BlackRock’s Larry Fink warns against trying to time the market
BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink speaks during an interview with CNBC at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on January 15, 2026 in New York City, USA.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Black Rock CEO Larry Fink urged investors to resist the temptation of futures markets, arguing that staying invested during turbulent times has historically provided much stronger returns.
“Over time, maintaining investment has become far more important than getting the timing right,” Fink wrote in his annual chief executive letter published Monday. he wrote. “Some of the market’s strongest days have come amidst the most troubling headlines.”
He cited the last two decades as a striking example: Every dollar invested in the S&P 500 has increased more than eightfold. But investors who only missed the top 10 days during that period would earn less than half that.
The billionaire’s warning comes at a time when markets are increasingly affected by rapid shifts in sentiment due to geopolitics, inflation and technological disruptions. Stocks rose sharply on Monday after President Donald Trump said the United States and Iran were in talks and halted attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure.
“The danger is that we focus so much on the noise that we forget what’s really important,” Fink wrote. “The forces behind today’s headlines have been developing for a long time. The old model of global capitalism is breaking. Countries are spending enormous amounts on energy, defense, technology to become self-sufficient.”
BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager with $14 trillion in assets under management by the end of 2025.
Fink also warned that the rapid rise of artificial intelligence could increase inequality, enriching the already wealthy while leaving others further behind.
“The tremendous wealth created over the past few generations has flowed mostly to people who already own financial assets. And now artificial intelligence threatens to repeat that model on an even larger scale,” he said.
AI-related companies have captured a significant share of recent stock market gains, concentrating returns among a relatively small group of firms and their shareholders.
