FINANCIAL BLOG

LPL Research provides its Weekly Market Performance for the week of January 26, 2026. Capital markets continued to face a variety of moving pieces, this time, ranging from high-profile earnings, central bank developments from Washington, and volatile commodities and currency market trading. U.S. stocks ultimately ended mostly lower after retracing early-week gains on rekindled artificial intelligence (AI) scrutiny, and markets parsed the nomination for the next U.S. central b

After a stellar 2025 in which emerging market (EM) equities returned 34%, 2026 is off to a good start with the MSCI EM Index up 7% year to date. Last year’s near doubling of the S&P 500 return was driven mostly by a weakening U.S. dollar, which propped up EM returns, but attractive valuations and artificial intelligence (AI) investment played a role. This week we highlight five reasons we’ve warmed up to EM.

The Federal Reserve (Fed) enters 2026 navigating potentially constrained policy conditions as resilient growth and above‑trend inflation intersect with an increasingly unsustainable fiscal trajectory. Fed Chair Jerome Powell emphasized that federal debt growth requires eventual corrective action, even if near‑term market risks remain limited.