Editorial Disclaimer: All investors are advised to conduct their own independent research into investment strategies before making an investment decision. In addition, investors are advised that past investment product performance is no guarantee of future price appreciation.

By Giovanny Moreano, Bankrate.com

Seasoned investors often approach markets with a long-term view, using short- and medium-term volatility to buy into the themes they believe will profit over many years. While identifying these trends is difficult, tuning out the noise can help you focus your portfolio on the winners, possibly resulting in significant gains.

Here are five of the most popular trends right now — including several themes showing significant growth potential in the rest of 2024 and beyond.

1. Generative artificial intelligence

Across industries, data scientists are exploring how to tap into artificial intelligence‘s (AI) power, from designing surgical assistants to developing tools that identify deforestation hotspots in the Amazon rainforest.

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With the arrival of generative AI, a subset of the broader technology, the pace of digital innovation has quickly accelerated. Gen AI relies on vast amounts of text to create new content in seconds, including poetry, art, music, videos and more.

In business, generative AI can enhance human creativity and productivity, transforming how we work. That’s why industry experts believe that gen AI’s arrival could be as significant as the internet. McKinsey Digital estimates that generative AI could increase global corporate profits by $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually.

For investors looking to get in on the action, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) offer an efficient and easy way to invest in AI companies, giving you exposure without buying individual stocks. Three to consider include Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence ETF (BOTZ), ARK Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF (ARKQ) and ROBO Global Robotics and Automation ETF (ROBO).

2. Small-cap stocks

High-profile large-cap tech stocks such as Nvidia and Microsoft got all the attention in 2023 and early 2024, as they drove the Nasdaq and S&P 500 indexes to new all-time highs. While investors scrambled to own these momentum stocks, they mostly shunned small-cap stocks, leading to a lackluster performance from these smaller companies.

Now with more attractive relative valuations, small-cap stocks have taken investors’ interest again. Some of the best small-cap stocks offer high growth and attractive markets, even if they don’t have the deep pockets and established markets of the large caps. So investors are again looking into these lesser-known names for opportunity.

Investing in individual small caps requires a long-term perspective and a lot of research work to understand the industry and the opportunity. Plus, small-caps tend to be riskier than larger companies, since they just don’t have the same level of resources. So investors looking to ride the small-cap wave may be well-served by buying some of the best small-cap ETFs instead.

3. High interest rates

When interest rates were near zero, most people got used to earning nothing on their savings and short-term investments. But now many high-yield savings accounts and certificates of deposit (CDs) offer returns above 5 percent.

Likewise, yields on Treasury bills have jumped to multi-year highs, prompting investors to turn their attention again to fixed income. While rates are poised to fall from here, investors still have time to lock in high yields for longer terms.

Like any other investment, deciding on the best fixed-income assets depends on your financial situation and goals. For example, income from bonds issued by the federal government might be exempt from state and local taxes, resulting in significant savings for those living in states with the highest taxes.

There are also other investment strategies like building CD ladders where you put chunks of money into separate CDs with different maturity durations, like six months, one year, and two years. Doing this allows you to lessen reinvestment risk.

Before choosing fixed-income investments, consult with your financial advisor. And if you don’t have one, we’ve compiled a handy guide to help you with your search.

4. REITs

While interest rates are high now, investors are anticipating them to decline substantially in the year ahead. And this means that sectors that have been hurt by higher rates, such as real estate investment trusts (REITs), may be poised for a rebound in the year ahead as rates fall.

REITs offer the ability to own real estate without all the headaches of actually managing it yourself. REITs enjoy significant tax advantages, most notably the ability to avoid tax at the corporate level in exchange for paying out most of their income as dividends. So REITs often offer among the highest dividends of any industry.

Publicly traded REITs are among the best types of REITs to invest in, because they offer high yields, low overall management costs and the scrutiny of public investors. As mentioned, with interest rates likely to fall in the short to medium term, a key cost for REITs is poised to fall, too.

Those looking to own a fund instead of digging into the details of individual REITs should check out the best REIT ETFs and be sure to avoid some of the worst REIT investing mistakes.

5. Cash is king

With myriad challenges weighing on the market – including global tensions connected to the Hamas-Israel war, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, and elevated oil prices – many investors feel on edge. Closer to home, prolonged inflation, massive government deficits and ballooning student loan debt add to the concerns.

In response, investors are finding comfort in cash. Global money market funds received massive inflows as 2023 progressed and then into 2024 as well. As of Dec. 1, 2023, U.S. money market funds held a record $6.3 trillion in assets, according to the Office of Financial Research. By the end of May 2024, that figure had grown to more than $6.5 trillion.

Billionaire hedge fund managers Ray Dalio and Paul Tudor Jones have taken a similar stance, seeing cash as a safe investment vehicle amid rising rates.

As individuals and institutions reconsider their investment strategies, cash is once again king, offering liquidity and stability in turbulent times. Cash offers optionality, with the ability to invest if and when markets hit hard times.

Bottom line

While these five investing trends offer the promise of outsized returns in the years to come, nothing is fully guaranteed in investing. You may want to consult with a financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

©2024 Bankrate online. Visit Bankrate online at bankrate.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By DEEPTI HAJELA Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Jarring, chaotic and sudden, the bullet whizzed toward the stage where former President Donald Trump stood behind a podium speaking. In its wake: the potential for a horrifying and tragic chapter in American history.

But the Republican presidential candidate had a narrow escape — mere inches, possibly less — in Saturday’s assassination attempt. The projectile from the shooter on a nearby rooftop left Trump with just a bloodied right ear, initially shaken but otherwise unharmed as he dropped down and Secret Service swarmed, his campaign continuing as the Republican National Convention got underway.

A tiny margin for survival, with a potentially seismic impact. And an unforgettable example of something many were talking about Monday — a hard truth about the events that shape us, our daily lives, and our society:

Sometimes, it’s all about chance, about circumstances falling in one direction and not another, about interventions in the nick of time or missteps that allow for disruption.

Sometimes history can come down to inches.

Near misses and the hinge of history

It’s a truth that often gets obscured as we look over dates, places, people and events with the perspective of hindsight and blanket media coverage. The past gets covered with a patina of inevitability — as if it could have only occurred the way it did.

But “what just happened to us is a kind of humbling lesson about how contingent all of this is,” says Susan Schulten, a history professor at the University of Denver. “And nothing’s foreordained.”

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No matter what, of course, there will be fallout and an impact from the attempted assassination of Trump on Saturday at a Pennsylvania rally, where an attendee was killed and two others wounded, and law enforcement killed the shooter. But what it will be, in this election year and in the years to come, will unfold differently than it would have in an America where events had gone differently.

History is filled with examples of chance, randomness or luck playing a part in how things turn out, says Mark Rank, a professor of social welfare at Washington University in St. Louis and author of “The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World around Us.”

In his book, he recounts an incident during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when a submarine from what was then the Soviet Union came close to firing a nuclear-tipped torpedo at U.S. forces out of a belief it was being attacked. But a circumstantial delay in getting the order carried out allowed enough time for another officer to recognize that wasn’t the case.

There are plenty of other moments where there can be endless “what-if” discussions, from assassinations of figures like Abraham Lincoln and John and Robert Kennedy to other attempted killings such as the attack on President Ronald Reagan in 1981, two months after he assumed the presidency.

It’s also events like the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Rank points out, when there were ordinary people who “missed their subway connection or were late or were early and just missed being killed in that disaster, whereas other folks were not as lucky.”

Trying to find meaning

Often, people respond to events like these by trying to make sense of them through a belief in coherence — to summon some kind of universal meaning, or divine plan.

That’s because people want a sense of control, says Daryl Van Tongeren, a professor of psychology at Hope College in Michigan. It’s too unnerving, he says, to admit that life is random and chance-filled. “It’s safer for us to think that we can just control everything that happens.”

And in the United States of America, where part of the national mythology is the idea that we are masters of our own destinies — that we can pull ourselves up by our own efforts — the idea of randomness can land as particularly unnerving, Rank says.

“In the United States, we’re really steeped in the idea of rugged individualism and self-reliance and meritocracy and you do it on your own, and you’re in control, and you have agency,” he says. “And to some extent, we are in control. We do make decisions. But another aspect of life is that … there are things that happen to you that you have no control over.

“That’s kind of unsettling,” he says. “But that’s the way life plays out. That’s the world.”

By WILL WEISSERT Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats are trying to offer political counterprograming to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, announcing $15 million to fund campaign operations in seven key swing states — even as some in the party have urged President Joe Biden to bow out of November’s election.

The Democratic National Committee announced Tuesday that it is investing $15 million in state parties, meant to help them open more field offices and bolster staffing. The funding will let them add to the 217 existing coordinated campaign offices working jointly for Biden’s reelection bid and state parties that already employ 1,100-plus staffers in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the DNC said.

The investments will pump nearly $3 million into Wisconsin; nearly $2 million each into Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada; almost $1.5 million in Arizona; more than $1.2 million in North Carolina; and more than $1 million in Georgia.

The outlay was planned prior to former President Donald Trump being injured in an attempted assassination during his rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, which prompted Biden and his campaign to temporarily shift its reelection strategy. Trump nonetheless is attending his party’s convention and will accept his party’s nomination on Thursday.

Trump’s campaign has spent recent weeks opening field offices, including those targeting key constituencies, in conjunction with the Republican National Committee.

“We have paid staffers and volunteer-powered field programs in every battleground state, and they are expanding daily,” Trump campaign spokesman Karoline Leavitt said. “Our aggressive and experienced operation is focused on turning out votes and highlighting the contrast” between Trump and Biden.

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The DNC for months has argued that its and the Biden campaign’s growing on-the-ground operation could help swing an election expected to be close. Still, top Democrats are trying to move past questions from within their own party that have persisted about whether Biden is up to continuing to seek reelection in the weeks since his debate debacle and despite the race’s shifting dynamics after Trump was injured last weekend.

Biden and his team have furiously attempted to reassure jittery lawmakers and donors, as well as skeptical voters, that, at age 81, the Democratic president can still win in November and handle a second four-year term. Nearly 20 Democratic lawmakers have nonetheless publicly called on Biden to step aside.

The DNC said the investments will fund new field offices and help state parties get more accurate data and better coordinate party efforts for down-ballot races.

“Democrats are leaving nothing to chance and investing heavily on the ground to ensure Joe Biden and Kamala Harris win this election,“ Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement. “This election was always going to be close, and regardless of beltway media narratives, the entire election is going to come down to operation and turnout in the battleground states.”

Arizona Democratic Party chair Yolanda Bejarano said state officials and the Biden campaign opened a 15th coordinated campaign office in Arizona over the weekend, adding that, “This election is going to be won at the doors, talking to people about the issues that they care about.”

“This is perfect timing from my vantage point,” Bejarano said of the DNC investment. “We need the resources to do the work, to hire organizers, to have town halls across the state, to get the message out through media buys.”