1. September Is the Worst Month for Stocks. Should Investors Care?
If you pay attention to financial media, you’re likely to hear quite a bit about September being the worst month for investors. While this is indeed borne out by the data – September is indeed the month with the lowest mean return for key indexes – seasonality is a fickle guide. Long-term averages are one thing; performance in any given month is another. — Steve Sosnick
2. How Social Media Is Changing How Clients Choose Their Financial Advisor
Before someone thinks about giving you a call, they Google you. They read your reviews. They search for you on social media. They watch a few videos-–or more accurately, they watch the first few seconds of a few videos, skim your latest posts, and look at who’s engaging with your content. Before they’ve ever filled out your contact form or scheduled a meeting, they’re already deciding if you seem credible enough to work with. — Niki Clark
3. The Problem You Can’t Solve With a Financial Plan
Planning has been a prism for Age Against the Machine since the beginning. We’ve examined how the process forces us to think ahead, identify what could go wrong, and consider what resources we might need. Ultimately planning is an exercise in finding options and their trade-offs. But then reality shows up, and reality has clearly not read up on the financial plan. Hopefully the planning process provides enough of a head start in disciplined steps to make a positive impact on decisions, particularly under stress. — Tom West
4. Oil Is Everywhere. So Why Are Gas and Diesel Prices Surging?
The U.S. government isn’t buying oil from Venezuela. It’s becoming a shareholder. The Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital will take a 35% passive stake in North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), a private company led by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt that holds rights to 17 oilfields containing an estimated 65 billion barrels. Washington will also get preferential rights to buy 20% of production at cost. — Frank Nolmes
5. What Schwab and Robinhood Are Actually Building
Schwab is industrializing the personalized client relationship. Robinhood is building the infrastructure that captures the client regardless of whether they want an advisor or not. Both moves are further along than most advisors realize, and the distinction between what was announced and what is actually being built matters for how you respond. — John O'Connell
6. Japan’s Biggest Opportunity in Decades? Why AI, Buybacks and Reform Are Powering a New Bull Market
The most important single shift in Japan today is the apparent exit from a decades-long deflationary mindset. This is not simply about inflation readings moving above zero. It is about what sustained, stable inflation changes at the behavioral level, whether for companies, for households, or for the policy apparatus that surrounds them. — WidsomTree
7. The Bond “Rout” Is Overblown. What Higher Treasury Yields Really Mean
More than one media outlet has described recent stress in the bond market as a “rout” while others have used “soar” or “soaring” to describe the rise in bond yields. And those folks are right that the bond market has seen better days…the yield on the US 30 Year Note recently hit a 19-year high, the yield on the US 10 Year Note just hit a near three year high and the iShares Core Aggregate Bond ETF is off 0.30% in 2026. As to why yields have risen, most market observers would cite concerns over inflation, and the US deficit and debt, and competition for capital from AI hyper-scalers. That written we think some perspective is in order. — Tim Holland
8. Are Wealthy Investors Paying Their Advisors Too Much—and Getting Too Little?
Let's face it, you have to deliver more value than ever before to compete with ideal prospects. You have to have a solid value promise, lower cost, and comprehensive advice and planning as part of your deliverables. You know that ideal prospects are not getting what you deliver, yet they stay with their advisor. Why? Is it because of relationships? Is it because they don't know how to fire their advisor? or is it that they don't know what they don't know? — Grant Hicks
9. More Information Doesn’t Make Investors Better. It Can Make Them More Confidently Wrong
Investors have access to more information than at any point in history. Market forecasts, sentiment indicators, valuation measures, economic data, analyst opinions, podcasts, financial news, and social media are available almost instantly. You might assume that all this information would lead to better investment decisions. — Jay Mooreland
10. AI Can Give You Financial Answers. It Still Can’t Be Your Financial Advisor.
Technology and artificial intelligence are dramatically changing the wealth management industry. I believe that's a good thing. We have access to tools today that would have been almost unimaginable when I started in this business more than 30 years ago. Technology can analyze a portfolio, produce a financial plan, model different scenarios and summarize thousands of pages of information almost instantaneously. Clients have access to more information, more investment choices and more sophisticated tools than ever before. — Jeff Green
11. If Every Advisor Puts Clients First, What Makes You Different?
The qualities that make you a good Advisor may not be the qualities that make you different. — Don Connelly
