Dow gains nearly 400 points; S&P 500 snaps 3-day losing run as chip stocks rise (CNBC)

10-year Treasury yield rises to highest since January 2025 as surging oil rekindles inflation fear (CNBC)

Stocks aren't getting rewarded like they used to for beating earnings expectations (CNBC)

Volkswagen CFO addresses plant closures, job losses as profits sink (CNBC)

Trump Threatens New EU Tariffs After Google Hit With $1 Billion Fine (Bloomberg)

‘Ridiculously’ Cheap US Bank Capital Risks Trapping Investors (Bloomberg)

Momentum Crash Hits YOLO Traders' Returns by Most in Four Years (Bloomberg)

Earnings playbook: Apple and other megacaps lead busiest week of the season (CNBC)

The RIA "dealmaking window" everyone was counting on might be shorter than it looks. EY-Parthenon's Gaurav Joshi says deal volume in wealth and asset management jumped 20% in H1 2026 even as aggregate deal value slipped, and that's not a valuation crash. It's PE buyers getting pickier, chasing durable, organic growth instead of just AUM. If you're a firm owner sitting on the fence about selling, "wait and see" just got more expensive. (InvestmentNews, July 20)

Cetera CEO Mike Durbin confirmed what recruiters already suspected: 2026 is on pace to be another record year, but the cost of winning an advisor has climbed fast. Transition packages have gone from a flat 0.2% of trailing revenue to asset-based deals as rich as 1.5%, paid out as forgivable loans over 9 to 10 years, directly in response to LPL's Commonwealth acquisition. Next time a broker-dealer recruiter tells an advisor their offer is "market rate," that's the number to hold them to. (InvestmentNews, July 21)

Arax, backed by RedBird Capital, picked up a $3B RIA with over 1,000 client relationships in its seventh deal of the year alone, a pace almost nobody else in the space is matching.

Two long-tenured advisors broke away this week and left Morgan Stanley after more than 20 years for LPL-affiliated Ascendus Financial Advisors in Tulsa, bringing about $145M. Another left Edward Jones for Ameriprise's independent channel in Idaho Falls with roughly $160M (InvestmentNews, July 22)

New data on AI adoption across wealth management makes the ROI story look shakier than the spending numbers suggest. Firms representing $31T in AUM have ramped up AI spend hard over the last three years, but 64% still don't have a unified data layer (83% for bank and trust firms), and F2 Strategy's Doug Fritz put it plainly: the correlation between AI spend and measurable value right now is "loose." The firms that do measure ROI aren't doing badly (68% report gains of 25% or more), which means the real gap isn't whether AI works. It's whether most firms are even set up to know if it's working. Worth remembering next time a recruiting pitch leans on "we're investing heavily in AI" like that settles anything. (InvestmentNews, July 24)