By Tom Lauricella
Publication Date: 2026-08-22 00:00:00
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In this week’s newsletter:
Stocks may have stumbled a bit this past week, but the main focus was elsewhere, as bond yields have been steadily climbing across the world’s biggest markets. This past week, the US Treasury 30-year bond yield rose to the point that the Treasury took what analysts called an extremely unusual (and unlikely to succeed) effort to push rates back down. We dug into why bond yields are moving higher from Japan to the United States, and why those factors might not end anytime soon.
One such factor is the massive AI infrastructure buildout. Another corner of the financial world being driven by such trends is emerging markets, where concentration among just a few AI-related stocks is at extreme levels. Leslie Norton spoke with fund managers about how they are navigating this unusual landscape.
Semiconductor stocks will also be in focus in the coming week when Nvidia reports second-quarter earnings. Morningstar’s Brian Colello weighs in on what he’ll be watching when the chip behemoth reports, and he explains why he thinks it will be another “beat and raise” quarter.
Executives at big Wall Street firms are trying to sell private credit funds to individual investors. When asked about credit problems in this market, the execs’ response has been “Nothing to see here, folks.” But the data tells a different…
