The S&P 500 posted its fourth weekly gain in a row and finished Friday with another new 2023 high. The index is currently up 12.41% year to date and is 10.38% below its record close from January 3, 2022.
The 20th century Baby Boom was one of the most powerful demographic events in the history of the United States. We've created a series of charts to show seven age cohorts of the employed population from 1948 to the present.
The artificial intelligence hype that has propelled US technology stocks in the past few weeks is showing signs of fatigue.
The clouds are finally parting for Tesla Inc. investors who stuck with the electric-vehicle maker through a rough ride. A rush of good news for the company and the return of bullish market conviction put the stock on pace to more than double this year.
The punditry knows that clients dread uncertainty. They count on it. They prey on it.
Today, one in three of the 65-69 cohort, nearly one in five of the 70-74 cohort, and nearly one in ten of the 75+ cohort are in the labor force.
This is a couple months past its release, but the latest Fed balance sheet shows that total household and nonprofit organizations net worth is 151% above the 2009 trough. The nominal Q1 2023 net worth is up 2.1% from the previous quarter and down 2.5% year-over-year.
Pop Quiz! Without recourse to your text, your notes, or a Google search, what line item is the largest asset in Uncle Sam's financial accounts?
I wrote this article in 2030 after I interviewed several retirees whose income plans were designed by ChatRET.
The UK has a complicated, punitive, badly constructed, and all-around dysfunctional tax system.
Spare a thought for the other AT1 crowd — not investors in Additional Tier 1 securities extinguished in Credit Suisse Group AG’s rescue, but shareholders in Aroundtown SA, the Frankfurt-listed property firm with the same stock-market ticker.
Having a reliable sales and marketing system that works automatically in the background, bringing in new, qualified leads every month instead of having to go on the hunt, allows you to prioritize your work in a meaningful way.
The Fed’s refusal to pause rates through the first five months of 2023 raises the odds of a hard landing. The magnitude of the yield-curve inversion has increased the risk inherent in the US banking and financial systems. The impending recession is unnecessary and self-inflicted.
This article will examine four real estate ETFs that investors and advisors can consider for their portfolios in 2023. Whether investors are seeking exposure to a specific sector or a diversified portfolio, there is a real estate ETF available to meet their needs.
With the US debt ceiling standoff defused, the Treasury can start borrowing big money again. The government is forecast to issue up to $1 trillion of debt this year in short-term bills, sucking cash out of the US financial system.
The weekly leading economic index (WLEI) is a composite for the U.S economy that draws from over 20 time-series and groups them into the following six broad categories which are then used to construct an equally weighted average. As of May 26th, the index was at -6.933, down 2.710 from the previous week.
A group of Alphabet Inc. contract workers is launching a unionization campaign, saying they need a greater voice at the company that has tasked them with work on its most high-profile products, including training generative AI answers in Google’s search engine and chatbot.
If price stability is the legal mandate of the Bank of Japan (BOJ), and the central bank’s official target for price stability is 2%, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI),* then why are fluctuations in prices the norm for Japan?
The debt ceiling crisis has been averted—but this short-term relief might come at the cost of greater future peril. Franklin Templeton Fixed Income CIO Sonal Desai analyzes the debt-ceiling resolution and delves into the potential longer-term risks that rising public debt poses to financial markets.
International Deep Value: Extreme cheapness ignores relative fundamentals.
With stocks struggling to break out of their range, rates climbing, and valuations stretched investors are rightly asking whether it’s time to sell.
Andy Rothman provides a first-hand perspective from his first trip to Shanghai and Beijing since the start of COVID in 2019.
Transitioning into the post-COVID investment environment shifts the foundations of portfolio construction that investors relied on in recent decades. On full display in 2022, inflation and recession risk punished both bonds and stocks together to historic declines.
For this edition of Bull vs. Bear, Nick Peters-Golden and Karrie Gordon discussed the fundamentals for and against investing in Japan ETFs.
Of course, over 300,000 people getting new jobs is good in itself, particularly for those with newfound opportunities. But, for the last several years, as the “great resignation” took hold, there were not many new workers coming into the workforce, leading to falling unemployment.
The first few years of the 2020s have seen a number of acute economic, financial, and geopolitical disruptions on a worldwide scale, and it will take time for the ultimate consequences of these shocks to be fully felt.
Despite market headwinds, investors remain bullish on real estate. As traditional sectors, like office and retail, continue to underperform, farmland presents an opportunity for investors seeking capital preservation and downside protection.
ChatGPT and AI seem to be everywhere these days, but what do they really mean for asset management and financial advisors? Does AI arrive as just a theme, or can it really have an immediate impact on financial advisors’ work?
We have used the word “unprecedented” to talk about the economy during and after COVID. We have never before locked down economic activity, while printing trillions of new dollars to help finance trillions of extra government borrowing to pay people not to work.
The labor force participation rate (LFPR) is a simple computation: You take the civilian labor force (people aged 16 and over employed or seeking employment) and divide it by the civilian non-institutional population (those 16 and over not in the military and or committed to an institution). As of May, the labor force participation rate is at 62.6%, unchanged from last month and better than the expected 62.5%.
Join the experts at State Street Global Advisors, Confluence Investment Management, Riverfront Investment Group, and VettaFi for a discussion about the state of the markets.
Anne Walsh, CIO for Guggenheim Partners Investment Management, discusses drivers of returns going forward. She also offers advice to young women looking to make a career in asset management.
I've updated our monthly workforce analysis to include the latest employment report for May. The unemployment rate rose to 3.7% and the number of new non-farm jobs (a relatively volatile number subject to extensive revisions) came in at 339K.
Billionaire Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, said the US is seeing stubbornly high inflation along with elevated real interest rates.
Global bonds are slumping after two shock interest-rate hikes this week served traders a reality check that central banks are far from done fighting inflation.
Various forces have contributed to this collapse, including advertisers fleeing from extreme content; brands and celebrities quitting the site; and the risible failure of the Twitter Blue subscription, which transformed the “coveted” blue check into a mark of comic derision.
Investors are piling cash into the largest junk bond exchange-traded fund at the quickest pace in nearly three years amid a broad rebound in risk assets.
Let's take a close look at May's employment report numbers on Full and Part-Time Employment. The latest data shows that 83.6% of total employed workers are full-time (35+ hours) and 16.4% of total employed workers are part-time (<35 hours).
Relative rotation entails shifting among stocks, sectors, and stock factors. The strategy adds significant value to portfolio management if done well.
This morning's seasonally adjusted 261,000 initial claims was up 28,000 from the previous week's revised figure. The latest reading came in well above the forecast of 235,000. This is the highest level of initial jobless claims since October 2021.
Today BloombergNEF released its seventh annual Electric Vehicle Outlook. The report offers reams of new data and projections around what’s become a familiar story: EV sales are growing at double digits each year and are now the only growth area in the global passenger vehicle market.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank will likely lead to tighter credit conditions as banks pull back from lending. Private credit managers are poised to fill the void that banks have left and can negotiate favorable terms, according to Franklin Templeton Institute’s Tony Davidow.
Several key economic indicators are released every week to help provide insight into the overall health of the U.S. economy.
Real estate ETFs have become a popular investment option for investors who want to gain exposure to the real estate market without owning physical properties. However, with some experts predicting a real estate recession, advisors may be wondering if such funds remain a good option.
Two weeks ago, we noted that Congress would soon raise the debt ceiling, but that this could set up unexpected consequences for investors. Now that the debt ceiling is raised until 2025, the US Treasury is free to fund the government’s liabilities since January.
Zehrid Osmani, Head of Global Long-Term Unconstrained at Martin Currie, discusses the recent positive earnings reports from large U.S. banks and explains why their firm has no plans to invest in the banking sector.
Investors have had a lot to contend with thus far in 2023. Moderating economic growth, persistent inflation, volatile interest rates, falling profits, stress in the banking sector, war in Ukraine, and the debt ceiling debate all combined to weigh on sentiment.
Earlier this month, WealthManagement.com announced the finalists for its 2023 Industry Awards (the “Wealthies”). VettaFi is one of two firms to be recognized for outstanding achievement in research innovation. The Wealthies was the first award program of its kind to honor companies, organizations, and individuals supporting financial advisor success.
Asset-Map is a tool for financial professionals to visually map and provide feedback on their client’s financial picture. With better insights into a client’s financial inventory, advisors can help clients identify risks, opportunities and track progress to their financial goals. Adam Holt joins me to discuss Asset-Map and his vision for the future of technology-enabled advice delivery.
Multiple jobholders account for 4.8% of civilian employment. The survey captures data for four subcategories of the multi-job workforce, the relative sizes of which we've illustrated in a pie chart.
