Fall is an ideal season to visit U.S. national parks, with thinner crowds, cheaper lodging, and stunning foliage making for a perfect adventure. 

Parks like Great Smoky Mountains, Zion, and Acadia each offer unique fall experiences, from the vibrant colors of deciduous forests to cooler hiking weather and scenic drives. In the Smokies, trails like Alum Cave and drives through Cade’s Cove come alive with color, while Zion’s cottonwoods turn golden beneath towering red rock cliffs. 

Acadia shines with coastal sunrises, colorful hikes like the Bubble Trail, and charming downtime in Bar Harbor. Fall travel also opens up opportunities for budget-friendly accommodations, fewer lines at popular spots, and unique perspectives like helicopter tours or bike rides through canyons. 

Finsum: Whether you’re chasing peak colors or quieter trails, these national parks showcase autumn at its very best.

The rise of direct indexing is transforming public equity portfolio construction, giving institutional investors unprecedented control over market exposures through access to increasingly granular trading data. 

Instead of relying on traditional benchmarks, allocators can now customize portfolios to reflect sector convictions, exclude undesirable industries, and manage risk concentrations, like avoiding overexposure to mega-cap stocks such as Microsoft. Experts note that direct indexing's growth has been supercharged by post-pandemic volatility and evolving client expectations around values-based investing and tax efficiency. 

Industry leaders view custom indexing as a flexible, modular solution that enables investors to “build any sector tilt, factor fiesta, or thematic maze,” as one CIO put it. As technology advances and AI becomes embedded in portfolio design, managers must evolve into tech-savvy strategists capable of leveraging these tools for tailored outcomes. 

Finsum: What began as a “nice-to-have” has rapidly become essential in a market where precision, personalization, and proactive risk management drive success.

U.S. Treasury yields plummeted, particularly on short-term notes, after July’s jobs report came in significantly weaker than expected, reigniting investor expectations for an imminent Federal Reserve rate cut. 

The two-year yield dropped 25 basis points to 3.71%, its steepest one-day fall in a year, as traders priced in an 80% chance of a rate cut at the Fed’s September meeting. The labor data showed just 73,000 jobs added in July, well below forecasts, and revisions to prior months brought the three-month hiring average to a pandemic-era low of 35,000. 

The market’s reaction signaled a dramatic pivot in sentiment, further fueled by political pressure from President Trump and dovish dissent from two Fed governors. Treasury futures volumes surged as traders abandoned flattening yield curve bets, and BlackRock analysts now anticipate a 50-basis-point rate cut in September, with more to follow by year-end. 

Finsum: The Fed can afford aggressive easing without stoking inflation, setting the stage for a bold monetary policy shift.