Franklin Templeton’s Bi-annual Global Investment Management Survey

Posted By |

By Stephen Dover, CFA, Franklin Templeton Institute et al

(Sponsor Blog)

This bi-annual outlook survey is designed to give a view across our investment teams. The expectations for 2026 are based on survey results from investment professionals across all asset classes. We also provide our predictions on inflation, recession, asset class performance and more.

Summary

This bi-annual outlook survey is designed to give a view across our investment teams. The Franklin Templeton Institute identifies the median across answers and develops commentary on the year ahead. We surveyed our investment teams across all our asset classes: equity, private equity, fixed income, private debt, real estate, digital assets, hedge funds and secondary private markets.

The goal of the Global Investment Management Survey is to provide the most comprehensive global view on the dimensions that matter most to our clients.

The findings reflect the average of the group. While each of our investment teams are independent and have different outlooks, the survey serves as a starting point in understanding Franklin Templeton’s aggregate views on the economy, equities, fixed income and alternatives.

The survey results outlined in this paper are as of May 2026, and market data as of August 31, 2026.

Exhibit 1: Expectations for 2026 Based on the Franklin Templeton Global Investment Management Survey

Focus on Quality Across All Asset Classes

Source: Franklin Templeton Institute Global Investment Management Survey expectations are for the year 2026 and are as of May 2026. Survey methodology included at the end of the paper. There is no assurance any forecast, projection or estimate will be realized.

Key takeaways

Economic growth accelerating

  • Global growth will be slightly better than consensus forecasts.
  • We expect core Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) to approximate 3.0%–3.5% and will likely remain above central-bank targets.
  • Unemployment will rise but remain relatively low in the United States and will end the year around 4.5%.
  • The US dollar will remain rangebound and essentially unchanged by the end of 2026.
  • We do not expect a recession in 2026.

Equities likely to end 2026 at 7400–7800 (S&P 500 Index target)

  • Earnings will grow 15%+ versus market consensus of 31.5%.

FAVOR

  • Broad US stock exposure: we favor large-, mid- and small-cap and a balanced mix of growth and value. We are bullish on emerging markets and Japan.
  • Sector focus on technology, industrials and energy.
  • Factors to focus on include free-cash-flow yield, return on invested capital and return on equity.

RISKS

  • Geopolitics, Federal Reserve (Fed) misstep and earnings below expectations.

Municipal bonds, short duration and corporate credit will benefit from solid fundamentals and elevated yield levels in 2026

FAVOR

  • Municipal bonds will continue to be a high-quality, diversifying investment with attractive tax-free yields, as fundamentals remain solid and elevated supply levels continue to be met with strong demand to support valuations.
  • Shorter duration fixed income will be in favor during most of 2026 as yields remain elevated and the Fed could be on hold.
  • High-yield bonds are attractive. Default rates for high-yield debt could tick slightly higher during the second half of 2026; however, spreads should remain relatively tight in a sector with low interest rate risk and high all-in yields.

RISKS

  • Geopolitics and potential missteps by the Fed or other major central banks.

 

Survey Results Related to Equities

• The S&P 500 Index will end 2026 in the range of 7,400–7,800.
• Earnings are expected to grow more than 15% in the United States, driven in part by strong real US GDP growth of 2.5%.
• We expect earnings growth to broaden out. We favor stocks across the capitalization spectrum and believe both value and growth will generate positive returns. Continue Reading…

Your business is your retirement plan. Here’s how to make it worth what you need

Posted By |
Image by Pexels/Zeynep Sude Emek

By Arvin Mondano

Special to Financial Independence Hub

In a recent Findependence Hub roundup on FIRE, Loretta Kilday of DebtCC said most FIRE folks she’s encountered “don’t actually stop working; they stop working for someone else.” Business owners made that move years ago, which leaves them with a different retirement problem: for many of them, the company is the nest egg. The RRSP got whatever was left after payroll, and the plan has always been to sell.

That plan works when the sale price covers the retirement. It fails quietly when the owner learns what a buyer will pay only after deciding to retire. The fix is to run the numbers the other way around, years before you list.

Start with the number your retirement needs

Begin with the income you want, not the price you hope for. Say you need $60,000 a year on top of CPP and OAS. Using the 4% rule as a rough guide, that takes a portfolio of about $1.5 million. If your RRSP, TFSA and other savings already hold $400,000, the sale has to deliver roughly $1.1 million after tax, legal costs and any broker’s commission.

Your accountant can turn that into a pre-tax sale price. For this example, call it $1.3 million. What matters is having a target before you ever have an asking price. Owners who skip this step tend to price on what the business means to them. Buyers price on what it earns.

What buyers actually pay for

Buyers of owner-run businesses price them on the seller’s discretionary earnings, or SDE: pre-tax profit plus the owner’s salary and perks, plus one-time and non-cash expenses. It’s the cash flow a single owner-operator could take out of the business in a year.

The price is a multiple of that figure. Most small, owner-operated businesses in Canada sell for somewhere between two and three and a half times SDE. Where yours lands depends on how clean the records are, whether earnings are rising or falling, whether a few big customers make up most of your sales, and how much the business depends on you.

Now run your retirement math against it. Divide the price you need by a realistic multiple and you get the SDE the business has to show. At a multiple of 2.5, a $1.3 million sale needs about $520,000. If the business shows $350,000, it’s worth closer to $875,000, which leaves a $425,000 hole in the plan. Far better to find that out now than in the first offer.

The add-backs buyers accept, and the ones they don’t

Add-backs are where most price arguments start, because every dollar of SDE is worth two dollars or more of price. Buyers generally accept the ones they can verify: your own salary and benefits, personal costs run through the business such as a vehicle or phone, true one-time expenses like a legal settlement or a move, and depreciation and interest. Continue Reading…

Check your family’s Aeroplan points before November 30

Posted By |
Image by Pexels: Francesco Ungaro

By The Points Standard

Special to Financial Independence Hub

If you have an Aeroplan account you haven’t touched in a while, mark November 30, 2026 on the calendar. Under Air Canada’s current notice, that’s when its normal points expiry policy resumes after a long pause. Points are protected through November 29.

Under the normal rule, an account with no qualifying activity for 18 consecutive months loses its entire balance, unless an exemption applies. November 30 is the date to watch for accounts already past that limit; it isn’t everyone’s expiry date.

For people who collect points actively, this won’t matter. It matters for the balances nobody is watching: the account built up over a working life of business trips, the one a spouse opened for a single vacation, and the one belonging to an elderly parent who hasn’t flown in years. Those accounts can hold points worth keeping, even if nobody is planning a trip.

What a dormant balance is worth

Points feel like play money until you put a price on them. At The Points Standard we publish a monthly dollar valuation of Canadian points programs. Our current Aeroplan estimate is 1.9 Canadian cents a point for an informed flight redemption, with a baseline estimate of 1 cent. These are estimates of travel value, not cash balances or guaranteed redemption rates.

At those estimates, 50,000 points represents about $500 to $950 in travel value, and 150,000 points about $1,500 to $2,850. Actual value depends on the booking. Few of us would want to lose that much simply because an account was inactive.

Who is safe

Two groups don’t have to worry while their standing lasts:

  • Primary cardholders of an Aeroplan credit card. If you hold a TD, CIBC or American Express Aeroplan card as the primary cardholder, with the applicable accounts in good standing, your points don’t expire. That includes the no-fee CIBC Aeroplan Visa. Being an additional cardholder doesn’t protect your own Aeroplan balance.
  • Aeroplan Elite status members (25K and up), for as long as the status lasts.

Everyone else is on the 18-month clock.

How to find your own date

Use the website for this check. Air Canada’s published instructions say to sign in to your Aeroplan dashboard, select Activity, and scroll down to the points inactivity date. If you can’t find a date, contact Aeroplan to confirm your account’s status and deadline. Don’t assume the app uses the same path, or that a missing date means your points are protected. Continue Reading…

Retired Money: Book Review of David Booth’s Stay Calm

Posted By |

As we telegraphed in the September installment of my MoneySense Retired Money column, this month’s column is a book review of David Booth’s Stay Calm, published early in September. For the full review in the October column, click on the highlighted headline: The calming genius of passive investing.

David Booth is founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), maker of DFA Index Funds and DFA ETFs. I have long invested some of our family’s money in DFA funds, along with many of the other usual indexing suspects.

They are famously champions of taking a passive set-it-and-forget it approach to investing while minimizing the noise of what they have dubbed “financial pornography” propagated by traditional and social media, and the self-appointed experts who claim they can pick individual stocks or consistently time the markets.

As someone who takes a decidedly hybrid approach to investing in ETFs in various asset classes, — and occasionally indulging in a bit of high-conviction “index skimming” — I found Booth’s Stay Calm to be a refreshing reminder of the sound principles that underlie DFA.

Those who need a refresher on the virtues of passive investing will not be disappointed but as the book’s subhead implies, there are also quite a few lessons about embracing uncertainties in life in general, as well as investing in particular.

Stay Calm was published early in September by Authors Equity and is aptly subtitled “Learn to Embrace Uncertainty in Investing and Life.”  The book is divided into three main parts. Part 1 is on the science of investing and covers the Gift of being an Outsider, how Markets work and how to harness public markets. Part 2 is titled “The Mindset to Stay Calm” and the four chapter titles all make for excellent bullet points; Flexibility is the key to navigating Life’s Uncertainties; Don’t Predict, Plan; Control what you can control and manage what you can’t; and Tune out the Noise.

Continue Reading…

Is a Self-Directed IRA right for you? 7 Questions every investor should ask

Posted By |
Image created by the author with ChatGPT

By Donnell Stidhum, Self Directed Retirement Plans LLC 

Special to Financial Independence Hub

A self-directed IRA has become one of the most talked-about retirement accounts among investors looking for greater control over how they build wealth.

The appeal is easy to understand. Unlike many traditional retirement accounts that limit you to stocks, bonds and mutual funds offered by a brokerage, a self-directed IRA can provide access to a much broader range of investments, including real estate, private lending, private equity and certain precious metals, provided IRS rules are followed.

But here’s what I tell people during our conversations: having more investment choices doesn’t automatically mean a self-directed IRA is the right choice for you.

Over the years, I’ve seen investors open these accounts because they heard someone made money buying rental properties or investing in private companies. Unfortunately, some discover too late that the flexibility also comes with greater responsibility.

Before opening a self-directed IRA, I encourage people to slow down and ask themselves seven important questions:

1.) Do I understand the investment I’m buying?

This is always my first question.

A self-directed IRA allows you to invest beyond publicly traded securities, but it doesn’t eliminate investment risk. In fact, many alternative investments require even more due diligence because they aren’t traded on public exchanges and often have less transparency.

If you can’t clearly explain how an investment makes money, what could cause it to lose value and how you’ll evaluate its performance, you’re probably not ready to place retirement dollars into it.

Retirement investing isn’t about chasing opportunities. It’s about making informed decisions

2.) Am I looking for flexibility or simply chasing higher returns?

Many investors assume that because a self-directed IRA offers more choices, it must produce better returns.

That’s not how investing works.

The account itself doesn’t create performance. The investment decisions do.

I’ve met investors who have built substantial retirement wealth using traditional index funds. I’ve also met investors who have done exceptionally well with real estate inside a self-directed IRA. The difference wasn’t the account, it was their knowledge, discipline and long-term strategy.

Choose the account because it fits your investment approach, not because it promises bigger returns.

3.) Can I follow the IRS rules?

This is where many investors underestimate the complexity.

The IRS allows a wide range of investments, but it also has strict rules governing prohibited transactions and self-dealing. For example, you generally can’t use IRA-owned property for your personal benefit or engage in certain transactions with yourself or other disqualified persons. Violating these rules can jeopardize the account’s tax-advantaged status.

The rules aren’t designed to discourage investing. They’re designed to preserve the integrity of retirement accounts.

Before investing, understand the rules as carefully as you study the opportunity itself.

4.) Is this investment liquid enough for my retirement plan?

Liquidity is often overlooked.

Suppose your retirement account owns a rental property or a private business interest. Those assets may take months, or even longer, to sell.

That doesn’t necessarily make them poor investments, but it does mean your retirement strategy should include enough liquidity to meet future needs.

A diversified retirement portfolio shouldn’t leave you scrambling for cash because every investment is tied up in long-term assets.

5.) Am I properly diversified?

One of the biggest mistakes I see is concentration.

An investor becomes excited about real estate and moves nearly all of their retirement savings into a single property.

Another puts everything into one private company.

Diversification still matters. Continue Reading…