Cryptocurrencies

Kevin Warsh set to be confirmed as the next Fed chair, Senate committee meets to consider the CLARITY Act, President Trump heads to China, and the gerrymandering wars heat up.

Early detection, I believe, is one of the smartest investments you can make, whether we’re talking about your portfolio or your health.

The generational divide is a part of the human condition – and the investor condition. It’s not just that one group has more experience than the other, or that one is more eager to make its own way, but that both groups can learn totally different lessons from the same event.

Deglobalization supports diversification: Reversing global trade reduces economic productivity, but the resulting decoupling of international markets increases the protective value of geographic diversification.

What a week this was! On Tuesday, I participated on a panel at the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas, where I discussed why Bitcoin miners have a head start in the race for AI compute.

April saw a strong rally, which fully reversed the stock market’s losses in March. US markets set new all-time highs, and European stocks came within whispering distance of their all-time highs as well.

One of the most important decisions anyone will make in their lives is whether, and whom, to marry. A well-chosen partnership can lead to a happy steady state and help to weather downturns. But even the best long term partnerships can have their ups and downs. For currencies that are wedded to the U.S. dollar, the war in Iran has put some stress into their relationships.

Active ETFs are punching well above their weight in 2026. Despite representing just 12% of total ETF assets, actively managed funds have captured 40% of year-to-date flows, Todd Mathias, head of North America ETF product strategy at Franklin Templeton, told attendees at an April 27 roundtable discussion at the firm’s Manhattan office.

Despite the turbulence, the global LCC market remains an enormous force. Four of the world’s 10 largest airlines—Ryanair, Southwest, IndiGo and easyJet—operate on a low-cost model. The broader budget travel market is projected to exceed $315 billion by 2028, according to Statista.

When silver demand outstrips mining and recycling output, silver users must tap into aboveground stocks. That generally means rising prices to incentivize those holding silver to give it up.

The spring edition of our Investment Directions takes on a new look. As the weather heats up, our “summer body” of work embraces a slimmed down word count, Q&A format, and visualfirst approach – better for consuming on the go, or preferably, outdoors.

Kevin Warsh's bid to become the next chair of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) unfolded amid sharp political tension, legal uncertainty, and pointed questions about his independence from President Trunp. During a combative Senate confirmation hearing, Warsh sought to reassure lawmakers that he would not allow political pressure to dictate monetary policy, even as unresolved Justice Department investigation into current Chair Jerome Powell threatens to delay his confirmation and underscores broader concerns about the politicization of the central bank.

During and after World War II, Allied forces established airbases across remote Pacific Islands, bringing with them food, medicine, tools, and machinery that the indigenous people had never encountered before.

For ultra-high-net-worth individuals and families, wealth brings opportunity, but also extraordinary complexity. Multi-generational estate planning, concentrated equity positions, private investments, tax-efficient strategies, philanthropic structures, and family governance decisions all intersect in ways that demand thoughtful oversight.

At this point, investors of all ages are well aware just how much inflation can cut into one’s spending power, whether it be for everyday expenses or big-time purchases.

Stocks have been on a bit of a rollercoaster over the past two months. If your nature is to tune out the noise and check in occasionally, you might have missed it. After a 9 percent sell-off earlier in the year, markets quickly rebounded and have recently traded at all-time highs.

New Federal Reserve (Fed) chairs don’t come along often. Since 1980, only five individuals have led the Fed: Jerome Powell is currently in his second term, Janet Yellen served one term and Alan Greenspan famously held the role for more than 18 years.

It’s a busy macro stretch as company earnings reports come in fast and furious. A focus on real data and earnings may be a welcome development for investors wary of geopolitical headlines. The team at Wall Street Horizon will keep you up to speed with the latest trends, and you can access our industry-leading forward-looking corporate event data to stay ahead of markets.

Even in the event that the Middle East conflict eases and shipping resumes as usual through the Strait of Hormuz, it would likely take time for the global economy to normalize after one of the largest oil supply disruptions in decades.

GMO has posted a new 7-Year asset class forecast for 1Q 2026.

As always, I hope you’re having a good 2026 and that all is well with you, my readers, and your family and friends. Here’s my latest.

Yes, much of the blame lies with energy prices, which surged due to the war in Iran. Still, the March reading of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) serves as a reminder of the work to be done to damp inflation.

Despite compositional differences – public equities generally represent larger companies with more scale, liquidity, and financial flexibility than the typically smaller, private-equity-owned issuers that dominate the software loan market – the outcome is the same: Neither market has been able to fully retrace the year-to-date sell-off in a meaningful way.

I was working in one of our regional offices this week when the network on our floor experienced a brief outage. People were clearly not prepared for a return to an analog world, and grew increasingly anxious as the minutes ticked by.

The history of the U.S. airline industry is really a history of consolidation driven by crisis. The pattern has been remarkably consistent. Historically, when an external shock has hit—a recession, a war, an energy spike—the weakest carriers have folded or been acquired, while the strongest have emerged leaner and more profitable.

Oil shocks hitting economies with weak demand and strained balance sheets are especially damaging. Firms cannot fully pass on rising costs, so margins shrink, layoffs increase, and investment falls. Tightening monetary and credit conditions would cause inflation to fade faster but job losses, failures, and fragile household finances to be much worse.

Exchange-traded fund flows surpassed $500 billion in the first three and a half months of 2026 as the industry continues its rapid expansion with more than 300 new launches and record trading volumes.

Today we're going to look at the underlying data and find that while the world is not ending anytime soon, there are actually good reasons for the disparity in forecasts. So, it’s okay if you’re confused. The stock market just hit an all-time high, energy is volatile and will be a negative on global growth, to say the least.

Amplify’s path is unique in the ETF space and has carved out a small but powerful stronghold for itself. Its focus on thematic and income strategies lends Amplify resilience across different market types, and its commitment to innovation means it doesn’t tend to issue many “me too” products.

The famed economist John Maynard Keynes said almost a century ago that “markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” He was referring to the unpredictable nature of investor sentiment: an amorphous, hard-to-define concept that nonetheless plays a major role across various asset classes.

Geopolitical conflict involving Iran disrupted energy markets, driving oil and the dollar higher while stocks, bonds, and gold fell. Despite volatility, economic signals are mixed but stabilizing, especially in manufacturing. Muhlenkamp outperformed markets, increased cash and international exposure, while remaining cautious amid inflation, policy uncertainty, and ongoing war risks.

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.

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.

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.

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

March 2026 was a rough month for financial markets. Broad indexes experienced large selloffs, led by international stocks, though many of these still remain up in 2026. The dollar rallied strongly, breaking its year-plus downtrend.

A look at ETF flows for the month of March suggests caution is back in vogue. Fixed income ETFs showed serious muscle in the asset gathering race last month, capturing nearly 45% of net creations.

Systematic indexing removes the psychological stress of timing crypto markets by allowing advisors to capture broad asset-class returns through disciplined rebalancing.

Department of Homeland Security shutdown continues, and Congress considers addressing growing concern over prediction markets.

The fiat currency collapse narrative is one of the most emotionally satisfying arguments in all of financial punditry. It feels intellectually rigorous, draws on genuine history, and speaks to deep and legitimate anxieties about government overreach, monetary recklessness, and the long-term consequences of unlimited debt creation.

I just returned from the Investment U conference in Las Vegas, where I presented on gold and the great digital transformation. Sentiment among investors was upbeat, despite great uncertainty in the world right now.

Gold has fallen roughly 21 percent from its all-time high of nearly $5,595 reached in late January to approximately $4,430 as of this writing, and the prevailing narrative in markets is that this correction reflects a genuine shift in the metal’s outlook

Bitcoin is now less volatile than some Magnificent 7 stocks, but it's still capable of steep, prolonged declines.

The convergence of ETFs, mutual funds, and tokenization is gaining momentum as asset managers seek to modernize product structures, expand distribution, and future-proof their businesses without abandoning established regulatory frameworks.

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.

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.