There have been huge sectoral pains for tech, bio-tech, emerging market, and growth stocks in the last couple of weeks, but JPMorgan says it's time to turn bullish on these beta positions. Analyst Kolanovic said that these equity sectors are about to benefit because many of the geopolitical risk and macro pressures are about to ease. JPMorgan’s analyst believes that there will be little inflation and the US will avoid a recession. Biotech has been beat down since last August when the Nasdaq Biotech Index peaked; it is now at 75% of its previous high.

Finsum: The Fed projections could be bad for tech stocks as higher interest rates decrease the relative value of techs profits.

Model portfolios have been a surprisingly quick growing tool for the financial industry in the last year, and Morgan sStanley’s Wealth Management is capitalizing by adding a series of new model portfolios. These strategies will have hefty minimums of $750k to $1.5 million and are targeting tax and direct indexing strategies from the recently acquired Parametric. This was a key reason Morgan Stanley acquired Parametric last year to rapidly develop and deploy direct indexing strategies. Overall the portfolios have acquired $150 million in assets since their inception in January.

Finsum: Financial companies took a page out of tech companies playbook by just acquiring the companies that might align with them and allow the to quickly scale when it came to direct indexing.

February was a bad month for fixed income ETFs which saw $32.2 billion in outflows. This marks the third straight month in a row of outflows. However, fixed income wasn’t the only category suffering in February; many traditional funds like money markets and stock/mixed asset funds saw outflows as well. This is an overall bearish sentiment that is creeping across the market, and signals that investors are worried about future rate hikes for the Fed. However, alternative funds continue to be on a win streak as they had their strongest inflows in over a year and have 11 consecutive months of inflows.

Finsum: There is a stronger correlation with stocks and bonds than there was thirty years ago and many investors are turning away from bond funds in the face of volatility.

Biden has hit a brick wall with his climate legislation, and now is going out of his way pleading that oil companies double down on drilling efforts to curb gas prices in response to Russia-Ukraine invasion. However, the SEC is expected to propose new regulation that will force companies to disclose data around their climate risks. This legislation will only come into effect as early as 2023, but it will put a major spotlight on the biggest polluters and carbon contributors. Many believe these changes will force companies to pay higher costs for their carbon use and maybe make it harder for companies to invest in green bonds and funds around these companies.

Finsum: This isn’t enough to end greenwashing; foriegn governments are well ahead of the US in terms of ESG regulation.

2021 set an all time record for American’s quitting with approximately 47 million opting to leave their jobs and giving the year the title the ‘Great Resignation’. However, financial advisors have remained insulated from the one off spike. Many say this has to do with how advisors see their business, and being their own practitioners. This holds many companies accountable for keeping advisors satisfied because they can take their book of business elsewhere. Still there have been a slight increase in quits but that's part of a broader trend over the last three years for financial advisors.

Finsum: Firms are definitely getting the message, and are increasing measures for both retention and hiring in order to grow scale and attract advisors.