Forbes has announced the 2026 Top Wealth Advisors Best-In-State and Chevy Chase Trust is proud to share that three of our advisors have been recognized this year.
The ranking methodology, developed by SHOOK Research, is based on both quantitative and qualitative factors, including interviews, and evaluates advisors nominated by their firms.
Source: Forbes.com, awarded April 2026. Data compiled by SHOOK Research LLC based on time period from 6/30/24 – 6/30/25.
*Neither Chevy Chase Trust nor its executives paid a fee to Shook Research in exchange for participation or recognition.
Even before the jolt of the Iran conflict, investors were beginning to grapple with several new market realities: higher structural inflation, persistently higher long-term interest rates, growing skepticism about artificial intelligence (AI) and stress in private credit. At Chevy Chase Trust, we have been focused on these dynamics for some time, working diligently to position clients well amid a sea change in the economy and markets.
NAVIGATING A SEA CHANGE
The first quarter reminded investors that markets can appear calm—until they are not. The widening Middle East conflict and associated disruption to energy supplies pushed oil prices higher late in the quarter, contributing to a pullback in equities. Year to date, the S&P 500 generated a total return of -4.3%. Most equity markets outside the U.S. also retreated.
Unlike many investors, we do not view this pullback as “just another temporary shock” that inevitably sets up the next leg of the long bull market. In our view, the U.S. economy is operating under a new set of constraints. Recent events in the Middle East have brought these into stark relief. After two decades of generally disinflationary tailwinds, policymakers have less room to cut rates or add fiscal stimulus without risking inflation. That changes how markets behave—and how we manage risk.
We expect a relief rally if tensions in the Middle East ease. However, we believe the rebound may be smaller and shorter than many investors anticipate. Several economically sensitive areas of the market were already weakening, and inflation and bond yields were relatively elevated even before the Iran conflict began.
The risks are substantial. It has been a long time since inflation was a persistent problem in the U.S. Many asset managers have never invested during an inflationary environment. This quarter’s volatility reinforced why diversification, valuation discipline and a focus on durable long-term investment themes matter.
INFLATION MATTERS MORE THAN MANY INVESTORS APPRECIATE
Inflation is arguably the most important macroeconomic factor influencing the direction of financial markets— and the economy itself. When inflation is very low, real economic growth is typically stronger and corporate valuations tend to be higher. Conversely, when inflation is high, real growth typically slows, lenders demand higher interest rates and stock valuations usually compress.
The display below shows that periods of higher inflation have tended to coincide with weaker productivity and slower real economic growth. In all but the most extreme cases, stocks still delivered positive returns over time. However, the price investors are willing to pay for earnings (expressed by the P/E ratio) has usually been lower, and bond yields have generally been higher. In other words, higher inflation often means a tougher environment for both stocks and bonds.
POLICY MAKERS HAVE LESS ROOM FOR RESCUE
For most of the last 20 years, a set of broad global forces – China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), the globalization of supply chains, a surge of cheap energy from U.S. shale production and rapid adoption of new technologies with quickly falling prices – kept inflation low. This was particularly true in the United States, where companies more aggressively capitalized on these trends. Persistent low inflation enabled the Federal Reserve and U.S. government to respond quickly and powerfully to the Global Financial Crisis and COVID shutdown.
But these disinflationary forces stalled well before the Iran war-induced energy shock began. In January, the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation(1) rose to 3.1%. It has been above the Fed’s stated 2% target for five years. As a result, policymakers are now more constrained. Easing policy via lowering interest rates or providing stimulus may increase inflation, and that limits how quickly markets can count on a rescue should one be needed.
HIGHER INFLATION AND DEBT COULD KEEP INTEREST RATES ELEVATED
Despite an epic capital markets boom and solid economic growth, U.S. federal government debt grew from $10.7 trillion at the end of 2008 to $38.5 trillion by the end of 2025. It’s now a staggering 122% of GDP.
For much of this period, interest rates were extremely low, which helped keep government debt-servicing costs manageable. Today, long-term Treasury yields are nearly double their average from 2008 through 2020, and they may rise further. The interest expense on U.S. debt now exceeds defense spending. Given the current annual deficit spending of about 6% of GDP, the situation will likely get worse.
After decades of handwringing by commentators about rising levels of U.S. government debt, markets are finally showing increased concern. Recent auctions of Treasury bonds have gone less smoothly than usual, and long-term bond yields have not fallen after Fed rate cuts.
The correlation between stocks and bonds has also flipped from an inverse relationship to a positive relationship. In the last few years, when bond prices have fallen, stocks have also declined. This is a signal that the economic backdrop is different than it was for most of this century.
AI OPTIMISM IS BEING TESTED
Over the past three years, a small group of large technology companies—often called the Mag 7 (2)—has driven almost half of S&P 500 returns. In the first quarter of 2026, that group was down on average nearly 12%. The reversal of these market leaders accounted for nearly 90% of the Index’s decline in the quarter.
Since 2023, investor interest in the Mag 7 was driven largely by seemingly boundless enthusiasm for AI. Now, many are beginning to question the scale and pace of spending required to build AI infrastructure. Just four companies(3) are expected to spend more than $650 billion in 2026, on top of the $420 billion they spent in 2025. Continuing this AI infrastructure buildout will require substantial additional capital, including an increased reliance on debt financing. Higher bond yields, as described above, raise the hurdle rate for these projects and pressure valuations across the board, particularly for growth companies.
Transformative technologies can create enormous value, but the investment cycle can overshoot, especially when capital is abundant.
History offers a useful analogy. The rapid growth of Internet traffic (just under 500,000% over the last 25 years) ultimately reshaped the economy, but many early investors still reaped disappointing returns. Too much capital chased the opportunity before sustainable business models emerged. The same risk exists in parts of today’s AI buildout.
Like AI, the Internet buildout required massive capital spending, but even at the height of the dot-com boom the ratio of capital spending to revenue was far more rational than is the case today for AI. U.S. telecom companies eventually managed to squeeze profits from their Internet-related businesses, but only because equipment prices plunged. So far, AI hardware and data-center infrastructure costs have not fallen fast enough to allow the creators of large-language models and the data centers that support AI traffic to generate attractive returns on investment.
If financing costs rise at the same time that competition intensifies, today’s optimistic assumptions about AI profitability could be challenged, and major projects may be scrapped. This is one reason why we have been cautious about investing in the more crowded parts of the AI trade.
As one commentator put it, we are not only running an experiment about a powerful technology. We are also running an experiment about how much capital markets are willing to fund before returns become clear.
Recent events in the private credit market suggest that we may be testing the limits of this experiment. For much of the past decade, private credit was sold to both institutional and retail investors as a virtually “risk-free” way to earn extra yield. We frequently cautioned clients that this sales pitch was too good to be true, but many yield-seeking investors bought it. The assets of private debt managers have increased by $1 trillion over the last ten years, while traditional commercial and industrial loans in the banking system have barely grown. Much of that lending went to the Technology sector, and write-downs are building. This has prompted many investors to try to liquidate their holdings, but increasingly, managers are limiting withdrawals.
Many investors see the various market-moving issues we’ve described—the war-driven energy price shock, higher inflation and interest rates, soaring AI investment and private credit market wobbles—as distinct issues. We view them as interrelated. We are no longer investing in a world where capital is very inexpensive and where broadly disinflationary forces allow aggressive government intervention at the first sign of trouble. This changes the risk/reward calculation.
PORTFOLIO POSITIONING AND THEMATIC UPDATE
With markets beginning to reflect inflation concerns and more scrutiny of AI-related spending, several of our themes held up relatively well during the quarter. Our End of Disinflationary Tailwinds theme benefited from strength in the Energy sector and other areas that tend to perform well as inflation rises. The Energy sector outperformed the broader S&P 500 by over 40% this quarter. While we continue to see long-term opportunities in this theme, we may begin to take some profits in names that have soared, at least in part, due to the war in Iran.
We also continue to see great promise in our Opportunities Abound Abroad theme, even as the war in the Middle East created short-term headwinds for some international markets. While we are not there just yet, we think a further deterioration in relative performance may present a chance to increase positions.
Some holdings of our Next-Generation Automation and Advent of Molecular Medicine themes performed well as growth investors broadened their holdings beyond the most crowded Mag 7 and AI-related names. We think widespread adoption of AI may help both these themes over the mid- to longer-term. Many of the holdings in our Advent of Molecular Medicine theme are critical to generating the genetic data that will likely power AI’s use in the healthcare industry. Similarly, automation technologies should proliferate as AI tools are eventually applied in the physical world.
CONCLUSION: DISCIPLINED INVESTING IN A HIGHER VOLATILITY ERA
At the start of 2026, investor sentiment was broadly optimistic. This quarter’s pullback has reduced some of that optimism, but it has not changed the underlying reality. We are in a transition period shaped by geopolitics; higher structural inflation and a new relationship between stocks, bonds and policy. And all of this at a time when starting valuations and investor allocations to equities are near record highs.
In such an environment, it is especially important to avoid overconfidence and to stay focused on fundamentals. Our philosophy is straightforward: we do not make heroic, headline-driven bets in areas where we believe our thematic research doesn’t give us an edge. We cannot know the timing of diplomatic breakthroughs or the next turn in a conflict or when the market’s embrace of AI and private credit will loosen.
Instead, we focus on managing risk deliberately, diversifying exposures and investing in well-researched themes that we believe offer long-term return potential that is underappreciated by the market. We are grateful for the trust you place in us as we do this.
(1) Core personal consumption expenditure (“Core PCE Index”) (2) The Mag 7 are Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. (3) The four hyperscalers are Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta. Other firms, such as Oracle and Open AI, are spending heavily but are not included in the totals above.
Important Disclosures This commentary is for informational purposes only. The information set forth herein is of a general nature and does not address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity. You should not construe any information herein as legal, tax, investment, financial or other advice. Nothing contained herein constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments. This commentary includes forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially from the views expressed. Materials referenced that were published by outside sources are included for informational purposes only. These sources contain facts and statistics quoted that appear to be reliable, but they may be incomplete or condensed and we do not guarantee their accuracy. Fact and circumstances may be materially different between the time of publication and the present time. Clients with different investment objectives, allocation targets, tax considerations, brokers, account sizes, historical basis in the applicable securities or other considerations will typically be subject to differing investment allocation decisions, including the timing of purchases and sales of specific securities, all of which cause clients to achieve different investment returns. Past performance is not indicative of future results, and there can be no assurance that the future performance of any specific investment or investment strategy will be profitable, equal any historical performance level(s), be suitable for the portfolio or individual situation of any particular client, or otherwise prove successful. Investing involves risks, including the risk of loss of principal. The level of risk in a client’s portfolio will correspond to the risks of the underlying securities or other assets, which may decrease, sometimes rapidly or unpredictably, due to real or perceived adverse economic, political, or regulatory conditions, recessions, inflation, changes in interest or currency rates, lack of liquidity in the bond markets, the spread of infectious illness or other public health issues, armed conflict, trade disputes, sanctions or other government actions, or other general market conditions or factors. Actively managed portfolios are subject to management risk, which involves the chance that security selection or focus on securities in a particular style, market sector or group of companies will cause a portfolio to incur losses or underperform relative to benchmarks or other portfolios with similar investment objectives. Foreign investing involves special risks, including the potential for greater volatility and political, economic and currency risks. Please refer to Chevy Chase Trust’s Form ADV Part 2 Brochure, a copy of which is available upon request, for a more detailed description of the risks associated with Chevy Chase Trust’s investment strategy. The recipient assumes sole responsibility of evaluating the merits and risks associated with the use of any information herein before making any decisions based on such information.
Chevy Chase Trust was proud to co-host Harmony after Hours, a private concert and reception, with The Phillips Collection.
The joyful performance by cellist Camille Thomas and pianist Julien Brocal was the highlight of the evening, followed by a reception and private viewing of the galleries.
In attendance from the firm were Jeff Whitaker, President and CEO and member of the museum’s Board of Trustees; Patricia Saul, Vice Chair of the Board of Directors; Fred Hopkins, Managing Director; Stacy Murchison, Chief Marketing Officer; Claire Vorhees, Director; Marc Wishkoff, Head of Business Development; Alan Adler, Managing Director; Caroline Szivos, Director and Jonathan Kobets, Director.
It was a memorable evening, celebrating art, music and partnership.
Congratulations to Senior Managing Directors Deborah Gandy, Michael Gildenhorn, and Ramona Mockoviak on being named 2026 Washingtonian Top Financial Advisers.
Deb’s career reflects decades of trusted relationship management and a deep commitment to both clients and community. Her longstanding dedication to board service and community leadership has earned her widespread recognition and positioned her as a respected voice throughout the DMV.
Michael brings extensive experience advising individuals, families, and institutions on sophisticated wealth planning and investment strategies. His disciplined approach and deep market insight continue to help clients make informed financial decisions across generations.
Ramona is a seasoned wealth advisor to many of the D.C. region’s most prominent families and serves on multiple boards. Her leadership in expanding client and advisor opportunities, along with her coordination of comprehensive client services, has been instrumental to our continued regional growth.
To learn more about the 2026 Washingtonian Top Financial Adviser list, click here.
Rankings developed by Washingtonian using survey results compiled in September/October 2025. Awarded January 22, 2026. Chevy Chase Trust paid no application fee to participate.
We have been named the 2026 Best of Bethesda Readers’ Pick in the Wealth Management Firm category by Bethesda Magazine. This recognition reflects the trust our clients and community place in our disciplined approach to investment management, planning and trust services. Thank you to everyone who voted for our team!
Read more about the Best of Bethesda Readers’ Picks here.
Selected as a winner on December 26, 2025, for surveys conducted from August 4 to September 7, 2025.
*Neither Chevy Chase Trust nor its executives paid a fee to Bethesda magazine in exchange for participation or recognition.
We’re proud to share some exciting news from our local community: Paula Landau, Managing Director at Chevy Chase Trust, has been named a finalist in the Financial Adviser category for Bethesda Magazine’s Best of Bethesda 2026 Readers’ Picks. This recognition highlights Paula’s dedication to her clients and her standing as a trusted adviser in the Bethesda area and beyond.
The Best of Bethesda awards are an annual celebration of the businesses, services, and professionals that make our community exceptional. What makes these honors especially meaningful is that they’re chosen by the readers themselves — local residents and community members who cast thousands of votes in a multi-round online poll. Finalists and winners are determined by the number of votes received from the community.
Please join us in congratulating Paula Landau on this well-deserved recognition.
Selected as a finalist on December 26, 2025, for surveys conducted from August 4 to September 7, 2025.
*Neither Chevy Chase Trust nor its executive paid a fee to Bethesda magazine in exchange for participation or recognition.
To allow you to plan for the preparation of your 2025 tax returns, we are providing a time table for the mailing of the official tax documents that Chevy Chase Trust is required to report to our clients and the Internal Revenue Service. Please note you will only receive the tax forms that are applicable to your account(s). Copies of your tax documents will also be available on Wealth Access.
Consult with your tax advisor to discuss the possibility of filing an extension with the IRS to obtain additional time to file your tax forms, particularly if you hold securities with delayed reporting.
DOWNLOAD TAX DOCUMENTS TO TURBOTAX:
Chevy Chase Trust is a TurboTax Import Partner. This means that you can import your Chevy Chase Trust 1099 forms directly into your tax return when you use TurboTax software. A TurboTax tracking code can be found on the front page of your 1099 statement. During the preparation of your return on the TurboTax software, you will select Chevy Chase Trust forms for import and will be prompted to enter your TurboTax tracking code from the front page of your tax statement and your social security number.
Important Disclosures LEGAL, INVESTMENT & TAX NOTICE: The information contained herein is of a general nature and does not consider the circumstances of any particular recipient. This information is not intended to be and should not be treated as legal advice, investment advice, or tax advice and is for informational purposes only. All information discussed herein is intended to be current only as of the date of publication.
Originally published inWealth Management – 2026 Market Outlook By Marc K.Wishkoff, Senior Managing Director & Head of Business Development, Chevy Chase Trust
As 2026 gets underway, markets are balancing optimism around productivity and innovation with meaningful economic and policy uncertainty. In a new article for Wealth Management’s 2026 Market Outlook, Chevy Chase Trust Senior Managing Director and Head of Business Development Marc K. Wishkoff explores what this tension may mean for investors in the year ahead.
Grounded in Chevy Chase Trust’s Global Thematic Investing philosophy, the piece highlights how disciplined research, global diversification, and careful portfolio construction can help investors navigate an environment likely to test consensus narratives.
Read the full article in Wealth Management’s 2026 Market Outlookto explore the themes shaping our investment perspective and how we are positioning portfolios for the year ahead.
After a year of exceptionally strong returns globally, we expect more muted performance in equity markets in the year ahead. We are excited, however, by the dynamics unfolding for our investment themes, which we believe provide excellent hunting grounds for companies with significant, long-term share price appreciation.
THE BULL MARKET CHARGED AHEAD
It was a great year for equity investors globally.Most major indices touched all-time highs during 2025. Fiscal stimulus, low and falling short-term interest rates in much of the world and relatively low energy prices drove the broadest global equity market rally since 2007.
HOW LONG CAN THE GOOD TIMES ROLL?
The S&P 500 closed 2025 more than 90% above its October 2022 low. In each of the past three calendar years, the index’s total return exceeded 17%. Such strong returns seem unlikely in 2026. The last time the S&P 500 delivered double-digit returns for four consecutive years was during the tech and telecom bubble of the late 1990s. The time before that was way back in the 1950s.
As Yogi Berra once quipped, “Predictions are hard – especially about the future.” Many upcoming events could have a big impact on the economy and financial market performance in 2026. These include the Supreme Court decision on the legality of the 2025 tariffs, the naming of a new Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed), the path of unemployment and interest rates and any change in the consensus on the ultimate profitability of artificial intelligence (AI).
Despite the uncertainty resulting from the factors listed above, several tailwinds should support continued U.S. and global economic growth. In addition to relatively low oil prices and the expected impact of the Fed’s 175 basis points of interest-rate cuts since September 2024, the U.S. consumer will receive generous tax refunds in the first half of 2026 from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. U.S. companies will also pay lower effective tax rates, due to provisions in the bill designed to stimulate capital investment. Europe and Japan also appear to be willing to dole out ample fiscal largesse in the year ahead.
While we believe the odds are in favor of solid economic growth in 2026, there are three areas of concern that bear watching. Each is likely to weigh more on U.S. equity market performance than the economy, but a stock market decline could depress consumer and corporate spending, which would lead to slower economic growth.
The Curse of the Midterm Election Year: Midterm election years tend to see the strongest economic growth of the four-year U.S. election cycle. But economic strength does not necessarily translate to strong equity market returns. Historically, the second year of the presidential term has delivered the strongest economic growth, but the weakest stock returns, of the four-year election cycle. Equity markets are forward-looking and tend to price in growth before it occurs.
The Unemployment Conundrum: The U.S. economy has two principal weaknesses now. Price levels are still too high for many consumers, and, perhaps more important, job growth is very slow. Typically, the economy and employment grow together. That hasn’t been true recently. While employment bounced back from extreme lows as the pandemic-related shutdown ended, it has barely grown for the last three years.
Although still relatively low at 4.6%, the U.S. unemployment rate is up 1.2 percentage points from its trough in April 2023. It is unclear whether the economy can continue to grow robustly while the labor market languishes. This is the first time that the unemployment rate has risen this much outside of a recession.
AI (Over) Optimism: For the last three years, excitement about the potential of AI has driven very high expectations for sales and earnings for most of the Magnificent Seven (Mag 7)(1) stocks and a few other AI-related companies.
As we have previously written, AI is an extremely capital-intensive and competitive business, unlikely to produce the extraordinary profitability of the prior generation of technology companies, which engaged in “capital light” and naturally monopolistic businesses, such as software, media and advertising. Like research and development (R&D) spending on new drugs, AI capital spending is likely to pay off over longer time horizons and with less certainty than technology investors have come to expect. Today, capital spending and R&D consume a greater share of the sales and gross cash flows of the largest AI providers(2) than R&D does for drug stocks, which trade at much less lofty valuations.
The Mag 7’s weight in the S&P 500 has jumped from approximately 11% in 2015 to almost 35% at the end of 2025. History shows that stocks priced on expectations of exponential future growth can fall sharply if investors lose faith in the narrative. Given the Mag 7’s huge current weight in the S&P 500, a diminution of AI fervor could drag down the index as a whole.
Over the past decade, our thematic research led us to invest in many of the companies now benefiting from AI euphoria for reasons wholly unrelated to AI. Many years of strong cash flow growth from their non-AI business lines allowed them to comfortably afford rapid, large AI investment. Our increasing concern about the future return on AI investment led us to reduce exposure to many of these companies over the last year. We still own several of the Mag 7 stocks, but we hold them at well below their weight in the S&P 500.
THEMATIC UPDATE
Our thematic investment approach is geared to identifying beneficiaries of disruption and investible changes in the global economy. Most of our themes have been in our portfolios for years, although our focus on particular companies changes as themes evolve.
Today, we have five investment themes that we see as rich hunting grounds for the rare companies that can disrupt the status quo in a way that benefits their shareholders.
Two of our themes, The End of Disinflationary Tailwinds and Opportunities Abound Abroad, relate to what we see as seismic changes in the global economy that we believe will lead to new market leadership in the coming years:
▪ Widespread monetary and fiscal policy shifts from economic austerity or restraint to unabashed stimulus and debt growth, and
▪ Protective trade policies that lead to more redundant and less efficient supply chains.
The End of Disinflationary Tailwinds:After four decades of declining interest rates and ten years of very low inflation, both rates and inflation have returned to long-term norms. While the impact of higher interest rates was initially cushioned in the U.S. by the long-term, fixed-rate debt that many consumers and companies locked-in during the pandemic, we think sustainably higher levels of inflation and interest rates mark a notable shift in the global investment landscape that has not yet been reflected in most investors’ portfolio positioning. ..
Opportunities Abound Abroad: U.S. equity markets have outperformed global equity markets by over 45% since 2004. But recent structural reforms in fiscal, energy, industrial and capital-market policies are taking hold in several non-U.S. geographies, creating exciting investment opportunities. In China and Europe, savings rates stand at 45% and 15% of GDP respectively, versus roughly 4% in the U.S. Both regions are taking steps to stimulate domestic consumption and to expand their domestic technology firms.We believe these policies, coupled with recent and potential future weakness in the U.S. dollar, will lead to better equity performance in certain industries and companies outside the U.S. Given the long stretch of U.S. outperformance, many equity investors are very under-allocated to non-U.S. markets, creating opportunities we can capture.
Our research also continues to uncover attractive new areas for investment across our other themes.
The Rise of Purpose-Built Tech (formerly, Dawn of Heterogeneous Computing): For nearly 50 years, the performance and cost of computing technologies improved exponentially, as Moore’s Law predicted. Now, physical and economic challenges limit such rapid growth. When we launched this theme, our initial focus was on how computational technologies would benefit from specialized, purpose-built solutions, rather than one-size-fits-all approaches. We are now expanding our focus to include companies in adjacent areas, including software and security. We believe firms that generate and leverage bespoke, high-quality proprietary data and technology solutions will displace prior scale-based winners. ..
The Advent of Molecular Medicine:After decades of promise, breakthroughs in genomics have changed the practice of medicine. Genomic sequencing technology, clinical knowledge and data analytics have converged to generate diagnostics and treatments specific to individual patients and diseases. We expect more data-intensive practices will improve medical outcomes and alter which companies in the healthcare ecosystem win or lose. After several years of uncertainty that depressed valuations and equity returns in the broad healthcare sector, we believe companies leading the genomic medical revolution are well positioned for long-term outperformance. ..
Next-Generation Automation: As the global labor force ages and the need for supply-chain redundancies becomes more acute, companies are increasingly seeking ways to do more with fewer people. Automation technologies, previously concentrated in automobile and electronics production, have matured and reached an inflection point. They now offer attractive returns on investment to companies across many industries. ..
IN CONCLUSION
After the strong performance of the past several years, one can’t know if, when or by how much the U.S. equity market might drop, or how great the impact on the economy will be. Stock markets go up most of the time. Down years are rare. The S&P 500 has only declined in seven of the last 25 years. But the higher frequency of positive returns is partly offset by the greater magnitude of negative returns. Declines can be particularly painful following periods when the market is highly concentrated and richly priced. After the internet bubble burst in 2001, the S&P 500 fell by 49%, and the Nasdaq dropped 78%.
To address this challenge, we adhere to a set of time-tested portfolio- and risk-management practices. These include routinely trimming winning positions. Even though these sales may generate taxable gains, we believe this practice results in client portfolios that are well diversified and able to better withstand periods of turbulence.
We continue to focus our research energies on identifying the next disruptive investment themes and the companies poised to benefit from them. Historically, the long-term outperformance of equities versus fixed income has been driven by less than 5% of companies—superstar stocks that delivered excessive returns. Investing early in these businesses, when their market capitalizations were relatively small and expectations reasonable, has generated strong outperformance for investors.
We approach 2026 glad for the strong year just ended, excited for the future and grateful for our clients’ continued trust in us.
(1) Alphabet (owner of Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms (owner of Facebook), Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla (2) The largest providers, dubbed hyperscalers, provide corporations with access to the massive, specialized infrastructure needed to train, build and run AI models. The largest five are Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Meta and Oracle Cloud. Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Byte Dance, NVIDIA’s DGX Cloud and CoreWeave, are other big players.
Important Disclosures This commentary is for informational purposes only. The information set forth herein is of a general nature and does not address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity. You should not construe any information herein as legal, tax, investment, financial or other advice. Nothing contained herein constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments. This commentary includes forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially from the views expressed. Materials referenced that were published by outside sources are included for informational purposes only. These sources contain facts and statistics quoted that appear to be reliable, but they may be incomplete or condensed and we do not guarantee their accuracy. Fact and circumstances may be materially different between the time of publication and the present time. Clients with different investment objectives, allocation targets, tax considerations, brokers, account sizes, historical basis in the applicable securities or other considerations will typically be subject to differing investment allocation decisions, including the timing of purchases and sales of specific securities, all of which cause clients to achieve different investment returns. Past performance is not indicative of future results, and there can be no assurance that the future performance of any specific investment or investment strategy will be profitable, equal any historical performance level(s), be suitable for the portfolio or individual situation of any particular client, or otherwise prove successful. Investing involves risks, including the risk of loss of principal. The level of risk in a client’s portfolio will correspond to the risks of the underlying securities or other assets, which may decrease, sometimes rapidly or unpredictably, due to real or perceived adverse economic, political, or regulatory conditions, recessions, inflation, changes in interest or currency rates, lack of liquidity in the bond markets, the spread of infectious illness or other public health issues, armed conflict, trade disputes, sanctions or other government actions, or other general market conditions or factors. Actively managed portfolios are subject to management risk, which involves the chance that security selection or focus on securities in a particular style, market sector or group of companies will cause a portfolio to incur losses or underperform relative to benchmarks or other portfolios with similar investment objectives. Foreign investing involves special risks, including the potential for greater volatility and political, economic and currency risks. Please refer to Chevy Chase Trust’s Form ADV Part 2 Brochure, a copy of which is available upon request, for a more detailed description of the risks associated with Chevy Chase Trust’s investment strategy. The recipient assumes sole responsibility of evaluating the merits and risks associated with the use of any information herein before making any decisions based on such information.
Chevy Chase Trust is pleased to announce the appointment of Carlton W. Davis, CFA, as Co-Head of Fixed Income, marking an important milestone for the firm and a natural progression of our investment leadership.
Since joining the firm, Carlton has been a driving force within the Fixed Income team, bringing a sophisticated understanding of markets and a disciplined approach to portfolio construction and trading. His experience includes an institutional fixed income role at Liberty Mutual Investments and a prior role in Operations at T. Rowe Price. He is a CFA charterholder and earned his MBA from The Wharton School.
Known for his analytical rigor and strategic perspective, Carlton has played a key role in shaping our fixed income strategy and delivering results. His leadership reflects the qualities that define Chevy Chase Trust’s approach: deep research, thoughtful security selection, and agile execution.
As Co-Head of Fixed Income, Carlton will help lead the department into its next chapter, reinforcing the firm’s high-touch service and disciplined investment approach.
Please join us in congratulating Carlton on this significant and well-earned achievement.
Our approach seeks opportunities across asset classes and around the globe. Perhaps our single most important distinction is this: At Chevy Chase Trust, we invest in global themes. We build equity portfolios of companies positioned to exploit powerful, secular trends, disruptive ideas, innovations, and economic forces.
The smartest investment strategies are informed by sound financial planning. Our clients appreciate an integrated approach and the difference it can make. Explore the difference in our financial planning, thematic investing, risk management and fixed income strategies.
Sometimes the greatest returns come from investing in people.
We’ve created a culture that values service over products, long-term goals over short term quotas, and your success over anything else. Our team of 90 professionals is comprised of CFAs , MBAs, CFPs® and other specialists in global research, thematic investing and planning.
