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| Wealth Adviser |
| People are starting to make bigger decisions to blunt the impact of rising prices. The consumer-price index, which tracks what people pay for goods and services, hit 7% in December, marking its fastest pace since 1982. Initially, Americans met this increase by making simple changes at the grocery store or by cutting out some other, more common purchases. But those small cuts are proving not to be enough lately, say economists, financial planners and consumers. Now, many are making much larger changes, such as scaling back their weddings or learning a new skill to save money. Below, some of the best analysis and insight from WSJ writers and columnists, the Dow Jones Newswires team and occasionally beyond, on investing, the wealth-management business and more. |
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| Investors Lose Appetite for Stocks of Unprofitable Companies: The prospect of rising interest rates has been especially hard on the Russell 2000 small-cap index, in large part because of the high proportion of small-caps that aren’t making money. Junk Loans Shine Amid Market Rout: Investors put a record $2.25 billion into leveraged loan mutual funds last week. |
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| Investors expect the Fed to clarify how fast it intends to tighten monetary policy, but uncertainty is likely to remain high after the meeting, with growth, inflation and employment dynamics changing as the pandemic evolves. "You have to get to a point where it slows the economy, and that's where we don't know where that level is. We are just kind of testing it out," Columbia Threadneedle's Ed Al-Hussainy tells WSJ. He says, however, that labor markets are tight, so "it might take a while for [monetary tightening] to translate into weakness in employment." (paulo.trevisani@wsj.com; @ptrevisani) Lower-quality credit markets will offer better return prospects this year than other fixed-income assets, such as investment-grade corporate bonds, says Alexander Pelteshki, investment manager at Aegon Asset Management. Pelteshki foresees decent total returns and excess returns on the lower-quality part of the credit markets for the year, despite some elevated intra-year volatility. "The excess spread that these bonds offer would provide a much bigger cushion against rising rates versus the investment grade bond universe," he says. Low default risk due to broader economic strength makes low-duration, high-subordination high-yield bonds a good place to take risks, he adds. (lorena.ruibal@wsj.com) |
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| Setting the Stage for Intentional Growth in Your Firm: Visualizing two future versions of a practice—one scaled, one unscaled—with your team can help an enterprise expand with impact and avert failures. (Barron's Firewalled) |
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| Covid-19 Fuels Best-Ever Commercial Real-Estate Sales: Property investors bet big on apartment buildings, warehouses and on U.S. growth shifting to the Sunbelt. |
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| Tech Startups Race to Rate Carbon Offsets: Sylvera has raised $32.6 million of venture funding to grade forestry projects by how effectively they keep carbon out of the atmosphere; it faces competition. ESG Investing Can Do Good or Do Well, but Don’t Expect Both: Green bonds typically have a slightly lower yield than a standard bond from the same issuer. This locks in guaranteed underperformance for taking identical risks that the government or company will fail to pay the bonds back. |
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| Workers Care More About Flexible Hours Than Remote Work: New survey of more than 10,000 knowledge workers found 95% want to set their own hours. |
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| TV Remotes, the Most Hated Devices in Your Home, Get Better: Remote controls aren’t going away. Instead, they’re being re-invented. People Itching to Cruise by Cargo Ship Hope for Reversal of Covid-19 Bans: Though standard cruises are back, business is nearly nonexistent for freighter travel agencies that book passage on the most basic of international journeys. |
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| The Wealth Adviser Briefing covers topics of interest to wealth managers, financial planners and other advisers. The content is curated by the Dow Jones Newswires team using articles from the Newswires, Barron's, MarketWatch and The Wall Street Journal. The briefing is delivered to subscribers by email each workday morning at 6:30 a.m. ET. You can sign up here (https://www.wsj.com/newsletters) for email delivery. Enjoying this newsletter? Get more from WSJ and support our work with a special subscription offer. |
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