Throughout 2025, I had the opportunity to interview several prominent investment experts for Morningstar’s The Long View podcast. Our team spoke with a wide range of economists, strategists, and portfolio managers. Many of the most insightful moments from these discussions are featured in the Best of The Long View 2025: Investing episode.
Several recurring themes surfaced during these conversations. As investors begin to consider their portfolio strategy for 2026, here are a few concepts I found particularly persuasive:
“There are plenty of reasons as a US investor to have a portion of your allocation international,” said Vince Montemaggiore, a portfolio manager from Fidelity. Among them: the cyclicality of investment performance. He pointed to the first decade of this millennium as a prime example.
While private markets are not expected to vanish, not everyone is convinced that investors should commit significant capital to private assets. Investor and author Daniel Rasmussen warned that investors should “be very wary of illiquid asset classes.” Rasmussen believes that allocators, particularly institutional asset owners, are dedicating an excessive portion of their portfolios to private debt and private equity. He views these financial markets, especially when there’s fixed income involved, there are connections and what they call ‘transmission linkages’ that are really, really hard to see because the information is not public.”
Beyond the lack of transparency, the market is lightly regulated and, by definition, illiquid. Speaking about semi-liquid fund structures, Jacobson said: “If you are trying to get your entire investment back, that could take a very long time depending on how it’s structured and whether or not there are other investors trying to get their money back.”
Finally, several 2025 guests offered essential long-term perspectives. Author and Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig joined the podcast during the tariff-related volatility of spring 2025, which pushed US stocks toward bear-market territory. While acknowledging the concerns surrounding Trump’s trade policies, he encouraged investors to evaluate whether their holdings were truly dependent on free trade. Panic, he noted, “is not conducive to good decision-making”—advice that proved sound following the equity market recovery in mid-2025.
Barry Ritholz, for his part, minimized the significance of market-level valuation for investors. “For my whole career, I’ve been hearing how expensive the market is on a Shiller CAPE basis… If you got out of equities because the CAPE was high, you left untold millions on the table.” He discussed how stocks may endure extended difficult periods, such as 1966 to 1982 or the first decade of the 2000s, only to follow them with long rallies that defy claims of being overvalued.
The enduring power of equities was a central theme in my discussion with Morningstar’s John Rekenthaler. “Over time, equities, they make more money than inflation,” Rekenthaler said. Comparing stocks to cryptocurrencies or assets lacking cash flows, he added: “There’s fundamental reality to this… stocks are not gambling in the long-term. There’s no sure thing, but it’s a sensible risk that you’re taking with a high likelihood of a payoff.” This is sage wisdom, regardless of what 2026 may bring.
