Bonds

President Donald Trump's administration predicted 3% annual economic growth when he pushed for the $1.5 trillion of tax cuts in late 2017. Despite recent bouts of pessimism and market gloom, the president's economy is holding its own.

Here's what we could hear and how it would impact the debt and equity markets.

Investors aren't waiting for a rebound in bitcoin prices to invest in fast-growing cryptocurrency markets. But guess who's getting left behind: Big Wall Street firms that currently dominate trading in stocks, bonds, foreign exchange and commodities.

Companies in the S&P 500 bought back a record $806 billion of their own shares last year. But the tactic - used by CEOs to juice their stock prices - may become less common as more companies confront the need to pay down debt, Bank of America analysts warn in a new note.

Stephen Schwarzman, founder and CEO of the giant U.S. private-equity firm Blackstone, was already one of the world's richest men. But after an announcement that the partnership will convert to a stock corporation sparked the biggest one-day rally in its publicly traded units, Schwarzman is immediately $573 million richer on paper.

The private-equity firm says the conversion will allow investors to buy its shares without creating the need for a Schedule K-1, an Internal Revenue Service tax form that's used to report earnings from partnerships.

Citigroup produced the best trading results during the first quarter, with the least-bad performance during a period marred by lackluster client activity, the prolonged U.S. government shutdown and nagging uncertainties about the trajectory of the global economy. The 2018 leader, Goldman Sachs, slipped to last place.

TIPS just don't have the volatility to produce a big payoff, either in the breakeven or the resulting price action.

Morgan Stanley says first-quarter profit falls 9% from a year earlier as revenue tumbles in the New York-based investment bank's trading business. But the results still exceed the expectations of Wall Street analysts.

BlackRock continues to steal market share from mutual-fund competitors with its suite of exchange-traded funds. Analysts say investors' increasing preference for ETFs shows no sign of abating. But because of the low fees charged by ETFs, profit margins are shrinking.