Goldman Sachs swiftly raised its one-month projection for Brent to $115 a barrel, a $20 price increase from their previous projection. Not only that they say there are still lots of upside risks if there is further disruption or escalation. The only thing that could hold higher oil prices off would be a complete deterioration of demand by the US and Western Europe. More sanctions are upcoming from the west as Russian banks will be banned from SWIFT payment systems. Commodities are also facing higher price pressures with both threats to payment methods for Russian goods and restrictions to Russian commodities to the wider West. On top of all of this shale supply will fail to compensate for the current demand and OPEC+ will have to step in if there is to be any relief in oil prices.

Finsum: This is a good time to by energy bonds as payment streams will surely be in supply with higher gas prices.

Investors, advisors included, seem to be wondering why the stock market has done quite well since Thursday morning when Russia invaded Ukraine. Many expected stocks to tumble—and they initially did—but the opposite has happened, with the S&P 500 up around 5% since the close of business on the 23rd. The reason why has everything to do with the Fed and interest rates. The market now thinks the Fed is in a bind and won’t be able to hike rates as fast as they would have been able to before the conflict. This would mean a slower stop of the easy money surge that has gone on for years. Markets are now only forecasting a 12.5% chance of a 50 bp hike in March.

FINSUM: Stocks have jumped as a simple reaction to the fact that the path of rate hikes looks less steep right now than it did a week ago, which is also why the tech-heavy Nasdaq has jumped the most.

Fidelity has just taken a big step in the direct indexing game. Direct indexing has been very hot across the asset management space over the last 12-18 months and has mostly been marketed so far as a high-minimum service for advisors to customize portfolios to client desires. Now, with a product called FidFolios, Fidelity is poised to launch a service to let mom and pop investors customize their portfolios with a minimum of just $5,000.

FINSUM: This was bound to happen. Most advisors may see this as a threat to their value proposition, but we more see it as a validation of the utility of direct indexing for clients. Advisors should take this as a sign of confidence that they should offer direct indexing to clients!

Financial firms have tried desperately to increase recruiting efforts in the last year or two. While companies like Wells Fargo concentrated on incentive-based tools around retention and recruiting Ameriprise Financial has taken a technology approach. In partnership with Seismic, they have ramped up the suite of technological offerings in order to track, grow, and run their business. The biggest tools offered are LiveDocs, LiveSend, and Interactive Content which all augment their services in order to allow them to compete with larger companies They see their automation efforts as a superior offering to purely financial incentives and it resulted in over 2% growth in the last year.

Finsum: A new approach to advisor recruiting by Ameriprise could definitely give their advisors an edge over competitors and lead to more long-term growth in recruits.

Fixed-income investors are in the doldrums when it comes to today’s ultra low yield environment. Guaranteed income from CDs is just not high enough, and while bonds may be secure their value is at a valley. Laddering annuities is maybe the best strategy, but the questions are under duration. In a flat yield curve going for a short duration makes sense, and as the yield curve steepens moving to long-term contracts is more attractive. In today’s interest rate market, the goldilocks spot is around 5-years, it is a much higher return than shorter-term annuities and longer-term contracts tie your money up without much more of a return boost. The best part is you can integrate this annuity laddering strategy into IRAs and take advantage of all the tax solutions they bring to the table.

Finsum: It's critical to ladder the right duration depending on the current rate environment and given how much interest rate risk there is today it's more important than ever to be precise.