighing how to position for the back half of 2026, last week tightened a thesis we have been building all year.
Taylor Topoussis and Chris Galipeau discuss high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.
May’s 5.3% S&P 500 gain masked a deeply uneven market: technology surged 16% on AI spending momentum while most sectors declined, and a surprise inflation rebound flipped the Fed narrative from cuts to potential hikes.
As advisors, our role is not to solve fiscal policy; it is to ensure our clients are positioned to weather the uncertainty that comes from that gap, stay committed to their long-term plans, and not let macroeconomic anxiety drive short-term decisions they will regret.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is negotiating to pay razor-thin fees to Wall Street firms handling its IPO — but banks are still likely to rake in about $500 million from the record-setting market debut.
Geopolitical risks are still lingering in the background, but the story lately has been all about earnings. A strong 1Q26 season, paired with a steady drumbeat of upbeat management commentary, has helped push the S&P 500 to 21 record highs this year.
Businesses are racing to build the physical infrastructure that makes AI usable at scale – data centers, the graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware stack, power, and cooling.
The market continues to demonstrate remarkable resilience. Lower oil prices, easing Treasury yields, and the relentless buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure are still providing a favorable backdrop for risk assets.
If you’re not familiar with the name Leopold Aschenbrenner, you should be. A 24-year-old wunderkind, Aschenbrenner was hired by OpenAI in 2023 to work on the company’s “superalignment” team, essentially trying to figure out how to keep AI systems safe once they become smarter than the people building them.
Closed-end funds may not be a hot topic right now, but they offer a highly compelling means to solve today's macroeconomic woes.
Goldman Sachs announced a partnership with Anthropic in early May, though you probably shouldn’t view it as just a cool innovation story. It is infrastructure in motion. When institutions like Goldman move, pay attention to what problem they believe they are solving.
For the last eight years, GMO’s Asset Allocation team has held a differentiated view on Japanese equities. Long before Japan re‑entered the global investment narrative, we argued that the country was undergoing slow but durable structural changes aimed at improving corporate governance, growth, and capital efficiency. These reforms were never expected to deliver quick results. Instead, we expected them to compound quietly over time.
The essential feature of a useful alternative asset isn’t that it’s unusual or exotic, but that its returns aren’t tightly linked to the risks that already dominate the portfolio. The value of an alternative asset comes from the way it interacts with the other assets in the portfolio.
It’s not often that investors encounter something truly new in markets. But they will soon when Space Exploration Technologies Corp., OpenAI and Anthropic PBC go public with trillion-dollar valuations, or close to it. No company listed in the US has ever come to market so extravagantly priced — by a long shot.
The industry is entering a more customized phase of liability-driven investing, he said. While earlier stages focused on adding duration and raising fixed-income allocations, better-funded plans are now tinkering at the margins to more precisely match their holdings with their obligations.
Innovation drives productivity growth, which in turn raises the standard of living for a nation's population. Accordingly, we support the theory that AI will benefit the economy and the population. We laid this bullish case out in "The AI Economy: Looking Beyond The Façade Part I."
The dollar is supposed to be dying. We’ve heard that argument for the better part of a decade, and it’s getting louder, not quieter. Dollar dominance isn’t fading. In fact, the events of late April 2026 just delivered the loudest counter-signal in years.
Equities extend gains as earnings and semiconductors lead markets higher. Consumer confidence remains subdued despite economic resilience. Inflation is easing gradually but remains above the Fed’s targey.
In the 24-hour financial news cycle, there’s much buzz surrounding the buildout of infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI). What about infrastructure beneficial to humans? There are plenty of ETF opportunities in the sector that’s gone from defensive hedge to dynamic capital appreciation engine.
Many debates in defined contribution (DC) circles focus on fees, new asset classes, and ever more complex solutions. But the biggest improvement available to plan participants may come from something far simpler: how their fixed income is managed.
The next IPO wave may create a different kind of portfolio challenge for institutions already holding private stakes in companies like SpaceX and OpenAI.
Growing excitement around the burgeoning space economy is increasingly favoring companies positioned to benefit not only from Elon Musk’s SpaceX filing for a public offering, but also from rising enthusiasm for space exploration and increased funding.
Large asset managers are rolling out a wave of actively managed emerging-market ETFs, pitching them as alternatives to benchmarks increasingly dominated by AI stocks.
As globalization gives way to reshoring and resurgent resource nationalism, emerging markets may offer fresh alpha opportunities through their ability to supply the raw materials required to fuel the AI boom.
The U.S. government’s decision to invest $2 billion directly into nine quantum-computing companies through minority equity stakes—not just grants—signals a major shift toward treating quantum as a strategic commercial industry, with potential implications for investors seeking targeted exposure through funds like the WisdomTree Quantum Computing Fund (WQTM).
Recent market volatility and the conflict in Iran have understandably pushed many emerging market investors to the sidelines. But periods of uncertainty have historically offered attractive entry points into emerging market debt (EMD), particularly when underlying fundamentals are improving and asset flows are likely to increase.
Bankers are preparing to sell a jumbo debt package to support the $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. It’s a risky deal and comes at a moment when the bond markets have been wobbling.
In a relatively light week for traditional economic data, a mix of corporate earnings, business surveys, Federal Reserve minutes, and the latest read on the consumer from the University of Michigan helped paint an increasingly clear picture for investors.
It’s the first word that comes to mind to describe Q1 2026 U.S. company earnings. S&P 500 earnings growth is looking set to reach 28% year over year (yoy), more than double the consensus estimate of 12% at the start of the reporting season.
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has transitioned from an equity market narrative to a defining force in fixed income. Hyperscalers (Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOG/L), Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), and Oracle (ORCL)) are shifting from internal cash flows to substantial bond issuance to fund massive data center, graphics processing unit (GPU), and power infrastructure buildouts.
Contrary to what legal television series portray, verdicts rarely turn on a single moment of drama. They take shape gradually, as evidence accumulates and a broader narrative comes into focus.
Chris Galipeau discusses high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.
Almost two-thirds of fund managers permit some level of “nuclear exposure,” with 34% allowing investments in nuclear weaponry, according to Jefferies Financial Group Inc.’s fourth-annual ESG and defense survey.
Global equity markets moved modestly higher this week as first-quarter earnings season continued to deliver strong results.
Despite these higher costs, a projected 45 million Americans are expected to travel at least 50 miles from home this weekend, setting a new record. Close to 40 million will drive while some 3.7 million will fly.
The SpaceX initial public offering prospectus is more than 400 pages of rocket fuel-grade ambition. It is also an extended warning for investors in Tesla Inc. who aren’t named Elon Musk.
On May 26, 1896, Charles Dow calculated a simple arithmetic average of 12 industrial stocks and arrived at a closing value of 40.94. Now, exactly 130 years later, that same benchmark has crossed the historic 50,000 threshold.
New AdvizorPro data shows RIAs broadened their ETF lineups in Q1 2026, leaning into real assets, active managers, and defense strategies.
Quantinuum Inc., a quantum computing company backed by Honeywell International Inc., is seeking to raise $1.05 billion in its US initial public offering, capitalizing on investor enthusiasm for the technology.
Prudential Financial Inc.’s asset-management arm has financed about $4 billion of land-banking projects through a partnership with Domain Real Estate Partners, part of a push to gain exposure to the US homebuilding industry.
Private markets (private equity, private credit and real estate) have historically delivered an “illiquidity premium”. Institutions and family offices have recognized this illiquidity premium and have historically allocated significant capital to capture it.
Since the post-COVID recovery began, U.S. nonfinancial corporations have generally managed capital conservatively. They have kept credit metrics stable and, in many cases, actively improved them. That discipline was not entirely voluntary: The sharp adjustment in funding costs triggered by the Federal Reserve’s 2022–2023 rate hiking cycle raised the bar for incremental borrowing and pushed management teams toward balance sheet restraint.
In this video, Chuck Carnevale explains why he believes a diversified dividend-growth stock portfolio can be a better long-term strategy for retirees than the traditional 60/40 stock-and-bond allocation. Using a real-world portfolio he created in August 2021, Chuck demonstrates how an all-equity income portfolio can provide both rising income and capital appreciation while helping investors stay ahead of inflation.
During the American cigar craze of the 1990s, a couple of my neighbors purchased humidors and began collecting. The holy grail for them was Cuban Cohibas, banned from import by longstanding U.S. sanctions.
Artificial intelligence (AI) might be the talk of the town these days, but quantum computing is the quiet thunder rumbling in the background. It just got much louder with the U.S. White House commiting to roll out a massive $2 billion funding package distributed across nine quantum computing companies.
Elon Musk has bucked the trend of industrial conglomerate breakups, including such illustrious companies as General Electric and Honeywell International Inc., and decided to form a somewhat unwieldy company that makes rockets, spacecraft, satellites, antennas, modems and now computer chips. With SpaceX’s purchase of Musk’s xAI in February, the world’s leading space company was married to an AI startup and the X social media platform.
For private equity firms, capital flexibility is prized today. Merger-and-acquisition (M&A) activity has cooled, while commodity prices and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven disruption have heated up, creating uncertainty for investors. This makes it more challenging to sell portfolio companies, so private equity firms are holding investments longer. As a result, many firms are turning to net asset value (NAV) loans for capital needs.
Some institutional investors who had grown accustomed to outperforming the broader private equity composites are finding they have not done so consistently in recent years. Their diagnoses of the problem often center on specific decisions or biases they made in their recent manager selection, whereas a likely culprit is a falloff in the persistence of outperformance among private equity managers.
There is a growing risk of economic overheating in the US as the artificial intelligence boom expands beyond semiconductors and spills into the broader economy — never mind the tame wage growth and house prices that would typically point in the opposite direction.
Nvidia is now a textbook fit for quality-focused indexes in ETFs given its strong underlying business fundamentals. The company has become the smartest kid in the quality classroom, scoring exceptionally high on metrics like high return on equity (ROE), strong return on invested capital (ROIC), stable earnings growth, and low balance sheet leverage.
Recently, Matthew Bartolini, global head of research strategists at State Street Investment Management, sat down with VettaFi to discuss where inflation stands, opportunities within portfolio construction, and much more.
We separate this article into two parts. Part one is the optimistic case: an AI-induced, productivity-led economic boom in which the benefits spread quickly to society. Part two will address a more bearish outlook: the possibility of a large gap in the distribution of AI's productivity benefits, accruing to corporations much more quickly than to employees.
Put succinctly, the world today requires substantially more electricity than only a few years ago. AI, electrification, reshored manufacturing, and population growth in the developing world are converging into a demand curve that the existing global power system simply cannot meet.
Private credit managers are increasingly turning to the once-unthinkable: Trading in and out of loans to dump troubled assets and hunt for bargains amid the industry’s first stress test after years of breakneck growth.
Hedge funds have been selling the scorching rally in US semiconductor stocks to book profits, while keeping their overall exposure to the AI theme, according to traders at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Even if armchair investors are fleeing private credit or panicking that their unlisted shares in Anthropic PBC are now invalid, the long-term trend is clear: Public markets keep losing ground to private funds.
Sustainable investing in fixed income has come of age. Against a backdrop of heightened geopolitical tensions, persistent economic and trade uncertainty, sustainable fixed income continued to demonstrate its appeal in 2025.
At first glance, the retreat of foreign asset managers is ominous. Signs of a domestic retail frenzy are everywhere. Cash deposits in local brokerage accounts have reached 137 trillion won ($91 billion), a two-third jump from six months ago.
Emerging markets (EM) are using low-cost renewables to cut fuel imports, stabilize power costs and improve energy security—positioning EM as the growth engine of the energy transition. Countries and companies that leverage their dominance in critical minerals and green technology could pull ahead, creating dispersion in potential outcomes for investors.
While most institutional investors recognize that private equity and public equity share similar economic risks, they often seem to ignore how their aggregate equity portfolio is affected by their substantial allocation to private equity.
Wall Street is racing to turn computing power into a tradable commodity with the first ETFs being filed even before the futures contracts they would track have started to trade.
Nvidia Corp., facing more investor skepticism, used its latest quarterly report to tout progress in diversifying the company, which aims to rely less on the giant data center operators that have fueled its runaway growth.
In the past year, new models from industry leaders have continued to boost AI’s capabilities. According to various capabilities tests, Anthropic’s Mythos model has leapfrogged other AI models – including in the ability to thwart or support cyberattacks.
Enterprise software is undergoing its most significant reset in a generation. Artificial intelligence (AI) is reallocating value within software—creating clear winners and exposing vulnerabilities in business models that have worked well for the past two decades. We believe investors who treat software as a uniform asset class will make costly mistakes.
Institutional investors have spent years hearing about the promise of artificial intelligence. That phase is giving way to a more practical question: not whether AI can create more scale, but whether that scale can be governed, validated, and translated into better fiduciary decisions. For OCIO providers, AI without discipline is not an advantage.
Private Equity
Private Credit’s Resurgent Redemptions Shatter Short-Lived Calm
Private credit’s very bad month started on March 2, when Blackstone Inc.’s BCRED revealed what was at the time its largest investor redemptions ever. It was bookended on April 2, when Blue Owl Capital Inc. said two of its funds faced massive withdrawal requests of 22% and 41%, forcing the firm to largely block the exits.
Funding as the New AI Bottleneck: What Alphabet’s Move Reveals
In the first phase of the generative AI boom, the winning strategy was straightforward: own the physical bottleneck. Alphabet’s plan announced this week to raise $80 billion suggests that the next phase may hinge on something else—the ability to finance AI capacity at scale without undermining returns.
SpaceX IPO Brings ‘Prime Time’ for Advisers Ahead of Wealth Surge
Some of that tension is also being felt by their clients, advisers say. Along with the anticipation of a life-changing windfall, the initial public offering is eliciting more complicated emotions, as well, ranging from apprehension to confusion.
Park City Ski-Area Turns to Luxury Dirt Deal Ahead of Olympics
The largest ski resort in the US, in a corner of Utah long popular with wealthy travelers and second-home buyers, is expanding — and turning to the municipal bond market to help pay for it.
Look to State Street, Invesco, VanEck for Top-Performing ETFs in 2026
The top-performing non-leveraged ETFs of 2026 span a distinct blend of digital assets, next-generation semiconductor technology, and localized international equity plays. For advisors assessing portfolio allocations heading into the second half of the year, these performance figures highlight a sustained risk-on appetite among investors.
Musk Leaves Investors Starstruck at Dimon’s SpaceX Extravaganza
Elon Musk can still enchant investors with his vision of the future. Any questions about SpaceX’s record-breaking initial public offering — be it about the valuation, the company’s trajectory or technical execution — were brushed aside as the retail marketing for the deal got under way.
The New-Issue Window Flies Open: Inside 2026's Red-Hot First-Half IPO Rush
Get ready for an absolute blockbuster of a summer, and then some. While mega-cap tech stocks have been busy hogging the headlines on the corporate event calendar, a quiet transformation has been taking place just off the exchange floors. The IPO market, which spent the better part of the last few years stuck in a defensive crouch, has officially smashed the accelerator to start 2026.
Venus and Mars are Alright Tonight?
It’s May 2026 and once again civilization and financial markets have made it 5-ish months into a new year without self-combusting like a Spinal Tap drummer. It is important to note that dozens of people and stocks spontaneously combust every year, but despite the increasing universality of AI, it’s “just not really widely reported.”
A Universe of Potential Opportunity Lies Beyond the Public Markets
As a symbol of economic vibrancy and opportunity, it’s hard to beat the public market. Its storied venues, where everything from butter to trillion-dollar tech companies are bought and sold, are a foundation of the modern world.
Look to State Street, Invesco, VanEck for Top-Performing ETFs in 2026
The top-performing non-leveraged ETFs of 2026 span a distinct blend of digital assets and localized international equity plays.
AI ETFs: The Next Wave Emerges
The first phase of the artificial intelligence investment trade was relatively straightforward: if you wanted to capture the AI boom using familiar names, you bought semiconductors.
Dimon to Pitch JPMorgan’s Ultra-Rich Clients on SpaceX IPO
JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon plans to discuss the upcoming SpaceX initial public offering with thousands of the bank’s high-net-worth clients, part of an unprecedented nationwide push in coordination with the rocket maker’s leaders.
Four Watchpoints for 2026’s Potential Mega IPO Class
The IPO market may be entering one of its largest cycles in years, but the next wave may be defined less by breadth than by scale. Instead of hundreds of companies listing, a smaller group of AI and strategic infrastructure leaders could reset the market on their own.
Record Highs on the Back of Earnings and AI. Will Inflation Prove Sticky and Derail the Rally?
Despite rising global yields and renewed inflation concerns, equities moved higher in May on the back of a strong US earnings season and continued momentum in AI-related stocks. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 8.4% for the month, while the S&P 500 rose 5.3% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 2.9%.
Guided by Fundamentals: Navigating Emerging Markets with Value
Emerging markets offer important exposure to economic growth through rapid industrialization, natural resource endowments, and strong demographic dynamics.
Could the ‘I’ in AI Stand for Inflation?
Even if the Middle East war does find a lasting settlement, the specter of inflation appears poised to hang over the markets. Indeed, while employment data had, up until recently, been the primary focus for investors, arguably, inflation reports have now moved into the ‘leaderboard’ position.
2026 Mid-Year Outlook: U.S. Stocks and Economy
Learn what's in store for the remainder of 2026 and the challenges that lie ahead in our mid-year outlook for U.S. stocks and the economy.
Factor Investing Endures Despite Tough 2025 for Quality Stocks
A strong business isn’t always a winning stock at every moment, and 2025 was a good reminder of that. Developed market equities finished the year up more than 20%, but quality stocks lagged. That’s why Parametric favors a multifactor approach to capture factor risk premia.
AI Stocks Enter a Crucial Month as Major Tech Events Crowd the Calendar
Get ready for a magnificent month, and then some. Mega-cap tech stocks dominate the corporate event calendar in June, already highlighted by NVIDIA (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote address at Computex 2026 in Taiwan earlier this week, one of many major conferences.
Wellington to Buy Hartford Funds for $1.9 Billion in Wealth Push
Wellington Management Co. agreed to buy the asset-management division of Hartford Insurance Group Inc. as the Boston-based investment firm pushes ahead with a wealth expansion.
Bull vs Bear: Are Space ETFs Ready for Liftoff or Grounded by Macro Headwinds?
Space ETFs have seen strong inflows coupled with standout performance, capturing significant market attention. For investors, the rapid pace of capital deployment into the space economy underscores a compelling investment opportunity. For this edition of Bull vs Bear, writers Zandile Chiwanza and Elle Caruso Fitzgerald debate the use cases for space ETFs in portfolios.
A 180% Crypto Rally Shows New Investing Era as Bitcoin Stumbles
As billions of dollars leave Bitcoin and Ether funds, money is flowing into a corner of crypto that promises something investors have long struggled to find in digital assets: a clearer path from economic activity to token value.
Company Pension Funds Stuffed With Bonds Ease Up on Debt Buying
A key source of demand for corporate bonds may be fading now that managers of company pension funds have more than enough money on hand to pay their retirees.
AOR Update: Resilience
US equities continued to climb higher in May, with the S&P 500 Index rising 5.1%. Further de-escalation of geopolitical tension in the Middle East has paved the way for the market’s 19.5% advance from the late-March lows.
What Are Investors Really Getting from Private Markets?
Private markets have become integral to modern portfolios, with many investors searching for higher returns and diversification, including from public markets. But recent fund redemptions have reinforced that illiquidity isn’t theoretical, raising questions about the benefits of giving up liquidity. We see several—but investors must understand the trade-offs.
Records on the Tape. Savings at a Three-Year Low.
For the dollar-denominated investor weighing how to position for the back half of 2026, last week tightened a thesis we have been building all year.
Strong Earnings Season Complete! Where Will the Market Focus Now?
Taylor Topoussis and Chris Galipeau discuss high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.
The S&P 500 Hit Record Highs, but Eight of Eleven Sectors Ended May in the Red
May’s 5.3% S&P 500 gain masked a deeply uneven market: technology surged 16% on AI spending momentum while most sectors declined, and a surprise inflation rebound flipped the Fed narrative from cuts to potential hikes.
America's Tab: What 100% Debt-to-GDP Means for Advisors
As advisors, our role is not to solve fiscal policy; it is to ensure our clients are positioned to weather the uncertainty that comes from that gap, stay committed to their long-term plans, and not let macroeconomic anxiety drive short-term decisions they will regret.
SpaceX Wants a Fee Cut From IPO Bankers Targeting $500 Million Windfall
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is negotiating to pay razor-thin fees to Wall Street firms handling its IPO — but banks are still likely to rake in about $500 million from the record-setting market debut.
Market Focus Shifts From Earnings to Macro Catalysts
Geopolitical risks are still lingering in the background, but the story lately has been all about earnings. A strong 1Q26 season, paired with a steady drumbeat of upbeat management commentary, has helped push the S&P 500 to 21 record highs this year.
Investment Discipline Amid the AI Infrastructure Boom
Businesses are racing to build the physical infrastructure that makes AI usable at scale – data centers, the graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware stack, power, and cooling.
Falling Yields Reinforce Equity Market Resilience
The market continues to demonstrate remarkable resilience. Lower oil prices, easing Treasury yields, and the relentless buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure are still providing a favorable backdrop for risk assets.
The $13.7 Billion Hedge Fund That’s Betting Big on AGI Infrastructure
If you’re not familiar with the name Leopold Aschenbrenner, you should be. A 24-year-old wunderkind, Aschenbrenner was hired by OpenAI in 2023 to work on the company’s “superalignment” team, essentially trying to figure out how to keep AI systems safe once they become smarter than the people building them.
3 Reasons To Invest In Closed-End Funds This Summer
Closed-end funds may not be a hot topic right now, but they offer a highly compelling means to solve today's macroeconomic woes.
Goldman Sachs Didn't Partner With Anthropic to Write Better Emails
Goldman Sachs announced a partnership with Anthropic in early May, though you probably shouldn’t view it as just a cool innovation story. It is infrastructure in motion. When institutions like Goldman move, pay attention to what problem they believe they are solving.
Japan Equities
For the last eight years, GMO’s Asset Allocation team has held a differentiated view on Japanese equities. Long before Japan re‑entered the global investment narrative, we argued that the country was undergoing slow but durable structural changes aimed at improving corporate governance, growth, and capital efficiency. These reforms were never expected to deliver quick results. Instead, we expected them to compound quietly over time.
Record Extremes, Alternative Investments, and the Hippo
The essential feature of a useful alternative asset isn’t that it’s unusual or exotic, but that its returns aren’t tightly linked to the risks that already dominate the portfolio. The value of an alternative asset comes from the way it interacts with the other assets in the portfolio.
SpaceX Needs to Get to $5 Quadrillion to Rival Mag Seven Magic
It’s not often that investors encounter something truly new in markets. But they will soon when Space Exploration Technologies Corp., OpenAI and Anthropic PBC go public with trillion-dollar valuations, or close to it. No company listed in the US has ever come to market so extravagantly priced — by a long shot.
Company Pension Funds Stuffed With Bonds Ease Up on Debt Buying
The industry is entering a more customized phase of liability-driven investing, he said. While earlier stages focused on adding duration and raising fixed-income allocations, better-funded plans are now tinkering at the margins to more precisely match their holdings with their obligations.
Timing Productivity Benefits: The AI Economy
Innovation drives productivity growth, which in turn raises the standard of living for a nation's population. Accordingly, we support the theory that AI will benefit the economy and the population. We laid this bullish case out in "The AI Economy: Looking Beyond The Façade Part I."
Dollar Dominance Remains Alive And Well (Part 1)
The dollar is supposed to be dying. We’ve heard that argument for the better part of a decade, and it’s getting louder, not quieter. Dollar dominance isn’t fading. In fact, the events of late April 2026 just delivered the loudest counter-signal in years.
Earnings and Semiconductors Power Markets
Equities extend gains as earnings and semiconductors lead markets higher. Consumer confidence remains subdued despite economic resilience. Inflation is easing gradually but remains above the Fed’s targey.
Beyond the AI Boom: Human Infrastructure Exposure With 3 ETFs
In the 24-hour financial news cycle, there’s much buzz surrounding the buildout of infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI). What about infrastructure beneficial to humans? There are plenty of ETF opportunities in the sector that’s gone from defensive hedge to dynamic capital appreciation engine.
The Retirement Hack Hiding Inside Most DC Plans
Many debates in defined contribution (DC) circles focus on fees, new asset classes, and ever more complex solutions. But the biggest improvement available to plan participants may come from something far simpler: how their fixed income is managed.
Mega IPOs and Institutional Portfolio Risk
The next IPO wave may create a different kind of portfolio challenge for institutions already holding private stakes in companies like SpaceX and OpenAI.
Rocket, Satellite Stocks Surge as SpaceX IPO Fuels Euphoria
Growing excitement around the burgeoning space economy is increasingly favoring companies positioned to benefit not only from Elon Musk’s SpaceX filing for a public offering, but also from rising enthusiasm for space exploration and increased funding.
AI’s Grip on Emerging Markets Fuels Rise in Stock-Picking ETFs
Large asset managers are rolling out a wave of actively managed emerging-market ETFs, pitching them as alternatives to benchmarks increasingly dominated by AI stocks.
Guided by Fundamentals: Navigating Emerging Markets with Value
As globalization gives way to reshoring and resurgent resource nationalism, emerging markets may offer fresh alpha opportunities through their ability to supply the raw materials required to fuel the AI boom.
The U.S. Government Just Became a Quantum Investor
The U.S. government’s decision to invest $2 billion directly into nine quantum-computing companies through minority equity stakes—not just grants—signals a major shift toward treating quantum as a strategic commercial industry, with potential implications for investors seeking targeted exposure through funds like the WisdomTree Quantum Computing Fund (WQTM).
Why Now Is the Time to Revisit Emerging Market Debt
Recent market volatility and the conflict in Iran have understandably pushed many emerging market investors to the sidelines. But periods of uncertainty have historically offered attractive entry points into emerging market debt (EMD), particularly when underlying fundamentals are improving and asset flows are likely to increase.
The Ellison Family’s $49 Billion Ask Is an Acid Test for Markets
Bankers are preparing to sell a jumbo debt package to support the $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. It’s a risky deal and comes at a moment when the bond markets have been wobbling.
Stocks Rise on AI Optimism While Fed Signals Higher Rates for Longer
In a relatively light week for traditional economic data, a mix of corporate earnings, business surveys, Federal Reserve minutes, and the latest read on the consumer from the University of Michigan helped paint an increasingly clear picture for investors.
The Equity Outlook After More ‘Magnificent’ Earnings
It’s the first word that comes to mind to describe Q1 2026 U.S. company earnings. S&P 500 earnings growth is looking set to reach 28% year over year (yoy), more than double the consensus estimate of 12% at the start of the reporting season.
AI’s New Frontier: The Transformation of Investment-Grade Credit
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has transitioned from an equity market narrative to a defining force in fixed income. Hyperscalers (Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOG/L), Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), and Oracle (ORCL)) are shifting from internal cash flows to substantial bond issuance to fund massive data center, graphics processing unit (GPU), and power infrastructure buildouts.
Gilt-y As Charged
Contrary to what legal television series portray, verdicts rarely turn on a single moment of drama. They take shape gradually, as evidence accumulates and a broader narrative comes into focus.
Fundamental Backdrop Strong. Watch for Pullbacks.
Chris Galipeau discusses high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.
Jefferies Says Investors Boost ‘Nuclear Exposure’: ESG Investing
Almost two-thirds of fund managers permit some level of “nuclear exposure,” with 34% allowing investments in nuclear weaponry, according to Jefferies Financial Group Inc.’s fourth-annual ESG and defense survey.
Markets Rally as IPO Momentum Builds
Global equity markets moved modestly higher this week as first-quarter earnings season continued to deliver strong results.
45 Million Americans Hit the Road This Weekend Despite $4.50 Gas
Despite these higher costs, a projected 45 million Americans are expected to travel at least 50 miles from home this weekend, setting a new record. Close to 40 million will drive while some 3.7 million will fly.
SpaceX Writes Tesla’s Future in the Stars
The SpaceX initial public offering prospectus is more than 400 pages of rocket fuel-grade ambition. It is also an extended warning for investors in Tesla Inc. who aren’t named Elon Musk.
130 Years of the Dow: Why It Still Matters for Advisors
On May 26, 1896, Charles Dow calculated a simple arithmetic average of 12 industrial stocks and arrived at a closing value of 40.94. Now, exactly 130 years later, that same benchmark has crossed the historic 50,000 threshold.
Real Assets or Active ETFs? Where RIAs Allocate
New AdvizorPro data shows RIAs broadened their ETF lineups in Q1 2026, leaning into real assets, active managers, and defense strategies.
Honeywell-Backed Quantinuum Seeks to Raise $1.05 Billion in IPO
Quantinuum Inc., a quantum computing company backed by Honeywell International Inc., is seeking to raise $1.05 billion in its US initial public offering, capitalizing on investor enthusiasm for the technology.
PGIM Backs $4 Billion of US Land-Bank Deals in Asset-Based Push
Prudential Financial Inc.’s asset-management arm has financed about $4 billion of land-banking projects through a partnership with Domain Real Estate Partners, part of a push to gain exposure to the US homebuilding industry.
The Cost of Being Too Liquid
Private markets (private equity, private credit and real estate) have historically delivered an “illiquidity premium”. Institutions and family offices have recognized this illiquidity premium and have historically allocated significant capital to capture it.
AI Credit Expansion: Assessing the Micro and Macro Risks
Since the post-COVID recovery began, U.S. nonfinancial corporations have generally managed capital conservatively. They have kept credit metrics stable and, in many cases, actively improved them. That discipline was not entirely voluntary: The sharp adjustment in funding costs triggered by the Federal Reserve’s 2022–2023 rate hiking cycle raised the bar for incremental borrowing and pushed management teams toward balance sheet restraint.
How & Why Dividend Growth Stocks Beat Bonds: Model Portfolio Update
In this video, Chuck Carnevale explains why he believes a diversified dividend-growth stock portfolio can be a better long-term strategy for retirees than the traditional 60/40 stock-and-bond allocation. Using a real-world portfolio he created in August 2021, Chuck demonstrates how an all-equity income portfolio can provide both rising income and capital appreciation while helping investors stay ahead of inflation.
Cuba Libre
During the American cigar craze of the 1990s, a couple of my neighbors purchased humidors and began collecting. The holy grail for them was Cuban Cohibas, banned from import by longstanding U.S. sanctions.
Washington’s $2 Billion Quantum Bet Can Prop Up These ETFs
Artificial intelligence (AI) might be the talk of the town these days, but quantum computing is the quiet thunder rumbling in the background. It just got much louder with the U.S. White House commiting to roll out a massive $2 billion funding package distributed across nine quantum computing companies.
Musk Is Leading SpaceX Into the Conglomerate Trap
Elon Musk has bucked the trend of industrial conglomerate breakups, including such illustrious companies as General Electric and Honeywell International Inc., and decided to form a somewhat unwieldy company that makes rockets, spacecraft, satellites, antennas, modems and now computer chips. With SpaceX’s purchase of Musk’s xAI in February, the world’s leading space company was married to an AI startup and the X social media platform.
NAV Loans: Flexibility for Private Equity When Holding Periods Extend
For private equity firms, capital flexibility is prized today. Merger-and-acquisition (M&A) activity has cooled, while commodity prices and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven disruption have heated up, creating uncertainty for investors. This makes it more challenging to sell portfolio companies, so private equity firms are holding investments longer. As a result, many firms are turning to net asset value (NAV) loans for capital needs.
Letter to the Investment Committee on Private Equity
Some institutional investors who had grown accustomed to outperforming the broader private equity composites are finding they have not done so consistently in recent years. Their diagnoses of the problem often center on specific decisions or biases they made in their recent manager selection, whereas a likely culprit is a falloff in the persistence of outperformance among private equity managers.
Inflation Is a Tax on AI’s Unfettered Spending Spree
There is a growing risk of economic overheating in the US as the artificial intelligence boom expands beyond semiconductors and spills into the broader economy — never mind the tame wage growth and house prices that would typically point in the opposite direction.
Nvidia Cements Its Quality Characteristics After Q1 Earnings Beat
Nvidia is now a textbook fit for quality-focused indexes in ETFs given its strong underlying business fundamentals. The company has become the smartest kid in the quality classroom, scoring exceptionally high on metrics like high return on equity (ROE), strong return on invested capital (ROIC), stable earnings growth, and low balance sheet leverage.
Matt Bartolini Talks Inflation-Resilient Portfolios & More
Recently, Matthew Bartolini, global head of research strategists at State Street Investment Management, sat down with VettaFi to discuss where inflation stands, opportunities within portfolio construction, and much more.
The AI Economy: A Look Beyond the Facade
We separate this article into two parts. Part one is the optimistic case: an AI-induced, productivity-led economic boom in which the benefits spread quickly to society. Part two will address a more bearish outlook: the possibility of a large gap in the distribution of AI's productivity benefits, accruing to corporations much more quickly than to employees.
The Energy Pivot: Establishing Supply in the Face of Historic Demand
Put succinctly, the world today requires substantially more electricity than only a few years ago. AI, electrification, reshored manufacturing, and population growth in the developing world are converging into a demand curve that the existing global power system simply cannot meet.
Private Credit’s Unthinkable Becomes Reality as Trading Revs Up
Private credit managers are increasingly turning to the once-unthinkable: Trading in and out of loans to dump troubled assets and hunt for bargains amid the industry’s first stress test after years of breakneck growth.
Goldman Says Hedge Funds Took Profit on Huge Chip-Stock Rally
Hedge funds have been selling the scorching rally in US semiconductor stocks to book profits, while keeping their overall exposure to the AI theme, according to traders at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
A Simple Way to Avoid Messes Like the Anthropic Shares Shock
Even if armchair investors are fleeing private credit or panicking that their unlisted shares in Anthropic PBC are now invalid, the long-term trend is clear: Public markets keep losing ground to private funds.
Key Takeaways From PIMCO’s Sustainable Investing Report 2025
Sustainable investing in fixed income has come of age. Against a backdrop of heightened geopolitical tensions, persistent economic and trade uncertainty, sustainable fixed income continued to demonstrate its appeal in 2025.
Why Foreigners Are Fleeing the World’s Best Stock Rally
At first glance, the retreat of foreign asset managers is ominous. Signs of a domestic retail frenzy are everywhere. Cash deposits in local brokerage accounts have reached 137 trillion won ($91 billion), a two-third jump from six months ago.
Renewable Energy Could Define Winners and Losers in Emerging Markets
Emerging markets (EM) are using low-cost renewables to cut fuel imports, stabilize power costs and improve energy security—positioning EM as the growth engine of the energy transition. Countries and companies that leverage their dominance in critical minerals and green technology could pull ahead, creating dispersion in potential outcomes for investors.
What Barbarians Like to Take Private
While most institutional investors recognize that private equity and public equity share similar economic risks, they often seem to ignore how their aggregate equity portfolio is affected by their substantial allocation to private equity.
The Race to Offer Compute Futures to Masses Has Already Started
Wall Street is racing to turn computing power into a tradable commodity with the first ETFs being filed even before the futures contracts they would track have started to trade.
Nvidia Tells Skeptical Investors AI Is Ready to Go Mainstream
Nvidia Corp., facing more investor skepticism, used its latest quarterly report to tout progress in diversifying the company, which aims to rely less on the giant data center operators that have fueled its runaway growth.
AI, Market Power, and Diminishing Labor Share
In the past year, new models from industry leaders have continued to boost AI’s capabilities. According to various capabilities tests, Anthropic’s Mythos model has leapfrogged other AI models – including in the ability to thwart or support cyberattacks.
Software in the “Age of Intelligence”
Enterprise software is undergoing its most significant reset in a generation. Artificial intelligence (AI) is reallocating value within software—creating clear winners and exposing vulnerabilities in business models that have worked well for the past two decades. We believe investors who treat software as a uniform asset class will make costly mistakes.
AI Won’t Replace OCIO, It Will Separate Leaders From the Rest
Institutional investors have spent years hearing about the promise of artificial intelligence. That phase is giving way to a more practical question: not whether AI can create more scale, but whether that scale can be governed, validated, and translated into better fiduciary decisions. For OCIO providers, AI without discipline is not an advantage.