Tax Loss Harvesting

Chris Galipeau discusses high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.

Most coverage of Trump Accounts treats them as a parenting question, or a discussion comparing them to 529s. For founders and business owners the analysis of them is slightly more nuanced.

Demand for fixed income ETFs hit a historic high-water mark in September. Investors and advisors turned to fixed income ETFs at a record-breaking pace, driving 2026 net inflows of $446 billion past all-time levels with months to spare. The massive tide of capital arrives at a critical juncture.

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.

For many investors, a 401(k) is simply a retirement savings account. For high-net-worth families, however, it can become a sophisticated planning tool that supports tax efficiency, wealth accumulation, and long-term legacy objectives.

Equity markets generally moved lower as rising yields and energy prices created a more challenging backdrop. Higher yields can be particularly difficult for long-duration equities, where a greater share of expected cash flows sits further into the future.

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.

Investors can’t get enough of ultrashort bonds. Driven by concerns over high equity valuations and rate volatility as the U.S. Federal Reserve mulls over the direction of interest rates, capital preservation strategies appear to be the elixir to help ease uncertainty. As such, ultrashort bonds have been seeing greater demand as traditional safe havens fall short on yield or carry unwanted duration risk.

One or a few high-performing stocks can provide a big boost to portfolio values. But they’re hard to come by and often struggle to maintain their momentum over time. Because these stocks increase portfolio concentration, investors must balance the risk of overexposure against the tax cost of diversifying. A thoughtful, tax-aware plan may help bring portfolios back in line.

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.

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%.

Market volatility persisted in August as investors were again forced to reassess escalating tensions and an exchange of military strikes in the Middle East, while softer labor-market data was countered by mixed inflation readings.

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.

Elevated interest rates have investors scrambling for yield, and munis have been ready to answer the call with tax-exempt income.

As students get closer to making a final college decision, the last two years of high school are particularly important. Parents will want to review their financial strategy to meet the costs of college, including a review of current savings, financial and merit aid, scholarships and loan options.

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.

When markets become volatile, many investors gravitate toward assets they perceive as “safe.” Cash, certificates of deposit (CDs), money market funds, U.S. Treasury securities, and high-quality bonds can all play an important role in a diversified portfolio. But “safe” doesn’t necessarily mean “risk-free.”

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.

Chris Galipeau discusses high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.

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.

It's been 40 years since I began my career on Wall Street and the lessons I learned along the way from some all-time investment greats always hold true.

I haven’t always taken the most conventional approach to economics. In a world where many practitioners construct elaborate models to arrive at conclusions, I often find more value in simply following my instincts. During stressful times and paradigm changes, thinking outside of the equations is essential.

For the past six weeks, we’ve walked through the forces creating America’s K-shaped economy, housing, healthcare, education, wages, incentives, and the political consequences when enough people decide the system is not working for them. This week let’s look at the situation from a more optimistic angle.

After several challenging years, important parts of the health care sector appear to be reaching an inflection point. Policy uncertainty has weighed on pharmaceutical companies, constrained biotech funding has pressured the drug-development ecosystem and the normalization of pandemic-era has challenged select tool and device companies. More recently, however, several of these headwinds have begun to moderate.

For many investors, years of disciplined saving, equity compensation, business ownership, or a handful of exceptional investments can produce a portfolio that grows faster than expected. While that may sound like an ideal outcome, it can also create what we often think of as a wealth overhang: a situation in which the complexity of your wealth begins to outpace the financial plan supporting it.

Stocks have enjoyed a powerful run off the spring lows and have largely shrugged off concerns around growth, inflation, higher interest rates, the effects of artificial intelligence (AI), geopolitics, and policy uncertainty. As the calendar turns to September, however, they are entering what has historically been, from a seasonality perspective, the most challenging month of the year for equities.

Kevin Warsh's Jackson Hole speech struck a decidedly hawkish tone and was arguably the clearest signal yet that the Federal Reserve is actively considering additional tightening. Markets responded by raising the probability of a September hike to roughly 60% and pricing approximately 60 basis points of cumulative tightening through the middle of next year.

With recent data weakening the case for an immediate increase in rates, markets have sharply pared expectations for near-term tightening, with a hike no longer fully priced before early 2027.³ This moderation in rate-hike fears has been supportive for gold.

The saying “May you live in interesting times” is becoming relevant in the bond market for all the wrong reasons. “Interesting” usually means “trouble.”

August 2026 was a blockbuster month for ETF acquisitions.

House poised to pass bill to avoid government shutdown, two new members set to join the House, Fed chair speech boosts rate hike possibility, and national debt hits $40 trillion.

The month of August reminded many investors that the markets rarely move in a straight line. A combination of encouraging economic fundamentals, uncertainty in the bond market and renewed geopolitical turmoil led to increased volatility and shifting market leadership. But the underlying backdrop reinforced that the US economy continues to expand at a sustainable pace.

Interim data takes center stage, with Costco, Ford, Robinhood and Charles Schwab offering fresh reads on consumers, autos and retail trading

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made waves with his recent announcement that the Treasury would at least double the size of its buybacks of long-term debt in the coming months. He argues that long-term yields do not reflect fundamentals, suggesting that the Treasury's intervention is aimed to restore proper market functioning.

Markets opened on a sour note on Monday after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled “Operation Economic Outcast.” This initiative was to include sweeping sanctions against Iran and the networks that enable the regime to evade existing restrictions. Bessent did not explicitly mention Iran’s enablers, but many assumed China was the primary culprit.

This summer has delivered "blockbuster" returns, both positive and negative, while the possibility of quick and seemingly easy gains continues to draw investors toward speculative areas of the market. In his latest insight, Richard Bernstein, Global Head of Macro & Customized Investing, shares five charts that cut through the noise and highlight important shifts in credit creation, inflation, global growth, market leadership, and asset class performance.

Most people experience transportation through roads and airports. Traffic jams on highways and delays at major hubs are familiar frustrations. But the world's most important transportation network lies largely out of sight.

Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech was notably hawkish. But I came away from the speech even more confident in Warsh and thought it was one of the best speeches I’ve heard from a Federal Reserve chair. Most importantly, Warsh is refocusing on factors missing from the Fed’s framework for years: an explicit recognition that money supply and bank credit matter for the Fed’s inflation outlook.

AI-driven scarcity is allowing companies perceived as lower quality to post the revenue growth, margin expansion and rising returns that investors associate with quality, lifting estimates, multiples and stock prices.

The high-yield market appears expensive at first glance. Spreads sit near the tight end of their historical range, which implies limited compensation for credit risk. However, spreads relative to their historical levels do not capture the full opportunity set of the asset class. Corporate fundamentals remain healthy, defaults are low, and the quality of today’s high-yield universe is higher than its long-standing reputation might suggest.

The autism care economy is expanding across healthcare, technology, education, and behavioral services. As a result, investors are beginning to look at the companies serving it through a broader investment lens.

The first two articles in this series were about behavior. This one is about arithmetic. There are three numbers that decide most of your investing life. Let’s do the math Wall Street skips, one number at a time.

In a week that saw NVIDIA, the largest company in the world, report strong earnings that sent its stock sharply higher and reinvigorated optimism in the artificial intelligence (AI) trade, fiscal and monetary policymakers continued to provide the biggest headlines.

As the month of August came to a close, the first index mutual fund got to celebrate a key milestone. The mutual fund in question is the Vanguard 500 Index Fund (VFINX), which originally launched on August 31, 1976.

A hard line on trade was a popular plank of the first Trump candidacy. But once in office, his advisors used slow, conventional investigations and negotiations toward the goal of fairer terms of trade.

Beneath relatively muted index-level volatility, single-stock implied volatility remains high. In today’s low-correlation environment, individual stocks are moving more independently, keeping single-name volatility high even as those moves offset at the index level.