November 9, 2026 | LPL Research
___________________________

The artificial intelligence (AI) boom is becoming increasingly intertwined with the broader U.S. economy, fueling a surge in imports of semiconductors and servers while making data center construction an important source of business investment. That spending has supported growth but also widened the trade deficit, while a changing political landscape could bring greater scrutiny to the power demands, permitting, and costs associated with the buildout. None of that necessarily derails the AI investment cycle, but it could introduce more friction after a period of breakneck expansion. For investors, the shift is a reminder that enthusiasm over new technology ultimately runs into an old market reality: Capital spending can drive an investment boom, but productivity, profits, inflation, and interest rates will determine whether it delivers lasting returns.

November 2, 2026 | LPL Research
___________________________

Bonds have been behind the world’s biggest buildouts, effectively financing the future throughout history. And while equity markets have remained front and center amid the ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) driven bull market, as hyperscaler capital expenditures (capex) close in on $1 trillion per year, what was mostly an equity market story may now be turning into a rates market story as well. Hyperscalers have routinely begun selling longer-maturity bonds, and smaller borrowers have also entered the mix. With capex guidance continuing to grow, the supply wave is likely far from over, and markets have broadly absorbed this issuance well. But at a price. Here, we’ll discuss the impacts of the AI buildout on both the Treasury and credit markets, and what this could mean for investors.

October 26, 2026 | LPL Research
___________________________

Corporate America faces a higher bar this earnings season. Technology and artificial intelligence (AI) names remain in the spotlight amid ongoing spending, financing, and monetization scrutiny, while the macro backdrop remains clouded by rising energy prices and inflation pressures, higher borrowing costs, and heightened geopolitical risks. This begs several questions for markets. Is technology the only earnings driver? Are expectations too high? Can margins keep expanding? Here, we will discuss these three keys for the reporting cycle in our preview of third quarter earnings season.

October 19, 2026 | LPL Research
___________________________

Meta’s September launch of Muse, a personal artificial intelligence (AI) agent designed to act on a user’s behalf across digital workflows, crystallized the market’s latest disruption narrative. If AI can make consumer switching easier, which business models are truly protected by moats and which are merely monetizing friction? While we are skeptical that AI agents will disrupt businesses whose moats were earned through differentiated products, services, or brands, we do see potential disruption risk for businesses that largely benefit from consumer inertia, like forgetting to cancel subscriptions or not wanting to spend time on price comparisons.

October 12, 2026 | LPL Research
___________________________

Bank lending rarely commands the attention that payrolls, inflation, or consumer spending do. But it helps determine how much momentum the economy can sustain. Commercial and industrial (C&I) loans, the workhorse of corporate finance, pay for everything from working capital to machinery and software. When banks are willing to lend and companies are eager to borrow, it suggests executives see enough opportunity ahead to put money to work.

October 5, 2026 | LPL Research
___________________________

At roughly $1.0 trillion this fiscal year, interest costs now exceed what the government spends on defense or Medicaid. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects net interest to climb from 3.3% of GDP to 4.6% over the next decade. That projection was built on a 10-year yield averaging 4.1% this year and settling around 4.4% longer term, and we are above that path. By the CBO's own estimate, rates one percentage point above its baseline would push debt to 222% of GDP by 2056 instead of 175%.

September 28, 2026 | LPL Research
___________________________

Investors have plenty to worry about as fall begins. The conflict in the Middle East continues to disrupt critical energy infrastructure and transportation routes, keeping oil prices elevated and adding uncertainty around inflation. Meanwhile, rising interest rates and the prospect of additional rate hikes from the Fed could contribute to near-term market volatility. The enormous capital being committed to AI raises questions about the returns on that investment.

September 21, 2026 | LPL Research
___________________________

For decades, operating margins (earnings before interest and taxes, or EBIT, divided by sales) behaved like a cyclical series. When margins rose well above trend, the forces of competition, input costs, capacity additions, and customer pushback eventually compressed profitability. As Jeremy Grantham, investor and co-founder of asset manager GMO, famously said, “Profit margins are probably the most mean-reverting series in finance, and if profit margins do not mean-revert, then something has gone badly wrong with capitalism.”

September 14, 2026 | LPL Research
___________________________

The key lesson from these prior cycles is that rate hikes do not typically derail bull markets. When rate increases coincide with rising recession risks, that’s a different story. Today, recession risks are low by all accounts. Economic growth remains solid, labor markets remain healthy (as reinforced by last week’s jobs report), and inflation, though high, is far below the peaks reached in 2022. Meanwhile, interest rates are already much higher than they were at the start of the last tightening cycle, reducing the shock value for bond portfolios in the case of modest additional increases in market-based rates like the 10-year Treasury.

September 8, 2026 | LPL Research
___________________________

The concerns underneath the move are legitimate, and dismissing them would be the wrong kind of contrarianism. We want to acknowledge them properly before explaining why we still think the market is functioning as designed. But, like Aesop’s fable about a boy who cried wolf, calling every orderly sell-off a crisis is unhelpful. We don’t think we are there yet, but debt and deficit trajectories are unsustainable on this current path. Something will need to be done. The good news is that we were in a similar situation in the 1990s, and Congress acted. There are some similarities, but differences as well.