Investors have been wary of tech stocks as of late and instead are parking their money in investment-grade corporate bond funds. This week the sector garnered a whopping $2.9 billion in inflows which is the biggest week since July, over six months ago. Markets are expecting the Fed to hike this year, which means borrowing rates will start to hurt the growth-oriented stock, and the Nasdaq slumped to its worst start since 2008 as a result. However, the rising yields are also pushing more investors into relatively riskless corporate debt. Junk bonds didn’t get the same bump as many indices were down with a hawkish Fed.

Finsum: Don’t sell on tech stocks just yet, but it could be a bearish year for the number one market segment the last year if the Fed hikes four times!

House prices are at all-time highs, and since a small slump at the start of the pandemic have really seen rapid growth but are they in a bubble? Long story short, probably not, because a few key metrics are keeping them elevated. Federal Gov assistance programs have diminished the foreclosure numbers. Added to that the trillions poured into countless QE and MBS purchases have made mortgage rates be at near all-time lows. Finally, there appear to be real shortfalls in different housing markets, and the pandemics work from anywhere policies are having strong growth in places like Boise, Austin, and Orlando. All of these factors come together to say that there is a relatively low risk of a housing bubble but to keep your eyes peeled.

Finsum: The Case Shiller home price index is at an all-time high but more importantly growing at an all-time rate, this is getting close to bubble territory but it is lacking the speculative component.

Timing is everything in the market, and investors have a lot of reasons to be cautious in the bond market. A confluence of factors is making it likely that bond yields might jump up in 2022, particularly on longer-duration government debt. This is concerning as bond yields and prices move in the opposite directions so jumping on long-term debt right now could be deadly. For instance, the latest treasury yield rise sent an equivalent of an 800-point Dow Jones plunge in the iShares 20+ Year Treasury ETF (TLT). This is potentially scary as the markets are expecting three 25 basis points hikes from the Fed this year and inflation could also send bond yields rising. Most funds would see between a 1-3% hit on a 30-basis point yield spike.

Finsum: It’s critical to time the market but you might just stay away from long-term bonds, and stay on the shorter end of the duration.

A slew of new technological advancements are coming to Financial services and portfolio management software in 2022. The biggest changes will be modernizing networks, edge computing, and decentralized infrastructure like Web3. This means a lot of financial technology will begin moving to the cloud. In addition, actual payment transactions will take place on the technological device and not through a central network, which improves efficiency and processing speed. This doesn’t come at a big cost either as it’s a more robust and safer technology for payments solutions. Finally, in a decentralized financial industry, anyone can turn their personal capital into collateral and extract yield others can borrow from eliminating financial middlemen.

Finsum: These are wild changes in decentralized finance but undoubtedly a couple of years off, however cloud computing is a game-changer for portfolio management software.

According to a report from Charles Schwab registered investor advisor firms with less than $100 million in assets are improving recruiting efforts as of late. In a poll, it was the fourth listed initiative among RIAs in 2021, up five spots from the previous year. How these new recruiting efforts are delegated is also interesting with a quarter of RIA’s planning on adding relationship managers and 15% looking to add a client-facing management role. Additionally, more than half the firms are also adding back office and admin staff. Talent is an increasingly important commodity in the average RIA firm and many new efforts will be made to obtain it.

Finsum: It will be interesting to see exactly how the details of obtaining new talent come out: whether that’s specific programs or bonus-based incentives.

Bitcoin has stumbled as of late, all the way down to $46,000, but Goldman Sachs isn’t backing off their bullishness and they say the price may double to over $100,000 by the end of 2023. The first of the primary reasons is just the groundswell into digital assets generally. The second big factor is how investors will fundamentally see bitcoin moving forward, as a store of value substitute. They see bitcoin eating away at a stalling gold bouillon. To date, bitcoin only makes up a fifth of the ‘store of value’ market, but that could swing all the way up to a market majority. Other cryptos could also jump in to take some of the markets as well.

FINSUM: As Fed uncertainty lingers, investors are going to push themselves more into alternatives to hedge inflation and interest uncertainty and maintain a store of value.

Word had spread weeks ago that Franklin was in a position to acquire O’Shaughnessy Asset Management (OSAM), but that deal has finalized this week. OSAM will be a bolster an already growing separately managed accounts segment which stands at $130 billion AUM already. However, the big headline is the value-based investing and custom indexing that OSAM provides. The custom indexing platform OSAM owns known as Canvas has grown rapidly and doubled its aum in the last year hitting $2 billion.

FINSUM: This is another headliner deal in direct-indexing. What’s most notable is that many of the deals are coming through acquisitions rather than newer ones originating within the firms themselves.

Annuities have been criticized for their lack of a national advertising campaign that could really rally interest, but that will change in 2022. A large number of retirees should give companies enough desire to boost their annuities exposure. In addition to this many of the fundamental changes in regulation such as the secure act are paving the way for annuities to be introduced in new ways. Finally, the stock market has performed better than anyone could expect coming out of the pandemic, and bonds provided now yield and little security. Investors will need to protect their gains and retirement and expect big companies to pitch to these investors more frequently.

FINSUM: Protecting existing stock gains is a great argument for individuals to consider annuities in 2022.

JPMorgan Chase & Co issued a statement for investors to remain bullish about global equities moving forward. They believe the largest sources of risk are hawkish central banks, slowing growth in China, and global covid restrictions, but most of these threats are already priced in. Even if they aren’t quite priced in the chances of them really materializing is minimal. They remain positive as benchmark indices remain at near all-time highs. This sentiment is shared by lots on Wallstreet, like Credit Suisse. Moreover, to best take advantage of this growth, they advise to overweight Euro stocks, financial, commodity miners, and automobile manufactures.

FINSUM: The bears haven’t stopped barking but equities remain high and P/E ratios aren’t crazy, there’s room to run. 

ETFs saw a record performance in 2022 as inflows almost reached 1 trillion dollars, and while equity brought in over 60% of the inflows the second half was dominated by the fixed income market. This momentum in fixed income is expected to swell in 2022, particularly for the active ETF funds. Driving that those trending figures are the outperformance of active funds over passive funds, and an almost peak interest rate and inflation uncertainty. This sort of bourgeoning inflation and constricting Fed is unprecedented for the post-Volcker era. Active Issuers like T. Rowe price are very bullish on their prospects in the upcoming year.

FINSUM: While active funds haven’t brought home major returns they are getting better yield than passive funds and more diversity rather than piling on U.S. government securities.