Software stocks are down big YTD, but AI-targeted companies have signaled confidence through increased buyback announcements. Record YTD buyback authorizations suggest potential equity market support—but execution remains the wildcard.

The Fed’s decision made sense: don’t change the target for short-term interest rates if we don’t know what the world will look like tomorrow. But investors need to remember a couple of important things. Rate cuts, if they ever come, are less important than the money supply.

Stocks fell for the fourth consecutive week as rising interest rates and surging oil prices—driven by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East—continued to weigh on investor sentiment.

Uncertainty persists in 2026, affecting the broader fixed income market. Collateralized loan obligations (or CLO) have emerged as a viable option with the advent of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which have democratized access to retail investors.

Corporate credit markets have become unsettled about the potential for advanced agentic AI tools from firms such as Anthropic and OpenAI to automate functions across legal, analytical, marketing, and sales workflows, effectively targeting the software as a service (SaaS)/enterprise software space.

T. Rowe Price is leveraging three decades of private equity experience to give active ETF investors access to companies at the core of artificial intelligence, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Databricks, according to Christopher Murphy, head of ETF specialists at the firm.

The Federal Reserve (Fed) kept interest rates unchanged after its Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting earlier this month. Although investors and economists largely expected this outcome, stocks and bonds sold off immediately after Fed chair Jerome Powell’s post-meeting news conference.

A signed will does not guarantee a smooth transfer of wealth. Families can do everything “right” on paper and still hit a wall the moment someone dies because the assets they need to gather and transfer are behind logins, devices, and two-factor authentication.

QBI is a generous deduction hiding in plain sight. The difference is not technical brilliance. It is leadership — knowing which decisions matter, when they matter, and who needs to be coordinating them.

As part of comprehensive retirement distribution planning, evaluating how and when NUA applies can help reduce lifetime tax liability and preserve more of what has been earned over the course of a career.

Most of us have been taught that diversification provides benefits. We’re told there are assets that can be held alongside equities to smooth out the twists and turns of the market.

One of the most compelling theories about the future of artificial intelligence comes, oddly enough, from a 161-year-old paper about the coal industry. In 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons observed that improvements to the coal-fired steam engine had not reduced Britain’s coal consumption.

China’s $1.57 trillion sovereign wealth fund - long one of the biggest backers of private equity firms in the world - is considering new allocations to US money managers just months after reducing its exposure to the world’s biggest economy.

In the stock market’s volatile and uncertain start to the year, one trade has held strong: go long memory and storage.

BlackRock Inc.’s Rick Rieder, the firm’s top bond-market executive who was passed over by President Donald Trump to be chair of the Federal Reserve, is pursuing investor cash for his first hedge fund in years.

Faster productivity growth lifts earnings, improves the long-run fiscal arithmetic, and allows the economy to run stronger without recreating the inflation regime of 2022. Historically, markets are slow to recognize when the supply side of the economy has improved. This time should be no different. The productivity story is more durable than this week’s Iran developments, which is dominate trading over the near term.

As 2026 unfolds, market leadership is shifting in ways that go beyond the usual sector rotation. While AI-driven growth fueled recent gains, rising capital expenditures, energy demands, and valuation pressure are forcing a reassessment across both public and private markets. At the same time, economic data—particularly beneath headline job growth—suggests a more uneven expansion than many expected.

Since hostilities began in the Middle East three weeks ago, I’ve urged investors to stay calm and resist the temptation to panic-sell. While I still stand by that advice, it’s important to point out that this conflict isn’t resolving as quickly as initially expected.

There is little doubt that something unprecedented is happening in the world of AI, corporate investment, and equity returns. While AI may reshape the global economy, the surrounding investment cycle is still governed by the same macroeconomic and sentiment-driven forces that have shaped previous technological innovation and expansion periods.

The key swing factor remains oil prices. If the conflict ends within this window, we still expect only limited impacts on our economic and asset‑class outlooks.

The Securities and Exchange Commission should focus on enabling retail investor access to innovation rather than limiting products through merit-based judgments, according to Commissioner Hester Peirce. In a discussion with Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at TMX VettaFi, during the Exchange conference in Las Vegas, Peirce shared insight from her term at the SEC and examined the agency’s role moving forward.

Join Tidal Financial Group for an educational webcast exploring the benefits 351 conversion.

Join this product due diligence session with Fidelity Investments to learn about their active ETF offerings.

If it weren’t for the financial industry, in my opinion, the United States wouldn’t be suffering the serious social ills that have worsened in the last 40 years — primarily, the hollowing out of the middle class, and all the problems that have accompanied it and resulted from it.

With liquidity and credit stress in the private credit market rising, we must consider whether the Fed might once again ignore its mandates to backstop exuberant markets.

In this episode of ETF of the Week, Chuck Jaffe sits down with Todd Rosenbluth, Head of Research at VettaFi, to discuss why the SPDR Gold MiniShares Trust (GLDM) is a top pick for investors looking for gold exposure.

Thanks to Section 351 of the US tax code, investors can contribute their appreciated assets directly into an ETF structure without realizing gains at the time of transfer. Here, we briefly explain the mechanics, limitations, and potential benefits and risks of a 351 exchange to seed a new ETF with appreciated assets.

There are at least two conflicting narratives about Gen Z and young millennials. One is that they are extremely risk averse — afraid even to go out of the house, much less on a date.

Recent market performance for US consumer-discretionary stocks has been so ugly that it may be a great time to buy.

Dimensional Fund Advisors is becoming the first asset manager to launch an exchange-traded fund share class of a mutual fund since Vanguard Group’s patent on the model expired nearly three years ago.

In February, market sentiment was shaped by escalating US-Iran geopolitical tensions and sector-specific selloffs driven by concerns about AI’s potential disruption to existing business models.

Jeffrey Sherman of DoubleLine provided a candid assessment of the Federal Reserve's current trajectory and fixed income at Exchange.

In practice, many advisors use SMAs alongside ETFs, not instead of them—combining the scalability of ETFs with the customization and tax management SMAs can provide.

Modern markets have gotten used to central bank support whenever the global economy wobbles. But as the world confronts a fresh energy shock unfolding against brittle labor markets, investors need to prepare themselves for the possibility that central bankers won’t have their backs — quite the opposite.

Some forms of technical analysis are often too much “inside baseball” for many investors. However, the concept of moving averages is one of the most important technical indicators and an easier one to grasp.

Proposals to engineer secondary trading in private assets, often championed by vocal critics of public market liquidity, have gained renewed momentum. For some, enhanced tradability is viewed as a remedy to growing unease over the absence of transparent, real‑time valuation signals in private portfolios.

Many investors think about getting out of the stock market when it gets bumpy. But history shows that staying invested over the long term has resulted in positive gains.

Gold was the highest-returning major asset class of 2025, advancing approximately 64% on the year. Its appreciation was supported by multiple reinforcing factors: elevated geopolitical uncertainty driving safe-haven demand, U.S. dollar weakness, sustained central bank accumulation, and strong inflows into gold-backed ETFs.

Confidence among global stock-market investors, who largely kept their cool in the face of an escalating conflict in the Middle East, is starting to wear thin.

Global markets stood on edge as the conflict in Iran upended energy markets and muddied the outlook for the global economy. Interest rate markets repriced as market participants processed the notion that hostilities and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz could last longer than expected.

The Cboe Crude Oil ETF Volatility Index (OVX), which measures implied volatility in oil ETF options, estimates the expected volatility of crude oil prices over the next 30 days. The higher the reading, the more oil prices are expected to bounce around.

History made: Dimensional launches first active ETF share class. Access 40 years of micro-cap expertise in a tax-efficient ETF wrapper.

Muni bonds have been a strong performer so far in 2026, benefitting from an important transition to the ETF wrapper from mutual funds.

US futures extended a drop on Friday as earlier hopes for a quick resolution to the war in the Middle East faded. Meanwhile, traders braced for a historic amount of March options expiry.

As expected, there was no rate cut at today’s meeting, but changes to economic projections and comments at the press conference gave some light into how the Fed is processing political and geopolitical events, and how those events are shaping the Fed’s outlook.

A properly functioning Strait of Hormuz holds the keys to clarity around the growth, inflation, and market shock that has stemmed from the war in the Middle East.

Silver had a phenomenal 2025, more than doubling from around $30/oz to above $70 by late December, and the rally continued into the new year.

Private credit is a key pillar of debt capital formation alongside public credit markets and bank balance sheets. But an important part of its value proposition—to borrowers and end investors—is its illiquidity relative to public markets. That distinction is by design, and we think it should stay that way.

Economic dislocations create opportunities. While many market watchers are seriously concerned about the microshifts in markets and stocks, others may see the opportunities that emerge when oil prices spike.

Engaging with client family members may seem tricky, but it can start with simple questions to the client first. In fact, asking your client about the personalities and desires of their loved ones may be a way of deepening your understanding of your client’s financial needs.