ICON's Callahan: Earnings and value are growing; prices are 'trying to keep up'

Craig Callahan, founder and chief executive officer, ICON Advisers — manager of the ICON Equity fund, which is up more than 25% year-to-date — says the market, even at record highs, is right around fair value, meaning he doesn't see over-pricing or investor behavior typical of market peaks. As a result, so long as earnings stay strong — and he describes current earnings as being at levels of "crazy, silly growth" — the market will climb the proverbial wall of worry higher, potentially for the next few years. Mark Boulton, portfolio manager at Pictet Asset Management, says that the standard emerging-markets investment play — heavy on technology stocks and weighted to China, Korea and Taiwan — misses the point of true "emerging markets investing," which is to benefit from rising economies and countries that are seeing expansive GDP growth. Boulton, who runs the new Pictet Emerging Markets Rising Economies ETF, says Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and frontier markets like Vietnam and Kazakhstan have better growth prospects and are likely to outpace developed markets and deliver better long-term results moving forward. Chip Lupo discusses the 2026 Household Debt Survey from WalletHub, which showed that more than half of Americans say their household is struggling with debt, and more than 2 in 5 expecting their household debt to increase in the next 12 months.a