The greatest risks in markets are often the ones that don’t look like risks at all. Passive investing – now controlling well over 50% of US equity fund assets and more than $20 trillion globally, up nearly 20x since 2000 – has fundamentally altered how investors define risk. What used to mean the potential loss of capital has quietly been replaced by something far more benign: tracking error.

A geopolitical shock in the Middle East sent oil prices surging more than +70% in Q1, erasing all expected Fed rate cuts and testing how well-diversified portfolios actually were. For many investors, the answer was: considerably better than the S&P 500’s -4.3% return suggests.

On Wednesday, April 8, 2026, Morgan Stanley announced the launch of the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust ETP (MSBT). As Morgan Stanley notes, the launch of MSBT marks the first time a U.S. bank-affiliated asset manager is offering a crypto ETP.

Tesla Inc. and its Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk are a font of big numbers, real or imagined: A million robotaxis deployed, 20 million electric vehicles sold per year, “tens of billions” of Optimus robots stalking the Earth.

While families have limited control over rising tuition, certain college tuition tax deductions may help ease the overall cost of higher education.

Investors are starting to understand that robotics and AI each represent an industry of industries. Not a sector. Not a theme. The foundational technology stack that every other industry increasingly depends on. In Q1, the market decided to stress-test that thesis, and the results tell a more nuanced story than the headline numbers suggest.

Cinthia Murphy, investment strategist at VettaFi, joined Nate Geraci on this week’s ETF Prime to discuss record ETF flows in the first quarter despite challenging market conditions. The industry exceeded $460 billion in total flows, a 50% year-over-year increase from Q1 2025, according to Murphy.

Writing a book can bolster your credibility as a financial advisor, but it does something else that’s equally as valuable: It tells people who you are before you ever meet them.

Whatever you end up doing, make sure you are authentic and honest in your approach. Clients see right through a request or ask that you are uncomfortable making. You have to know what you want, find words that are right for you, and proceed accordingly.

For centuries the so-called cannon shot rule determined who controlled the seas. The legal concept, codified by Dutch jurist Cornelius van Bynkershoek in 1702, was simple: The distance a cannonball reached from shore set the maritime boundary of a coastal state.

Many advisors assume they have a referral problem. They look at their growth, consider how infrequently new clients arrive through introductions, and conclude that clients simply are not inclined to refer as often as they might.

Global bonds surged Wednesday on news that the US and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire, pausing a war that roiled markets for weeks by delivering the worst oil shock in years.

Equity markets staged a meaningful recovery last week, driven by optimism of a ceasefire in Iran. The S&P 500 returned 3.4 percent, the NASDAQ gained 4.5 percent, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added three percent – the best weekly performance in recent memory.

US stocks rallied after President Donald Trump’s announcement of a two-week ceasefire in the Iran war spurred relief across markets.

European stocks soared the most in a year as investors rushed to buy stocks in the wake of the US and Iran agreeing to a two-week ceasefire in exchange for Tehran reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Last month at the Exchange conference in Las Vegas, Anna Paglia, State Street Investment Management’s chief business officer, discussed how the firm’s private credit lineup came to be and how the firm sets about developing some of its products.

If the economic life of AI hardware is shorter than its accounting life, reinvestment needs are higher than reported depreciation suggests. What appears to be capital deepening by hyperscalers is largely capital churn.

At Exchange 2026, key thought leaders from firms across the country gathered in Las Vegas to share their ideas for navigating today’s macroeconomic uncertainty and the future of ETFs.

There is no government report more meaningless and yet more relied upon by policymakers than the monthly non-farm payroll report released every month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In this video, Chuck Carnevale (“Mr. Valuation”), co-founder of FAST Graphs, explains a simple and effective way to find high-quality stocks, even in an overvalued bull market.

Despite West Texas Intermediate crude climbing to $111.54, U.S. stocks ended last week higher for the first time since February 20.

Fixed income markets have faced a challenging stretch following the escalation of conflict in the Middle East. Sharply rising oil prices and renewed inflation concerns have pushed US Treasury yields higher, and municipal bonds have moved in tandem.

Across corporate lending markets, some investments are easier to trade and exit than others – differences that deserve particular attention today.

As strikes on Iran continue and the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed, it’s clearly too early for market watchers to stop thinking about geopolitical risk.

Fresh data on the US labor market and new research from the Federal Reserve suggest that the conventional wisdom around employment growth being sluggish is wrong.

529 Plans are a huge part of many families' investing lives, but up until recently rarely involved advisors. Could that change?

Developments in the Middle East continue to be, without a doubt, taking center stage for the financial markets. However, it’s important to keep tabs on the U.S. macro-outlook, especially the labor market and inflation aspects.

Join the experts at SS&C ALPS Advisors and MarketGrader Capital to learn how an equal-weighted approach can help address concentration risk without stepping away from U.S. equities.

At this point, we think the odds are very high that the Democrats win back the House in the mid-term election in November. Compared to how they did in 2024, the Democrats only have to gain three seats to take back the House.

Financial therapy can help men explore their internal parts to learn to recognize and begin to heal the emotional beliefs driving their economic behavior. The point of financial therapy is not to dampen ambition, but to heal beliefs that may be souring it.

In the competitive and client-centric world of wealth management advisory services, a strong business development strategy is more than a growth tool; it’s a necessity. While digital marketing, webinars and in-house events have their place, two of the most effective and scalable channels for high-quality lead generation remain referrals and centers of influence (COIs).

Cybersecurity stocks have sold off this year alongside the rest of the software sector, but with artificial intelligence increasing the potential threats from bad actors, investors risk missing out on the burgeoning demand for their services.

Finance has been moving fast. From crypto to prediction betting to exchange-traded funds to private credit, new markets—and risks—are proliferating.

Wall Street’s biggest ETF issuers are circling Invesco Ltd.’s Nasdaq 100 franchise, threatening to end its near-exclusive hold on the index.

The defining statistic of the so-called K-shaped economy is a little hard to define.

Call it the season of IPO prep. Recent launches and announcements from OpenAI and arch rival Anthropic are aimed at laying the groundwork to go public in late 2026 or early 2027, and for OpenAI, which just closed a $122 billion funding round that values it at $852 billion.

Last week, the stock market rally was one of the best performances in nearly a year. The S&P 500 surged 3.4%, the Nasdaq climbed 4.4%, and the bulls declared the correction over. As I have stated before, having watched markets for more than 35 years, I have come to recognize the difference between a relief rally and the end of a corrective cycle.

Since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28, jet fuel prices in the U.S. have more than doubled. According to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the year-to-date percent change in U.S. jet fuel prices stood above 120% as of the end of March.

The economy continues to show resilience, and the March jobs report reinforced that view. Payroll growth came in stronger than expected, prior months were not meaningfully revised away, and the unemployment rate edged lower. Wage growth eased, but the broader message was clear: the labor market remains too firm to support any near-term case for Fed easing.

The US-Iran conflict has altered Iran’s regional influence and, more broadly, has many other consequences. It pressures government relations as well as global and financial market trading.

With the conclusion of a volatile first quarter in 2026, the Amplify Energy & Natural Resources Covered Call ETF (NDIV) demonstrated the resilience of its underlying index (VettaFi Energy and Natural Resources Covered Call Index).

Gold’s recent drop from $5,600 to $4,400 is a classic liquidity story where investors are selling their most liquid winners to raise cash.

The middle is typically not where you want to be. In American sports, teams in the middle of the standings aren’t contenders for either a championship or a high draft choice. The middle seat on an airplane, subject to incursions from either side, is not very comfortable. The middle manager is accountable in every direction, empowered in none.

It was a rough first quarter for the Broadleaf Growth Equity Portfolio and the markets in general as investors tried to identify market leadership buffeted by AI spending concerns, talk of escalating private credit market risks, and ultimately, the emergence of War in Iran.

An Exchange conference panel explored bitcoin's evolving role, allocation tactics, and ETF structures for advisors building crypto portfolios.

Join the experts at Goldman Sachs Asset Management as they explore the current state of the fixed income market and discuss why a "set-it-and-forget-it" approach to fixed income may no longer be sufficient as investors consider actively managed fixed income ETFs to help navigate today’s environment.

With oil prices spiking and inflation concerns remaining elevated, many investors are looking for ways to diversify beyond the S&P 500. This week, Chuck Jaffe and Todd Rosenbluth, dive into the FlexShares Morningstar Global Upstream Natural Resources Index Fund (GUNR).

When investors want to reduce risk, one commonly used tool is beta. For instance, an investor may sell higher-beta stocks and replace them with lower-beta ones to cushion against an expected market decline. Such a strategy is intuitive and widely used; however, it can be greatly flawed.

Breakeven real rates can inform us how much of a total return portfolio’s realized risk premium would be required merely to catch up to the benefits of delayed claiming, arguably an inefficient use of the equity risk premium.

The debate over ETFs versus mutual funds has never been particularly useful for advisors who actually build portfolios. In practice, the question was never which vehicle is better — it was always which vehicle is better for this objective, in this sleeve, for this client. In 2026, that discipline matters more than ever.