Fixed income

The court has suggested that federal law bars awards from going further, blunting a legal tool that critics say the agency has abused.

“The stocks that I hadn’t heard of three months ago all of a sudden are the most active — that’s not where investors go, that’s where traders might go or hobbyists might go,” says a private wealth advisor at UBS.

As inflows soar and market dislocations vanish, an industry that consigned to history two major disruptions of the pandemic crash is back.

How the Fed proceeds is key for investors who have plowed into steepening bets, a move that peaked with last week’s surge in 10- and 30-year yields.

The central bank’s own data show that slightly more than half of U.S. households own stocks. But that doesn’t come close to telling the whole story.

One strategist — who last month warned about owning stocks — said that he now believes he was “far too cautious” during the current market rally.

Don’t expect significant changes anytime soon to longstanding complaints about conflicts of interest in the “issuer pay” model of the ratings business.

Banks and insurers have trailed the S&P 500 by 20 percentage points, their worst performance at this point of a year on record.

As liquidity disappeared amid the coronavirus-sparked mayhem, veteran fixed-income portfolio manager Gemma Wright-Casparius saw opportunities.

One French trade group reports that the country’s managers reduced research budgets by as much as 75% between 2017 and 2019.