Smart Beta

Elon Musk’s response to wavering demand and recession risk is pretty clear: slash prices, keep increasing capacity and try to continue growing even if it means sacrificing profit margin in the short term.

BuzzFeed Inc. shares surged by a record on news that the digital-media company plans to use OpenAI to bolster some of its content creation.

The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measures eased in December to the slowest annual paces in over a year while consumer spending fell, helping pave the way for policymakers to further scale back the pace of interest-rate hikes.

Investors are chasing European stocks at the fastest pace in nearly a year, while US equity inflows remain muted amid concerns of a recession, according to Bank of America Corp.

Slowly but surely, investment bankers from New York to London are chipping away at the tens of billions of dollars in leveraged buyout debt that remains famously stuck on their balance sheets.

The US Treasury’s quarterly financing estimates due next week will be closely watched to gauge the department’s view on how the debt-ceiling drama will unfold.

For Americans with a New Year’s resolution to trade in their gas furnace or water heater for climate-friendly heat pumps, a word of caution: Generous Inflation Reduction Act rebates for home electrification took effect on Jan. 1, but they won’t actually be available to homeowners until year’s end or 2024 at the earliest, according the US Department of Energy.

Here’s an article to help clients better understand the tax benefits of charitable contributions.

The Biden administration is under pressure from Capitol Hill lawmakers and student debt advocates to develop contingency plans to cancel billions of dollars in student debt and to move forward quickly if the Supreme Court strikes down the administration’s initial executive action.

Tesla Inc. has secured a new $5 billion revolving credit facility, another sign that the company is nearing investment-grade status.

The US economy grew faster than forecast into the end of 2022, but there were signs of slowing underlying demand as the steepest interest-rate hikes in decades threaten growth this year.

The layoff announcements coming lately from the chief executive officers of big technology companies all contain variations on the theme of “we hired too many people during the pandemic,” expressed with varying degrees of contrition.

The looming fight to raise the federal debt limit is drawing parallels to 2011 and 2008, neither of which is especially encouraging.

Having oscillated between anticipating another 50-basis-point interest-rate increase by the Federal Reserve next week or a downshift to 25 basis points, traders have settled solidly on the latter, guided both by Fed officials’ comments and by media reports.

What happens when you ask the hottest AI tool in the world to design an ETF that can beat the US equity market? It tells you the same thing every frustrated stock manager does.

For the first time, the world invested as much money into replacing fossil fuels as it spent on producing oil, gas and coal, according to an analysis from BloombergNEF.

Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., Shell Plc, TotalEnergies SE and BP Plc reaped almost $200 billion collectively last year but fears of an economic slowdown, plunging natural gas prices, cost inflation and uncertainty over China’s re-opening are dimming the outlook for 2023.

It pays to parse the language of any company’s earnings report, but perhaps more so for Tesla Inc. You could say it’s in the corporate genes.

Checking your 401(k) account balance is a little less painful these days.

Six Wall Street banks are being pressed by a group of shareholders to move faster on reducing their financing of fossil fuels to meet global climate goals.

The once-burgeoning realm of crypto and decentralized finance keeps imploding, presenting policy makers with a quandary: Should they just let it burn, or step in to address its now-obvious flaws?

It is possible, contrary to the predictions of most economists, that the US will get through this disinflationary period and make the proverbial “soft landing.”

If you believe in the Milton Friedman adage that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, then you should also believe that the Federal Reserve can stop increasing interest rates. Now.

Older advisors need to step aside and make room for the up and comers.

COVID-19 has been a catalyst for change in many aspects of our lives, not least the migration to flexible working, which would have taken many more years without the pandemic’s brutal intervention.

The Federal Reserve’s quantitative-tightening program risks being propelled toward an early end as US politicians bicker in Washington over raising the national debt limit, according to some economists and bond-market participants.

The popping of the bubble in US stocks is far from over and investors shouldn’t get too excited about a strong start to the year for the market, warns Jeremy Grantham, the co-founder and long-term investment strategist of GMO.

Stubborn inflation means more interest-rate increases are coming from the Federal Reserve and that sounds like great news for banks.

Cathie Wood’s flagship strategy is on course for one of its best months on record, joining assets across Wall Street that are so far defying gloomy expectations for the year ahead in emphatic style.

Ken Griffin’s Citadel churned out a record $16 billion in profit for clients last year, outperforming the rest of the industry and eclipsing one of history’s most successful financial plays.

Two major issues clients should consider in creating their own long-term care plan are where they will live and how they will pay for the care they are likely to need.

Word is out among hedge fund managers on how to get tax breaks for giving to charity - without actually handing over their money just yet. They can even keep it in their funds.

Paying down student debt or saving for retirement can seem like mutually exclusive goals. A little-known workplace benefit could soon allow more workers to do both.

Microsoft Corp. is investing $10 billion in OpenAI, whose artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT has lit up the internet since its introduction in November, amassing more than a million users within days and touching off a fresh debate over the role of AI in the workplace.

To determine the places where affluent Americans give the most to charity, we compared 384 metro areas.

In the weeks since the ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool took the world by storm, Nvidia Corp. has emerged as Wall Street’s preferred pick for traders seeking to profit from its potential.

The death of the cheap-money era is redrawing Corporate America’s earnings map - upending a decade of Wall Street wisdom over which stocks are the bargain buys or the high fliers of tomorrow.

There was much mirth online when the US Justice Department announced the arrest of crypto exchange Bitzlato’s founder last week.

Investors, economists and journalists have been talking incessantly about recession for the better part of the past year, and they’re all tired of it.

Artificial intelligence advances in a manner that’s hard for the human mind to grasp.

Making optimistic predictions either makes you look foolish if bad things happen or be forgotten if nothing bad happens.

Advisors can illustrate the risks in single-stock positions by educating their clients on the historical evidence that demonstrates diversification is the prudent strategy.

It’s big news that Envestnet is moving into the RIA custodial space and will soon be competing head-to-head with its biggest integration partners: an expanded Schwab platform, Fidelity and Pershing. I suspect that this is just the first of many so-called software “platforms” that will jump into the custody competition.

Enforcing big, complex change within an organization is an ongoing struggle, and the rate of success is alarmingly low. What is the challenge?