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This week's highlights:

It now looks like the September Federal Reserve meeting will be go-time for the next interest rate cut. At least, that's how economists are reading the tea leaves in the speech Fed Chair Jerome Powell's made Friday, in which he appeared to shift his emphasis from the risks of tariff inflation to the risks of a weakening jobs market. Check out what economists had to say about Powell's talk here.

With Powell seemingly waving the green flag for rate cuts, stocks pushed to fresh highs while bond yields fell. For the week, the market carved out a 4% gain. If you haven't checked your portfolio lately, you'll likely get a pleasant surprise, thanks to solid gains in stocks and bonds. While that's clearly good news for investors, across the markets, valuations are starting to look stretched, which makes it challenging to put new money to work. Where to invest when nothing looks cheap? Sarah Hansen takes a look.

Many US investors have been ignoring international stocks for years. But check this out: The Morningstar Global Markets ex-US Index has more than doubled the return of the Morningstar US Market Index in 2025. Dan Lefkovitz looks under the hood at what has been driving this year's outperformance of non-US stocks, as well as what might be next for international markets.

This coming week, we wrap up what has been an overall strong earnings season with the Big Daddy of reports: Nvidia. Brian Colello explains what he will be watching for when the semiconductor giant and pace car for the artificial intelligence boom reports earnings on Wednesday after the close.

Speaking of tech stocks, we also highlighted what Morningstar believe are the 12 best companies to buy now in this key sector. It's a group of names that usually aren't on investors' radar.