BlackRock CEO Fink backs staying invested amid market volatility

Synopsis

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink urged clients to remain invested amidst market volatility, emphasizing AI's transformative impact on investments and the economy. He highlighted that long-term investing, not market timing, builds enduring wealth and strengthens national growth, despite current anxieties about capitalism's reach and economic slowdown.

Asset management giant BlackRock's CEO Larry Fink on Monday urged clients to stay invested despite ongoing market volatility, while highlighting that AI is reshaping investment strategies and the broader economy.

Global markets have been roiled in recent weeks by a confluence of geopolitical and macroeconomic shocks, including the escalating US-Israeli conflict with Iran, which has driven sharp spikes in oil prices and disrupted key shipping routes, stoking inflation fears and rattling investor sentiment.

At the same time, growing concerns that artificial intelligence could erode the value of legacy software businesses have weighed on parts of the tech sector. These pressures are unfolding alongside signs of softening consumer spending and rising worries about an economic slowdown amid still-elevated interest rates.

"We are living through a period where things that would've defined a decade have become routine: wars with global repercussions, trillion-dollar companies, a fundamental reordering of international trade, and the advent of the most significant technology since, at least, the computer," Fink said in his annual letter to shareholders, titled 'Growing with your country: Thoughts from a long-term optimist'.

"Over time, staying invested has mattered far more than getting the timing right. Over the past two decades, every dollar invested in the S&P 500 grew more than eightfold."

The BlackRock chief executive wrote that much of today's economic anxiety comes from a deeper feeling "that capitalism is working - just not for enough people. And a focus on short-term investing is not a fix for that. Rather, it is long-term investing that allows countries to build domestic industries, that lets people build enduring wealth and shows how their country's growth can benefit them too."

Long-term investing performs a kind of civic miracle, he said. "When people invest their savings-over decades, not days-the capital markets put that money to work, financing companies, infrastructure, and jobs. And when that cycle happens in your own country, your future and your nation's future become linked. You help finance its growth. It helps finance yours."

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