Volatility/Downside Protection

Kevin Warsh’s early overhaul of Federal Reserve communication and policymaking suggests investors should prepare for a higher-for-longer rate environment with greater uncertainty around policy signals.

The World Cup games that went into extra time were reminders of just how tough it can be for players to keep up their momentum over the long haul.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The relative cheapness of Treasuries versus interest rate swaps mechanically affects how corporate bond spreads are measured, but it appears to have limited influence on how corporate bond spreads actually behave.

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

The equity bull market is expected to continue through the second half of 2026, supported by resilient U.S. growth, AI investment and solid earnings.

LPL Research analyzes China’s declining crude imports, inflation risks, and the resilient U.S. economy driving above-trend growth.

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

VettaFi’s Midyear Market Outlook symposium Thursday saw industry leaders take on the big questions. Where is the market going? How should investors and advisors navigate uncertainty and potential volatility? Leaders from Fidelity Investments and Invesco both joined for one of the early segments, focused on innovative U.S. strategies.

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.

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.

The shine has come off silver since it skyrocketed to over $100 an ounce in January. The price has dropped by over 50 percent from the record high. However, there are still reasons to be bullish on silver moving forward, including persistent supply deficits and growing industrial demand.

AI is changing the investment landscape, but fundamentals still matter, and we remain focused on quality companies with growing free cash flow.

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’ve been writing about inflation more in recent months and quarters because inflation has become the major driver of the US macroeconomic landscape. This week, we take a deep dive into inflation and interest rates, and at the end, I talk about why I am buying gold for my grandkids.

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.

It seems to be the end of the Great Moderation Era for the U.S. economy. The Great Moderation Era—which marked most of the two decades leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic—is drifting away into what we call the new Temperamental Era.

In this video, Chuck Carnevale, co-founder of FAST Graphs and known as "Mr. Valuation," explains why overpaying for a stock is often the greatest threat to long-term investment success. Using over 30 real-world examples, Chuck demonstrates how even outstanding companies can deliver poor returns when investors buy them at excessive valuations.

So far in 2026, we’ve seen that benchmark index returns can obscure important market dynamics. Even during a historically strong quarter, underlying dispersion created meaningful opportunities for tax-loss harvesting in custom equity portfolios.

The first half of 2026 reinforced the importance of balance, selectivity and income generation. Franklin Income Investors Chief Investment Officer Ed Perks discusses how markets have evolved, where opportunities are emerging, and why diversification remains critical heading into the second half of the year.

Investors must determine what the AI capital-spending surge means for long-term business durability.

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.

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.

A country drowning in energy shouldn't also feel like it's running out of electricity. In other words: before we ask whether America can make more things again, we should probably ask whether America can power the production.

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.

As the forces shaping bond markets become more local, the opportunities become more global. From energy stress to fiscal policy to advances in AI, today’s defining market forces are likely to play out differently across regions, sectors and issuers.

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.

Gold and silver traded in a volatile fashion over the past several days as investors weighed conflicting signals from the Federal Reserve, economic data, and geopolitical developments in the Middle East.

Private debt is increasingly valued for its potential to help insurers operationally and strategically: support liability matching, improve portfolio design, diversify underlying exposures and, when underwritten well, add resilient excess return.

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.

This paper presents the case for emerging market (EM) allocations within the broader context of global investment strategy. In a period of heightened geopolitical complexity—spanning the 2026 US-Iran conflict, challenges to globalization, political transformation and ongoing great power competition—we believe the case for engaged emerging markets exposure has never been stronger.

The Q2 earnings season is off to a rollercoaster start. The big banks collectively reported strong numbers, boosted by active capital markets and another impressive set of sales & trading revenue. And it was the usual chorus of bank CEO macro commentary:

In June we pointed out that Health Care looks cheap. Even though it has been rallying hard of late, the sector continues to trade at a 59% price-to-sales discount to the S&P 500, despite having an 18% return on equity (ROE) that is just a hair below the 19% ROE accorded the S&P 500.

Although economic conditions did not change much between the first and second quarters, investors were far more bullish in the second quarter.

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.

What were the key takeaways from last month’s numbers? Our corporate bond specialists look back at the market’s performance and provide incisive commentary to help you make sense of what drove the market—and what may be on the horizon for fixed income investors.

The current level of stock market valuations remains – easily – the most speculative extreme in U.S. financial history, beyond both the 1929 and 2000 extremes. Our baseline estimate is that the S&P 500 has a material risk of losing something on the order of 75% over the completion of this cycle.

Investors should consider where in the capital structure they are best compensated for risk. Equity may offer income with upside potential from active asset management, whereas debt may offer income with downside mitigation.

The first half of 2026 reinforced an important lesson for fixed income investors: Tax-loss harvesting opportunities don’t always arrive at year-end, often appearing during short periods of market dislocation when interest rates rise, new-issue supply increases or investor sentiment shifts.

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.

LPL Research examines how sticky inflation, Fed leadership changes, and AI-driven borrowing are shaping the fixed income outlook for 2026.

Historically, many in the pension industry viewed funding above the "plan termination level" as having little incremental value. Once a plan reached “plan termination level”, thought of as roughly 110% funding, conventional wisdom suggested additional surplus had little economic value because it is effectively "trapped capital."

It has been an eventful six months, and we are delighted that the Equity Dislocation Strategy has risen to the occasion. The Strategy generated a 9.05% net return in the first half of 2026, compared with a 1.3% return for MSCI ACWI Value minus MSCI ACWI Growth, a broad proxy for the value-growth spread.