Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving money and markets right now.
BlackRock's transformation is the story institutional investors can't stop talking about. The firm built its empire on exchange-traded funds, but its aggressive pivot into private markets — infrastructure, private credit, alternatives — is now driving the real growth narrative. This is a firm repositioning itself for a decade where passive alone won't be enough.
Shifting to gold, the metal is on track for its first weekly gain in roughly a month, and the driver is straightforward. Investors have been quietly scaling back expectations for any near-term Federal Reserve rate hike, which loosens the pressure on non-yielding assets like gold. When rate hike bets cool, gold breathes, and that's exactly what we're seeing play out this week.
Meanwhile, rural America is pushing back hard against the AI data center boom. A new survey shows electricity costs are the central concern — these facilities are enormous power draws, and communities worry about footing the bill. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has gone so far as to say data centers should be prohibited from rural neighborhoods, signaling that the infrastructure cost of the AI build-out is becoming a genuine political flashpoint.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
