The Buyback Returns, With Better Manners
Share repurchases are running at a substantial pace again, and the companies doing them have learned to explain themselves. Disclosure has improved faster than the underlying discipline.
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The Municipal Bond Market Finally Modernizes
The sleepiest corner of American finance is being dragged into the present by electronic trading, better disclosure and a generation of buyers who expect both.
Index Concentration Becomes a Risk Committee Problem
Broad market index funds have become substantially less diversified than the word index implies. Institutional allocators are reworking mandates written when the assumption held.
Investors Position for a Slower Path Down on Rates
Futures markets have spent the summer walking back easing expectations, and portfolio managers are adjusting duration, credit and cash accordingly.
Retail Traders Grow Up
The meme-stock cohort did not disappear when the fever broke. It aged into the most financially engaged retail generation in decades, with the account balances to show it.
The IPO Window Is Open a Crack, and Companies Are Rushing It Anyway
After a long drought, public listings are returning in cautious single file. The companies going first are teaching everyone else the new rules.
Dividends Are Fashionable Again
After a decade in which payouts read as an admission of exhausted ambition, companies and investors have rediscovered the discipline of cash returned.