Active Fixed Income

CLOs simply offer strong yield potential that often outpaces corporate bonds with similar credit ratings. Given that the ‘income’ portion of fixed income is often a key priority for investors, attaining high yield on a consistent basis gives CLOs a compelling use case.

Taylor Topousis and Christian Galipeau discuss high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.

Global investing is changing. Geopolitical tensions, shifting trade relationships, energy costs and divergent central-bank policies are increasingly influencing which companies and markets are best positioned to navigate the environment.

The Fed's recent rate increase may not develop into a hiking cycle as extensive as the one that began in 2022 because much of today's inflation pressure comes from supply constraints rather than broad economic overheating, where demand exceeds the economy's productive capacity.

US Treasury yields have moved sharply higher, with the 10-year yield rising roughly 45 basis points over the past month to about 5.25%. That has understandably revived concerns about what higher bond yields could mean for equities.

The S&P 500 hit a new record high in 3Q as strong earnings offset headwinds from oil returning to $100/bbl, the Fed hiking rates, and the 10-year Treasury crossing 5%.

With markets around the globe rattled by the bond sell-off, it may be time to pivot towards safe havens that still generate strong yield.

Active ETF flows offer a window into where the ETF ecosystem is going, and what its shifts and changes might mean for broader ETF innovation.

September ETF launches highlighted active strategies and an AI hardware ETF as year-to-date inflows reached a record $1.54 trillion.

The U.S. economy is handing investors a muddled picture. Housing is stuck, hiring is lopsided, and households feel worse than the jobs data suggest. Add a string of geopolitical shocks and a Federal Reserve (Fed) under new leadership still establishing its reaction function, and the signals markets rely on are harder to read. Investors will have to adjust to this market, where clarity is scarce.

ClearBridge Investments: With the economy still resilient, a gradual Federal Reserve hiking cycle could help broaden market leadership beyond the Magnificent Seven.

Hand-picking individual securities from an enormous fixed-income universe can be inefficient. That’s why AB developed a dynamic credit scoring model known as core score, which ranks investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds by their attractiveness.

Is now the time for senior loans? Shifting yields and rising pressure make the floating rate yield vehicles an intriguing place to watch.

On the surface, the municipal bond market may not check the “dynamic” box. After all, individual muni bonds and ETFs such as the ALPS BBH Intermediate Municipal Bond ETF (MNBD) are positioned, rightly so, as conservative, income-bearing investments.

Bond yields still look attractive, but investors are earning little extra for taking on corporate credit risk, according to Thornburg Investment Management.

Industrials are supported by increased capital spending in electricity capacity, construction around the artificial intelligence-related (AI) infrastructure buildout, defense, and energy, although higher costs and possible delays in data center construction could temper growth.

If you only looked at the price of gold in September, you’d be forgiven for believing the bull market had run out of steam. The yellow metal fell 6.3% during the month, and some in the financial press were quick to say it had failed as a safe haven.

Our real gross domestic product (GDP) forecast for 2026 is 2.5% (based on our Global Investment Management Survey) versus the Federal Reserve’s (Fed's) forecast of 2.2% and the Wall Street consensus of around 2%.

Long viewed as an emergency brake for macroeconomic panic, gold is starting to prove itself as much more than a crisis asset.

September’s fixed income sell-off marked a watershed moment for muni bond markets, delivering the steepest drawdown since the 2008 Great Financial Crisis. As benchmark yields spiked, prices across muni ETFs fell in tandem, and the volatility has not let up. This week, both 10-year and 30-year Treasury yields climbed to their highest levels since 2002.

T. Rowe Price has announced the launch of the T. Rowe Price Dynamic Emerging Markets Bond ETF (TDEM) on the Nasdaq today, the company said.

The Fed’s latest 25 basis point hike might represent a recalibration rather than tightening. Instead of focusing on the next hike, investors should watch broader financial conditions and the long-term trajectory for interest rates.

Fixed-income investors are being paid more to take risk than they have been in years, but not all opportunities are created equal. Higher yield levels, heightened volatility and growing differences across countries, sectors, industries and issuers are expanding the opportunity set. Dispersion is the raw material from which active returns are generated. Below are four ways investors can capitalize on it.

Midterm elections are increasingly taking over the headlines, and that includes coverage of markets. While inflation, rates, and geopolitics probably have more outright impact on portfolios, investors and market watchers still look to midterm elections as a major event.

Yesterday’s cooler-than-expected PCE print finally gave the bond market a breather, pulling Treasury yields down from their brief 5.3% peak. For financial advisors, this recent whiplash brings fixed income duration conversations back to center stage — specifically, balancing the hunt for long-term yield with the safety of ultra-short cash alternatives.

Munis can fund local power, grid, water and wastewater infrastructure; most AI campus capital will be financed in non-municipal markets.​

Explore how muni bond ETFs and targeted state funds can provide tax-efficient yields and strategic flexibility heading into 2027.

Assessing the wall of worry. Here, we assess the market's growing wall of worry, explain why these worries warrant attention, and justify our continued constructive intermediate-to-long-term stock market outlook.

Given that the Federal Reserve raised interest rates earlier in September, inflation data that was already crucial has taken on a new meaning. These reports could now serve as a barometer for what is to come from the central bank.

Bond markets continue to adjust to a more hawkish policy environment following the Federal Reserve’s recent 25-basis-point rate hike.

As bond yields have risen, mortgage rates are again facing upward pressure, extending the U.S. housing market's post-pandemic affordability challenges. Beyond mortgage rates, trends in wage growth, taxes, and insurance costs also continue to shape the affordability outlook.

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

The financial markets are navigating a storm. The Treasury yield sell-off intensified this week, pushing the 10-year Treasury yield up to an intraday high of 5.20%, its highest level since 2007.

Before evaluating whether a long-short strategy belongs in a portfolio, we think it helps to understand what's actually happening under the hood. Let's start at the beginning.

The BlackRock Model Portfolio Solutions team made significant allocation shifts during the week ended September 24, 2026. The team recently managed over $300 billion and often causes shockwaves in the ETF industry.

The S&P 500 has remained remarkably resilient in the face of mounting macro headwinds. Despite oil prices topping $100 per barrel, 10-year Treasury yields climbing above 5%, and a renewed shift toward tighter monetary policy, the index continues to hover near record levels.

This week, there are a few things that we need to pay attention to: the large move in interest rates and what it means (and more importantly, what it doesn’t mean!); and the constant barrage of doom and gloom on energy and AI. Let’s jump in.

The exchange-traded fund (ETF) market is pacing toward a record-breaking year in 2026, driven by an unprecedented wave of new product launches and historic capital inflows.

The U.S. economy has traveled farther than most forecasters expected. Strong household spending, healthy labor markets and continued business investment have kept the expansion on course.

The appeal of a portfolio of individual bonds for many investors are the known qualities that they can provide: a known stream of cash flow, a known redemption value, a known redemption date, and a known yield; all of which are locked in at the time of purchase.

LPL Research analyzes S&P 500 margin expansion, assessing how much is structural versus cyclical and what that means for future earnings forecasts.

Global growth remains resilient but uneven. In the United States, expansion is supported by private demand, a stable labor market and AI investment, while Europe and Japan continue to show surprising strength despite ongoing risks.

Federal Reserve (Fed) chair Kevin Warsh has established his hawkish credentials. Franklin Templeton CIO, Sonal Desai sees scope for further yield curve steepening and a range of selective opportunities, based on capturing income and focusing on quality rather than counting on lower rates or tighter spreads.

Chris Galipeau and Taylor Topousis discuss high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.

In August, a flurry of ETF-related deals were announced and expected to close by early 2027. Goldman Sachs is buying NEOS Investments. T. Rowe Price plans to add F/M Investments. Victory Capital is acquiring First Eagle.

The K-shaped economy is real, and it is old. What changed isn’t the shape of the economy; it’s just that the media found a narrative that gets lots of clicks and views, and we let headlines do our thinking for us.

Throughout this Indexing Redefined series, we explored how traditional market-capitalization indexing ties portfolio weights directly to stock prices, creating hidden concentration risks. Furthermore, we discussed how fundamental indexing offers a disciplined alternative by weighting companies according to their real-world economic footprint. In this final installment, we address the dilemma investors face in highly concentrated equity markets.

According to the latest SPIVA U.S. Scorecard report, broader isn’t always better for active managers. Following a volatile start to the year, the S&P 500 rebounded sharply in the second quarter to gain 10% through June 30 thanks to robust corporate earnings.

The Federal Reserve (Fed) made something clear this week that markets had been reluctant to accept. Apparently, the easing cycle isn't paused, it's over for now.

In an environment marked by the Fed’s first rate hike in three years and ongoing market uncertainty, income-focused investors face a unique dilemma. While cash alternatives offer attractive yields in the short-term horizon, they leave portfolios vulnerable to reinvestment risk should the

Municipal bonds might still offer attractive tax-advantaged income and relatively stable credit quality for investors who understand the risks.

Stocks have recently hit new highs, supported by strong earnings growth, but the bond market is sending a more cautious signal.

The 2026 U.S. midterms are rapidly approaching, with major implications. Muni bonds, in particular, may be impacted.

Advancements in technology, combined with significant stock market gains in recent years, have created a new set of opportunities—and challenges—for investors. For example, investors holding a concentrated position in a highly appreciated stock may face a difficult trade-off between the risk of a market downturn and the potentially significant tax cost of diversifying the position.

With so much attention focused on what the Fed might do at its policy meeting this week, it’s a good time to look back at history to get a sense of how stocks might respond should policymakers hike rates as the market now expects. LPL Research had been characterizing the rate decision as a coin flip until Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s hawkish comments at the Jackson Hole meeting and the strong August jobs report.

A week of rising oil prices and higher interest rates sent stocks lower across the board as investors increasingly priced in the likelihood that the Federal Reserve (Fed) will begin a rate-hiking cycle at its September 16 meeting. Following the August Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, futures markets implied an 88 percent probability that the Fed will, or at least should, raise rates at next week's meeting.

On September 2, TMX VettaFi Head of Research Todd Rosenbluth appeared on the Schwab Network to discuss ETF inflows nearing record highs in 2026 and the 50th anniversary of the first-ever index fund, the Vanguard 500 Index Fund. The fund’s ETF share class, which trades under the ticker VOO, is a bit newer, having launched in 2010.

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

Is the AI infrastructure buildout one big trade in credit? So far, the market seems to think so. Spread dispersion – differences in borrowing costs among issuers – across the financing chain remains limited despite sharp differences in underlying risk. This contrasts with equities, where performance has become increasingly differentiated.

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.

Attractive yields and resilient credit conditions are creating opportunities across fixed income, but uncertainty around inflation and interest rates makes flexibility, selectivity and disciplined risk management especially important.

In Part III, the focus will center on practical applications of this discipline. In particular, how advisors can integrate the methodology into modern asset allocation, and why it offers an evolutionary leap for passive investing that’s available through exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

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.