Morningstar, Inc. - December 22, 2025
Is the Economy Improving Heading Into 2026?
Plus: How markets surprised investors in 2025, whether RMDs can...
 Morning DigestSarah Hansen From jobs to inflation and retail sales, here’s what investors learned from a week of highly anticipated economic data. 
ADVERTISEMENT  Editor's Picks  Stocks end the week little changed. Meanwhile, Rivian jumps 22%, while Nike falls. Ananya Chag, Bella Albrecht  The year proved once again that staying the course pays off for investors. Dan Lefkovitz  The calculations for RMDs are more conservative than many people realize. Christine Benz  Plus, the investment leaders and laggards of 2025. Dan Lefkovitz, Ivanna Hampton  We expect worsening credit profiles for both high- and low-quality borrowers. Michael Dimler Investing Insights These stock picks stand to benefit most from developing artificial intelligence technologies. Tori Brovet We believe these companies’ strong ESG management practices give them a long-term advantage. Margaret Giles Small-cap funds are down, but not out. Here’s why they retain long-term investment merit for patient investors. Eric Schultz The deal’s main value is to keep TikTok as a major tenant for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Luke Yang Q3 GDP and Consumer Confidence highlight the holiday-shortened trading week. Frank Lee Recent Earnings New Stock Analyst Reports BlackBerry's (BB) fiscal third-quarter results and fourth-quarter guidance were positive. Third-quarter sales rose 9% sequentially to $142 million, while non-GAAP operating margin rose 30 basis points sequentially to 17.6% Guidance implies roughly flat sales and profitability. QNX continues to drive solid organic growth for BlackBerry, even with growth headwinds to secure communications spending. We see both of these segments contributing to growth next year, and we appreciate BlackBerry's healthy organic growth trajectory. New Fund Analyst Reports A relatively poor showing in 2025 isn’t a sign that Wasatch Core Growth (WGROX) is broken. Its best features are largely intact. It’s tempting to tie the troubles to former manager J.B. Taylor’s departure in January 2025, but that would be a mistake. Granted, Taylor amassed a tremendous 24-year record here. But he handed the reins to two capable comanagers in Paul Lambert and Mike Valentine. Lambert spent two decades working alongside Taylor on this strategy; Valentine joined them in 2017. The two became the strategy’s co-leaders in January 2024 as Taylor prepared to leave. While they’ll likely remain at the helm for some time to come, Lambert and Valentine have already begun training a future leader with the appointment of Kipling Weisel as associate portfolio manager (also in January 2025). Weisel is early in his investment career, but his research—focused mainly on technology stocks—has supported this strategy for five years. The Tools You Need to Invest Like an Analyst Stay connected:
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