Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) are investment vehicles owned by countries. These funds can act as investment accounts or development tools, or both. The concept of a sovereign wealth fund is to grow current funds for the benefit of future generations.

These funds have several potential uses and countries use them differently. Some countries use SWFs to invest their economic or trade surpluses (What a concept!). This allows for the future stabilization of the economy in times of financial stress. It can also reduce the dependency on a singular commodity. If a country is an oil rich state, it makes a lot of sense for the country to invest a portion of its petroleum proceeds into a SWF for diversification away from oil in order to reduce economic shocks. Some countries use SWFs as public benefit pension funds.

SWFs often provide a source of funding for multinational firms engaged in global investment and trade, contributing to economic development and job creation. SWFs can also be used to further geopolitical agendas.

With income tax time upon us, I want to remind all of our clients and readers that we have a great tool for keeping your financial information digitally in one safe, secure place. It’s called Your Financial Life and it’s free gift from Halbert Wealth Management.

The idea is to have all of your financial information (account numbers, custodians, contact info, etc.) in one digital place for easy access. When there are changes to any of your financial information, you can easily update your record to keep it current.

Just days after his inauguration, President Donald Trump famously said, “With oil prices going down, I'll demand that interest rates drop immediately." And at a White House event following these comments, Trump said, "I think I know interest rates much better than they do, and I think I know it certainly much better than the one who's primarily in charge of making that decision," apparently referring to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

But in an about face, Trump in comments to reporters earlier this month said that the central bank was right to keep interest rates unchanged at its last policy meeting on January 29. "I'm not surprised," he told reporters. "I think holding the rates at this point was the right thing to do."

Also, newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the president no longer plans to pressure the Federal Reserve to lower its short-term federal funds interest rate. Instead, what he and the president want is to bring down longer-term borrowing costs, such as home mortgage rates, via a decrease in 10-year Treasury yields.

Today we take a look at the importance of Treasury yields, why President Trump has changed his tune and what measures the newly formed administration can take to ease long-term interest rates.

DeepSeek R1 has caused an uproar in AI land. ‘Bigly’ as the president would say. It was a flaming salvo out of the dark that took the US AI titans Nvidia, Open AI, Microsoft, Google Meta and Amazon by surprise. Or did it?