Keep your portfolio firing on all cylinders for the rest of 2026 using these steps

With 2026 just about halfway over, a key opportunity is emerging for investors to optimize their portfolios for the remainder of the year. The S & P 500 is up almost 8% year to date, even as investors have alternately juggled inflation worries, geopolitical tensions and uncertainty over interest rate policy. As resilient as the market has been, investors are making a mistake if they haven't revisited their portfolios since the start of the year. "Certainly, a lot has changed since January, and if you haven't touched things since then, we now have a much different picture today than it was then," said Kristen Jackson, CFA and CEO of Grant Street Asset Management in Canonsburg, Pa. For starters, the market was expecting interest rate cuts at the start of the year, but now fed funds futures trading suggest a 62% probability of a rate hike in September, according to the CME FedWatch tool. Review fixed income The prospect of "higher for longer" interest rates should encourage investors to revisit the maturities of their holdings. Bonds with longer maturities have greater duration — meaning their prices are more sensitive to fluctuations in interest rates. Yields and prices move inversely to one another. It's a balancing act for investors: Short-duration instruments are offering tempting yields without the interest rate risk. The Crane 100 Money Fund Index has an annualized seven-day yield of 3.46%. …