Separately Managed Accounts

The rapid deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) is evident; 99% of CEOs say their companies are investing in the technology. Apparently, AI is also quick at garnering assets. Launched less than three months ago, the Pictet AI Enhanced US Equity ETF (PQUS) is already approaching the $100 million mark in assets under management (AUM).

The stagflation narrative dominating financial social media isn’t completely wrong. That’s what makes it so dangerous. After more than 30 years of managing client portfolios through actual inflationary cycles, not watching them on YouTube, I’ve learned that the most damaging investment advice isn’t built on outright lies.

ClearBridge Investments: The ongoing energy crisis is pushing global oil inventories, including many critical product inventories, toward all-time lows, and it may be time to position portfolios given the potential for supply shortages to emerge.

Yields for preferred securities have generally risen more than corporate bond and long-term Treasury yields over the past few months, making them more attractive to investors.

It’s likely not a bubble. Earnings are high. Prices are high because they anticipate future high earnings growth. The historical record shows that growth rate is achievable.

Top RIA executives said Tuesday the industry's growth is still early, with breakaway clients and a talent shortage as key forces.

Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS) executives detailed their artificial intelligence strategy for operational efficiency as new data showed the top 100 registered investment advisor firms now manage more than $1.6 trillion in client assets, double what they controlled just two years ago, according to Padi Raphael, global co-head of third party wealth at the firm.

Access to private equity, private credit, private infrastructure, and private real estate assets can potentially improve long-term investment outcomes for participants.

LPL Research explores how a potential Warsh-led Fed could reshape policy, Treasury markets, and volatility amid rising deficits and shifting demand.

In my former life as a mutual fund analyst, T. Rowe Price was always a staple of my research. Back then, the focus was on their fundamentally focused active mutual fund lineup. However, in the last 15 years, the investment world — and my own research focus — has moved toward ETFs. I watched with strong interest as this Baltimore-based firm brought its active management expertise into the ETF world in 2020.

With the war in Iran dragging past the original ceasefire deadline, how might the situation impact global energy markets—and other sectors—from here? To cut through the noise, we asked Luke Pryor, Security of the Future Portfolio Manager and Co-Portfolio Manager of Strategic Equities, to share his oil and gas industry expertise.

As market volatility lingers, the latest S&P Persistence Scorecard reveals a sobering reality for active managers.

As equity markets transition into 2026, large cap equity portfolio managers share a surprisingly consistent framework — paired with sharp disagreements on where risk and opportunity sit. A survey of large growth, value, and blend managers reveals a market shifting away from simple narratives toward selectivity, fundamentals, and manager skill.

Global equity markets entered 2025 with a familiar narrative. U.S. leadership remained firm, supported by strong earnings, AI-driven optimism, and a market structure increasingly dominated by a narrow group of large-cap companies. For many investors, the path forward seemed clear: stay anchored to what worked.

LPL Research examines overlooked tech growth, assessing strong earnings, AI skepticism, and valuation opportunities for investors.

Advisors are rethinking strategy in 2026, as geopolitics, AI adoption, and downside risk reshape market expectations and investment decisions.

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.

As multi-asset income investors, we seek to help a wide range of clients meet their income needs. The benefits of an income-centric approach are especially relevant for investors as they enter retirement – and that’s especially true today. We bring that to life with two case studies.

The “American Industrial Renaissance” is an investment theme investors and allocators alike have probably been pitched several times, or at the very least heard about. Supply chains for manufactured goods have evolved to become more complex, while U.S. manufacturing employment as a share of total employment has steadily declined, leaving policy makers to grapple with the ramifications of a shrinking manufacturing base.

The primary contagion risk is sector concentration. Software and tech-enabled services represent roughly 15-20% of direct lending portfolios. A meaningful portion of these loans also resides in the Broadly Syndicated Loan (BSL) market – the bedrock of CLO ETFs – leading to a software weighting of 12–18% in typical CLO collateral pools.

Even before the first active dual share class fund from Dimensional launched, active mutual funds and ETFs were already roommates rather than existing in separate silos. Ben Johnson, head of client solutions at Morningstar, revealed in a LinkedIn post that active managers are increasingly using ETFs as essential tools for building portfolios.

Markets have long struggled to price geopolitical risk. Part of the issue is that each flare-up tends to be viewed as a one-off volatility jolt to be weathered and then faded once there is resolution.

Fixed-income market sentiment was dominated by geopolitical headlines, particularly the conflict in the Middle East following disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz and rising oil prices, which contributed to renewed inflation concerns.

LPL Research examines the fixed income space as global bonds broaden yields and reduce U.S. concentration, offering diversified income and resilience via non‑U.S. developed and emerging markets.

For a long time institutions treated tax-aware investing like a retail conversation; helpful for individuals, interesting for private wealth, but not front and center for institutions.

The stock market selloff between February 28 and April 14 produced one of the more instructive market lessons in recent memory. It isn’t because of what the market did, but because of what investors did in response.

While Russ acknowledges that the ongoing conflict in the Middle East has contributed near-term volatility, he also notes that these rising tensions are occurring against the backdrop of a solid U.S. economy.

Active ETFs are no longer a niche satellite play; they are becoming central pillars of modern portfolio construction.

Much of the conversation around private credit versus public high yield focuses on yield levels, default expectations and headline volatility. But we think what matters most is how each market lets investors measure, manage and reprice risk as conditions change.

Over the past year, LPL Research’s Strategic and Tactical Asset Allocation Committee (STAAC) has emphasized that tactical investing does not require constant activity. Instead, it requires preparation, patience, and the discipline to act only when the expected benefit of a change clearly outweighs the risks.

“Diversification” has been the driving principle of investing and risk management for generations. But what does it mean to be “diversified?”

Technology is transforming bond investing, across research, trading and—through optimizers—portfolio construction. We believe optimizers based on advanced digital investment platforms have a major advantage—and can create new levels of insight for portfolio managers that have them.

Behavioral finance is the study of how emotions, cognitive biases, and human behavior may influence financial decisions, often in ways that can conflict with logic, data, and long-term goals.

Tax management is about more than just deferring taxes to reduce this year’s bite. It’s also about managing where and how taxes show up over time. For high-net-worth investors with diversified portfolios, permanently reducing taxes versus deferring them may bolster long-term after-tax wealth. Many investors overlook a potent tax reduction tool: bonds.

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.

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.

It has now been over three years since GMO launched our Small Cap Quality Strategy in September 2022. During that period, the world has shifted, and we have navigated unexpected market conditions.

Every March people around the country start talking about their brackets. Most are referring to their basketball tournament bracket, hoping to predict the winners and maybe earn some office bragging rights.

Systematic equity investing is a way to invest in the stock market using clear rules and data, rather than guesswork or hunches. Instead of trying to pick stocks based on trends or headlines, this approach uses research, data, and technology to systematically identify opportunities across global markets.

Thanks to strong gains in markets over recent years, with many indices at or near record highs, the 60/40 default portfolio has quietly morphed into a bundle of expensive U.S. growth equities and credit exposures offering narrow spreads over Treasuries. In our view, such a portfolio is likely to disappoint investors by delivering low single-digit real returns.

In today’s era of automation, some situations demand a more active approach. Municipal bond investing is one.

Geopolitical volatility is not only increasing investor demand for infrastructure assets; it is urgently reshaping where and how capital is deployed. As energy security, supply chain resilience, and digital sovereignty rise up policy agendas, infrastructure investments that expand capacity and relieve bottlenecks are becoming critical.

At the height of the meme stock craze, investors made and lost fortunes as their speculative trades made headlines. This trend was so dramatic and so widespread that reporting on it moved beyond financial publications into the mainstream press and even into a few movie scripts.

In a world of intensified uncertainty and dispersion, investing becomes less about forecasting and more about favoring more liquid, high quality assets that can be resilient across a variety of scenarios.

If you’re not sure what direct indexing means, you’re not alone. Even after the recent growth, direct indexing remains relatively unknown. As our risk review team never fails to remind us, you can’t invest directly in an index. So what exactly is direct indexing?

Learn how RIAs are using Section 351 ETF conversions to modernize SMA strategies, defer capital gains, and boost firm valuation.

Geopolitical headlines rarely arrive quietly. The recent escalation in the Middle East is a reminder of how quickly tensions can feel destabilizing.

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.

With apologies if this is the tenth investment piece you’ve read this week about the impact of the Iran War on asset markets, but we wanted to share our thoughts on what’s going on with our investors. First a recap. The S&P 500 is down 5.4% since the February 28, 2026 start of the Iran War.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO) relationships have evolved dramatically. What once teed up primarily as a solution for smaller institutions seeking a roadmap to improving their governance, strategy and execution is now being adopted by much larger asset owners.

Skyrocketing oil prices were accompanied by mixed inflation readings last week. The headline Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rate held steady in February at 2.4 percent annually, while core CPI, which excludes more volatile food and energy costs, rose a modest 0.22 percent for the month.

As artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure debt floods bond markets, investors face a new risk landscape shaped by complex financing structures and potential overbuilding across the data center ecosystem.

Iran's de facto closing of the Strait of Hormuz precipitated the latest in a series of energy crises. Since the 1970s, some energy spikes were associated with weak stock markets, but some were not.

In this article, Russ Koesterich notes the year-to-date strength of both cyclical and defensive stocks, a pairing that seems too strange to last.

Investing is an exercise in decision making under uncertainty. No single signal—no matter how intuitive or well supported by history—captures the full complexity of markets.