Insights Investments

“Don’t trust a skinny ice cream man.” Ben & Jerry’s Ben Cohen   The volatility and confusion continue. On Monday, hope was the war in Iran would be over soon, but that quickly lost steam and crude oil soared back up close to $100/barrel later in the week. There are a couple ways to look …

Markets in 2026 are looking an awful lot like they did this time last year. Yes, the drivers are different, but the similarities are eerie. Let’s take a look (numbers as of Tuesday’s close)… The S&P 500 is down year to date. The Bloomberg Aggregate Bond Index is outperforming the S&P 500. Gold is having …

In the world of portfolio construction, the classic 60/40 split, 60% equities and 40% bonds, has long been hailed as a balanced approach to weathering market storms. It’s like the reliable minivan of investing: not flashy, but designed to get you through various terrains with a mix of growth potential and stability. But what if …

The last several years have been unusually favorable for investors. Equities have delivered strong returns, bonds have recovered meaningfully, and credit has remained resilient. For many portfolios, nearly everything has worked. And when everything works, diversification often goes unquestioned. There is an irony in how we respond to diversification, or more precisely, to correlation. When …

Artificial intelligence continues to dominate headlines and investment flows, but understanding the technology behind it requires looking beyond the hype and into the structure of the ecosystem itself. In this episode of Facts vs Feelings, Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist at Carson Group, and Sonu Varghese, Chief Macro Strategist at Carson Group, sit down with …

Thanks for reading this week’s Charts of the Week. This week’s charts focus on the current oil situation, inflation, macro data, and how real assets may help during periods of elevated inflation. We’ll keep publishing Charts of the Week every Monday. To view this week’s Charts of the Week, click here: Charts of the Week: Mar. …

By Blake Anderson, CFA®, Associate Portfolio Manager Investors received concrete proof points that LLMs and chatbots are beginning to act as business generators, not just efficiency imperatives. What began as an internal productivity story is steadily evolving into a top-line growth narrative. Instead of merely reducing costs, AI interfaces are increasingly shaping customer discovery, influencing …

The February payroll report was an ugly one, and a bit of a mess. The economy lost 92,000 jobs in February, whereas forecasters projected a gain of 55,000.  We saw significant revisions for the last two months as well: December payrolls were revised down by 65,000, from +48,000 to -17,000. January payrolls were revised down …

A resounding, and sometimes frustrating, feature of markets is that leadership change is inevitable over any period of time studied. The “A.I. Trade” has been prevalent for the past couple of years, absent some blips here and there (DeepSeek, Liberation Day, etc). In some ways, the A.I. trade has started turning upon itself – previous …

If you haven’t read it already, in yesterday’s insightful blog, Carson’s Chief Macro Strategist Sonu Varghese provided an update on inflation expectations given the expanding (for now) conflict in the Middle East. For the basic takeaway, just look at the title: The Inflation Outlook Doesn’t Look Good. Now that’s not 2022 “doesn’t look good.” But …

Oil spikes. Gas jumps above $3. Inflation expectations shift in a matter of days. Suddenly the market isn’t debating disinflation or AI productivity. It’s asking whether we’re entering a new inflation shock. In Episode 177 of Facts vs. Feelings, Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist at Carson Group, and Sonu Varghese, Chief Macro Strategist at Carson …