BlackRock is applying hedge fund strategies to its exchange-traded fund business.

Jeffrey Rosenberg, the firm’s senior portfolio manager on the systematic fixed income team, has a leading role in the firm’s liquid alternatives ETFs — which use a long-short strategy in ETF wrappers.

He contends the strategy provides valuable diversification amid the recent breakdown in the relationship between stocks and bonds.

“The great old adage around fixed income is ‘my bonds go up when my stocks go down.’ Now, we just went through a period in March with war risk where we clearly saw again on display… that doesn’t hold. And, really saw it in 2022,” Rosenberg told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “This entire post-Covid environment has really challenged that bedrock principle of the 60-40 portfolio that bonds are diversifying.”

According to Rosenberg, client demand for liquid alts ETFs is growing because there’s a desire to diversify your diversifiers.

“We’re bringing the techniques that we’ve developed in the hedge fund side of our business, which primarily center around market neutral, long-short investing,” he added. “That’s the key kind of ‘a-ha moment’ for ETF investors to realize most of what they have exposure to in the ETF ecosystem is some kind of beta exposure.”

Rosenberg is a portfolio manager on two BlackRock liquid alts ETFs: the iShares Systematic Alternatives Active ETF (IALT) and the iShares Managed Futures Active ETF (ISMF). As of April 8, the firm’s website shows IALT is up almost 8% so far this year while the ISMF is up nearly 5%.

“What liquid alternatives bring to the table is the ability to look at other sources of return away from just market directionality,” said Rosenberg.

He highlighted a major challenge investors face on the stock market side.

“Our equity portfolios have been more and more dominated by the big, large cap tech winners,” said Rosenberg. “With that concentration is a loss of diversification and a loss of diversification value on the equity side. So, liquid alternatives can address both of these challenges to portfolio construction.”

Asset management giant BlackRock raised its outlook for U.S. stocks, reasoning that contained impacts from the Iran war and strong corporate earnings will create a favorable backdrop for domestic equities.

The firm, which manages $14 trillion for clients, said in its weekly market note that it raised the rating a notch to overweight from neutral.

Developments in the war had made BlackRock cautious on domestic stocks. But it said prospects for a lasting ceasefire now have strategists believing that the impacts won’t be major.

“We saw two signposts that would lead us to re-up risk after reducing it a few weeks ago. First, tangible evidence of actions that would reopen flows through the Strait of Hormuz. And second, visibility on the lingering macro impact being contained,” the firm said. “This comes as expectations for corporate earnings have climbed for both the U.S. and [emerging markets] for 2026 – even since the conflict began on Feb. 28.”

Moreover, the strategists said “the threshold for the U.S. and Iran to go back to war is high,” further limiting potential damage.

At the same time, prospects for corporate profits appear bright.

With earnings season just getting underway, S&P 500 companies are expected to post a collective 12.6% profit increase in the first quarter, according to FactSet. If historical beat rates hold, that would rise to 19%, the forecasting firm said.

Moreover, technology profits are expected to grow 45% this year, yet the sector has seen only a marginal gain this year.

BlackRock said that has put valuation of information technology against the other 10 sectors at its lowest since mid-2020.

“We re-up risk in the U.S. and EM due to strong corporate earnings expectations and limited accrued damage to global growth,” the strategists said. “We focus on profit margins this Q1 U.S. earnings season and still favor thematic opportunities like defense.”

The two regions are the only overweights BlackRock has in its equity portfolio.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani want Indians to invest in the country’s equity markets instead of gold.

The advice comes at a time when the yellow metal has been witnessing heightened volatility, while Indian stocks have been underperforming with the Nifty 50 down nearly 2% so far this year.

A large portion of domestic savings in gold and silver “are unproductive,” Ambani said during a fireside chat with Fink on Wednesday, adding that money in the “stock market is compounding.”

Reliance Industries — India’s largest conglomerate — and BlackRock — the world’s largest asset manager — partnered to launch mutual funds in India last year.

Jio BlackRock Asset Management rolled out its first equity fund in August last year and as of December end, it had assets under management of 31.98 billion rupees ($353 million) across its equity funds.

Indians are among the leading buyers of gold in the world, but the country has been seeing increasing financialization of savings, with mutual funds growing in popularity.

Global consultancy firm Bain & Company estimates retail investor-driven assets of Indian mutual fund industry to grow to 300 trillion rupees ($3.3 trillion) by 2035 from 45 trillion rupees in fiscal year 2025.

Indians still hold majority of their assets in gold and real estate — allocating nearly 59% in financial year 2025, according to a report by Bain. The share of physical assets was 66% in financial year 2015.

At the event, Fink said that the next 20-25 years will be an “era of India” and Indians need to invest in their country’s growth through capital markets.

India is expected to remain the fastest-growing economy in the world, according to the International Monetary Fund, which has pegged its growth at 6.4% in 2026. In contrast, the IMF projects the world economy to grow by 3.3% in 2026. Major economies like Germany, the U.K and Japan are likely to grow in the low single digits.

Fink also shared that based on BlackRock’s experience in the U.S., the segment of the population that had invested in growth of America is far “better off than those who just kept all their money in a bank account”

“Indian equity market over the next 20 years will double and triple and quadruple,” Fink told India’s The Economic Times in a separate interview, adding that he doesn’t see “gold moving that way.”

Even as foreign investors have been net sellers of Indian equities for over a year, rising domestic participation in Indian equities has haled the markets stay in positive territory.

Investment through systematic investment plans, which refer to investing bite-sized sums at regular intervals, tripled to 2.89 trillion rupees ($31.9 billion) in financial year 2025…

BlackRock fixed income chief Rick Rieder’s star is rising as a potential Federal Reserve chair following flattering remarks Wednesday from President Donald Trump.

In a CNBC interview, Trump called Rieder “very impressive” following a recent meeting between the two. Rieder is one of a few finalists in the race to see who will succeed current Chair Jerome Powell when his term expires in May.

Trump also indicated that he is near a decision, with a candidate field that began at 11 now whittled “down to maybe one,” the president said during the interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Following his comments, traders on the Kalshi predictions market raised the odds for Rieder getting the nomination to 33%, about double where they were at the beginning of the week. Rieder did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh continues to hold the lead at 45%, but that’s down about 14 points from Monday.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has led the candidate screening, told CNBC earlier this week that he expects Trump will announce a decision next week.

— Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship.

BlackRock came into 2026 with a clear investment plan built around three pillars: artificial intelligence, income, and diversification.

Jay Jacobs, BlackRock’s head of equity exchange-traded funds, laid out ways in which ETFs fit into the shifting market bets from the world’s largest asset manager, which oversees more than $13 trillion from investors. Investors should remain focused on growth, he says, but precision will matter more than broad exposure.

“The first is really what are the biggest growth opportunities in the market today,” Jacobs said on CNBC’s “ETF Edge” on Monday. “Where you have to get laser focused to try and find some of these targeted exposures, like artificial intelligence, that could do very well in this environment.”

That and the other investing themes Jacobs shared on “ETF Edge” are consistent with BlackRock’s 2026 annual outlook, “AI, income & diversifiers,” which was released earlier this week.

BlackRock continues to view AI as a long-term, capital intensive investment cycle. Infrastructure spending remains elevated, while productivity gains and earnings growth are backed by AI-related investments. The firm does not see the theme as nearing exhaustion.

BlackRock is among the ETF companies offering AI-focused funds, such as its iShares A.I. Innovation and Tech Active ETF (BAI), which has amassed over $8 billion in assets.

There are many other AI ETF options that have grown to over $1 billion in assets in recent years:

• Roundhill Generative AI & Technology ETF (CHAT)
• Ark Autonomous Technology and Robotics ETF (ARKQ)
• Global X Robotics and Artificial Intelligence ETF (BOTZ)
• Global X Artificial Intelligence and Technology ETF (AIQ)
• iShares Future AI & Tech ETF (ARTY)
• Dan Ives Wedbush AI Revolution ETF (IVES)

Jacobs cited the U.S. equity market’s high level of concentration, with a handful of mega-cap tech stocks now accounting for an outsized share of returns, as among the reasons to fine-tune equities exposure. The “Magnificent Seven” stocks make up over 40% of the S&P 500 Index.

“[That concentration] is either a feature or a bug,” Jacobs said. “It’s reaching historical levels.”

Jacobs said investors are responding by becoming more deliberate about how much concentration they want. Some are choosing to broaden their exposure by equal-weighting the U.S. stock market as a way to manage the risk.

Jacobs cited the interest-rate environment, and expectations the Federal Reserve will lower rates again, as a reason to make income a major focus this year as the declining rates pressure yields on cash investments. Investors who relied on money markets for income may need to reposition. “We are in a falling interest rate environment. We expect some cuts this year. We need to find new sources of income to diversify your portfolio and generate income from it,” Jacobs said.

Diversification is the third pillar of BlackRock’s 2026 approach to the market. Bouts of volatility are becoming more frequent while market…

The wave of capital pouring into artificial intelligence infrastructure is far from peaking, said Ben Powell, chief investment strategist for APAC at BlackRock, arguing the sector’s “picks and shovels” suppliers — from chipmakers to energy producers and copper-wire manufacturers — remain the clearest winners as hyperscalers race to outspend one another.

The surge in AI-related capital expenditure shows no sign of slowing as tech giants push aggressively to secure an edge in what they see as a winner-takes-all contest, Powell told CNBC Monday on the sidelines of the Abu Dhabi Finance Week.

“The capex deluge continues. The money is very, very clear,” he said, adding that BlackRock is focused on what he called a “traditional picks and shovels capex super boom, which still feels like it’s got more to go.”

AI infrastructure has been one of the biggest drivers of global investment this year, fueling a broader market rally, even as some investors question how long the boom can last.

Nvidia, whose GPU chips are the backbone of the AI revolution, became the first company to briefly surpass $5 trillion in market capitalization amid a dizzying AI-fueled market rally that sparked talk of an AI bubble.

Microsoft and OpenAI also reached a restructuring deal in October to support the ChatGPT developer’s fundraising efforts. OpenAI has reportedly been preparing for an initial public offering that could value the company at $1 trillion, according to Reuters.

The build-out has set off long-term procurement efforts across the tech sector, from chip supply agreements to power commitments. Grid operators from the U.S. to the Middle East are racing to meet soaring electricity demand from new data centers. Companies, including Amazon and Meta, have budgeted tens of billions of dollars annually for AI-related investments.

S&P Global estimates data-center power demand could nearly double by 2030, mostly driven by hyperscale, enterprise and leased facilities, along with crypto-mining sites.