Sales of fee-based annuities are growing rapidly, reaching about $8 billion this year, though they still represent a small fraction of the $430 billion total annuity market. LIMRA projects $6.9 billion in fee-based variable annuities and $1.1 billion in fee-based fixed-indexed annuities for 2025, nearly doubling since 2022. 

Industry experts noted that while most sales still come from traditional 1035 exchanges, a rising share now involves new money, signaling growing advisor engagement. Insurers like Jackson National are developing fee-friendly products such as Jackson Income Assurance, which allows advisors to draw fees directly from contracts without reducing client benefits. 

Prudential Financial is also expanding in this space with ActiveIncome, an insurance overlay built for RIAs that preserves asset control while providing lifetime income. 

Finusm: These innovations aim to reduce friction between insurers and advisors, marking a structural shift toward fee-based, client-aligned annuity solutions.

Technology and Communication Services stocks continue to dominate markets in 2025, gaining 23% and 25% respectively—well above the S&P 500’s 15% return. Together, these sectors now account for nearly 45% of the S&P 500’s market cap, with Broadcom, NVIDIA, and Alphabet leading gains among the “Magnificent Seven.” 

Despite volatility earlier in the year due to competitive AI platforms like DeepSeek, resilient consumer demand and strong corporate profits have kept indexes at record highs. Analysts from U.S. Bank Asset Management Group note that AI and cloud computing remain major growth drivers, even as investors scrutinize valuations and capital expenditures. 

While elevated prices could leave tech stocks vulnerable to earnings slowdowns, experts see continued upside as innovation fuels productivity and structural growth. 

Finsum: Technology remains the market’s core engine, volatile yet essential for long-term investment performance.

As markets decline amid tariff concerns, investors are increasingly turning to structured notes for downside protection, income generation, and help staying invested through volatility. These tailored instruments combine features of debt and derivatives to offer asymmetric returns, limiting losses while allowing partial participation in market gains. 

Structured notes with “static buffers” can, for instance, protect against a 15% market drop while providing steady coupon payments. They also enable investors to enhance yield potential by reallocating portions of cash or fixed income holdings into structured products. 

Historically, structured notes with downside buffers have preserved principal in more than 90% of 20-year backtests, illustrating their resilience during turbulent markets. 

Finsum: While not maybe for all investors, structured notes can serve as a strategic tool to maintain exposure and stability when uncertainty runs high.

A new TIAA survey finds that two-thirds of Americans believe retiring between ages 65 and 70 is no longer realistic, with only 37% confident they can retire “on time.” Financial strain is widespread—20% of respondents aren’t saving for retirement at all, and nearly a quarter expect to work longer just to cover basic expenses. 

Some are even turning to unlikely strategies, such as the 10% who see playing the lottery or buying luxury goods as potential retirement solutions. TIAA executives warn that many Americans lack both adequate savings and access to financial guidance, underscoring the need for guaranteed income products and professional advice. 

The survey shows 92% of respondents want a steady income stream beyond Social Security, yet 25% feel too uninformed to invest in annuities despite growing interest. 

Finsum: Advisor should help clients to understand supplementing Social Security with long-term income strategies is essential to ensure financial security in retirement.

LPL Financial’s new Advisor Growth Study (AGS) analyzed six years of data from more than 14,000 advisory practices to uncover the behaviors that drive consistent, sustainable growth. Using supervised machine learning and explainable AI, LPL developed the Advisor Growth Index, a diagnostic tool that benchmarks advisor performance across client acquisition, development, and retention. 

The research found that firms demonstrating even two of the four core growth habits outperformed peers by fivefold. These high-growth advisors build a strong foundation by focusing on scalable operations and long-term clients, with a balanced client age mix under 60 and fewer than 35% in decumulation. 

They also segment clients strategically, prioritizing service to those with high assets or complex needs, while maintaining deep engagement with existing relationships to strengthen retention and generational continuity. 

Finsum: Data-driven client acquisition, leveraging M&A, digital marketing, and centers of influence, can help grow new client assets.

Large-cap blend funds, core holdings that mirror the U.S. stock market, have posted strong results, returning 15.84% over the past year, 22.50% annually over three years, and 14.81% over five. Morningstar data identified 15 standout funds with top-quartile returns across one-, three-, and five-year periods, including American Funds Fundamental Investors, AQR Large Cap Multi-Style Fund, and Vanguard 500 Index Fund. 

The American Funds Fundamental Investors fund rose 23% in the past year, boosted by global exposure and a refreshed management team, while The Investment Company of America fund gained 22.25% with a balanced focus on dividend growth and capital appreciation. 

AQR’s Large Cap Multi-Style Fund outperformed its peers with a 23.52% annual gain, leveraging value, momentum, and quality factors to manage market sensitivity efficiently. 

Finsum: These funds demonstrate that disciplined diversification, data-driven strategy, and cost efficiency continue to drive superior long-term performance.

Coinbase Asset Management and Apollo have partnered to launch tokenized credit products, combining Apollo’s private credit expertise with Coinbase’s blockchain infrastructure to introduce new stablecoin-backed strategies in 2026. Their initiatives follow the GENIUS Act, which established the first U.S. federal framework for stablecoins and is expected to drive the market to $3 trillion by 2030. 

Meanwhile, fund managers such as Hamilton Lane and Laser Digital have begun tokenizing credit funds via KAIO, a protocol purpose-built for institutional-grade onchain assets, with over $200 million already tokenized. KAIO, backed by Nomura, recently integrated with the Sei blockchain to provide fast, compliant access to funds like Hamilton Lane’s senior credit platform and BlackRock’s ICS US Dollar Liquidity Fund. 

In a related move, Securitize announced plans to go public through a merger with Cantor Equity Partners II, valuing the company at $1.25 billion and positioning it at the forefront of a $19 trillion market for real-world asset tokenization.

Finsum: Demand for tokenized assets is rising sharply, with Broadridge reporting that while only 15% of asset managers currently offer tokenized funds, 41% plan to do so soon.

The SEC’s pending approval of dual share classes marks a major turning point for ETFs, allowing mutual funds and ETFs to share the same underlying portfolio. Dimensional Fund Advisors, which has long pursued this exemption, is expected to be the first mover once operational logistics are in place. 

Industry leaders say investors will benefit from the ability to convert between mutual fund and ETF shares without triggering taxes or transaction costs, though custodians must update systems to enable this functionality. 

Firms like F/m Investments are preparing to launch mutual fund versions of existing ETFs to expand into retirement markets, while others, such as Touchstone Investments, anticipate a slower rollout due to operational hurdles 

Finsum: Fund boards will play a critical oversight role, ensuring proper governance, investor education, and alignment between fund structures as this transformation unfolds.

Assets in European active ETFs have more than doubled in two years to reach €62.4 billion, though they still make up only 2.6% of Europe’s total ETF market—far behind the 10.2% share in the U.S., signaling early-stage adoption. Investor interest is rising, with €13.4 billion in inflows so far in 2025 following €18.4 billion in 2024, yet active ETFs still represent just 6% of total European ETF flows. 

JP Morgan continues to dominate with a 56% market share, followed by Fidelity and Pimco, while new players like HSBC, Avantis, and Goldman Sachs are intensifying competition and pushing fees lower. 

Equity offerings are mostly “shy-active”, benchmark-aware strategies seeking modest outperformance, while fixed-income active ETFs have quietly excelled, expanding into complex areas like CLOs and mortgage-backed securities with strong early results. 

Finsum: Overall, Europe’s active ETF market is maturing rapidly, blending innovation, cost competitiveness. 

The Nasdaq-100 Index has long rewarded investors with strong returns, delivering a 19.43% annualized gain over the past decade, outpacing the broader U.S. market’s 13.93% return, though with greater volatility. This volatility, often seen as a drawback, can actually benefit investors through direct indexing, a strategy that allows ownership of individual stocks within an index. 

Unlike ETFs, direct indexing enables tax-loss harvesting, where investors sell underperforming stocks to offset capital gains and lower tax bills while maintaining market exposure. Wealthfront has pioneered this approach with its new Nasdaq-100 Direct portfolio, offering retail investors access to innovative companies and potential tax savings with a low 0.12% annual advisory fee. 

Direct indexing can help investors turn volatility into an advantage by improving after-tax returns while closely tracking the index’s performance.

Finsum: Ultimately, the strategy offers a cost-effective, tax-efficient way to capture the long-term growth potential of the Nasdaq-100’s most dynamic companies.