Larry Fink’s 2026 Annual Chairman’s Letter to Investors

Growing with your country: Thoughts from a long-term optimist 

Every year, I write this letter as a distillation of a year’s worth of conversations with clients and employees, world leaders, CEOs—and people investing for their retirement. Lately, no matter who is speaking, they’re saying the same thing: We’re not sure how to navigate this moment.

It’s understandable. 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.

Too often, this gets filtered through a short-term lens. Daily market moves are treated as signals of lasting change, and complex economic or technological transitions are compressed into headlines. We live in a world where information moves instantly, and reactions follow just as fast. At times, it can feel dopamine-driven—where constant input rewards short-term impulses. But speed can distort perspective, crowding out long-term thinking.

To be fair, in financial markets all this short-term activity serves a purpose. It’s how new information is absorbed, risks are priced, and capital is allocated. But 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. Miss just the ten best days, and you would have earned less than half.¹ And some of the market’s strongest days came amid the most unsettling headlines.

The danger is that we focus so much on the noise that we forget what actually matters. The forces behind today’s headlines have been building for a long time. The old model of global capitalism is fracturing. Countries are spending enormous sums to become self-reliant—in energy, in defense, in technology.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of wealth has flowed to people who owned assets, not to people who earned most of their money by working. Since 1989, a dollar in the U.S. stock market has grown more than 15 times the value of a dollar tied to median wages.² Now AI threatens to repeat that pattern at an even larger scale—concentrating wealth among the companies and investors positioned to capture it.

This is where 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.

At its best, long-term investing performs a kind of civic miracle. 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.

My belief in this civic miracle is obviously shaped by my job. But I’m not speaking only as the CEO of BlackRock—that belief reflects decades of experience seeing how investing can help more people share in economic growth. 

It is also grounded in something more personal. My father was born in 1925. My mother in 1930. They didn’t come from a lot of money. My dad owned a shoe store. My mom taught English. But they saved what they could and invested it.

This was the 1950s and 60s, right when the Interstate Highway System was being built, the mid-century industrial boom was taking off, and the auto sector was reshaping American life. And in their own small way, they helped finance all of that. They were part of the capital that built modern America. And over time, the gains flowed back to them. By the time they retired, they had enough savings to live comfortably well past 100. Because their wealth compounded alongside the American economy.

And that dynamic extends far beyond the United States. Across countries and generations, the pattern has been remarkably similar. Families who invested broadly and consistently—through depression and war, through inflation, financial crises, and even a global pandemic—had the opportunity for their wealth to grow alongside their economies. That history is why I remain a long term optimist. Not because the path is smooth, but because markets have 
tended to reward those who stay invested through uncertainty.

That is what this moment is about. Expanding that opportunity. Ensuring more people can own a stake in their country’s growth. Because today, too many are left out.

Many people don’t have the money to invest in the first place—households living paycheck-to-paycheck. You can’t invest if you’re not sure you can afford next month’s rent, next week’s groceries, or an unexpected bill. So the starting point has to be helping people build basic financial security.

And that’s starting to happen. Emergency savings accounts where employers can match contributions and workers can withdraw penalty-free are gaining traction. And a growing number of countries are experimenting with investment accounts seeded at birth, giving kids a stake in their country’s growth from the time they leave the hospital.

Even where savings exist, participation remains limited. The U.S. likely has the highest rate of market participation in the world. Still, roughly 40% of the population has no exposure to the capital markets.³ Around the world, participation is far lower. ⁴ Billions watch their economies grow from the outside, as renters rather than owners—putting their savings in bank accounts that earn little, rather than investing to share in the growth around them.

Markets work when investors trust they can buy and sell at a fair price. That trust helps businesses raise the capital they need to grow, and it allows families to spread their investments across many assets at low cost instead of relying on just one. Expanding access to that system—through better technology and financial education—could help more people share in economic growth. Over time, the same technological advances could also help bring greater transparency and potentially broader access to parts of the private markets—areas like infrastructure and private credit that have traditionally been out of reach for most individual investors.

Half the world’s population carries a digital wallet on their phone.⁵ Imagine if that same digital wallet could also let you invest in a broad mix of companies for the long term—as easily as sending a payment. Tokenization could help accelerate that future by updating the plumbing of the financial system—making investments easier to issue, easier to trade, and easier to access.

I start this letter with the forces that make this conversation particularly urgent right now: the reshuffling of global trade, the inequality that’s risen over the past generation, and how AI threatens to widen the gap without broader market participation.

Then I’ll offer four examples—among many—of how countries are already expanding market participation and helping more people grow with their economies.

The final section turns to BlackRock’s work with clients, which advances many of these same goals.

One last thing: Writing this letter is part of my duty to our shareholders and clients. But it is also a letter. And letters are meant to begin conversations. I hope this one does. I’ll be seeking out a range of perspectives, and I intend to spotlight some that meaningfully advance the discussion.

Thank you

Finally, I want to say a profound thank you to everybody at BlackRock. When we founded this company 38 years ago, we hoped that someday we might be able to recruit the best minds in the financial sector to join us. We did. And after nearly four decades at BlackRock, the people are the reason I still love coming to work. So, to all my BlackRock colleagues, I’m so grateful for you.

And to BlackRock’s clients: Thank you for your trust. We know choosing someone to manage your money is a sacred thing, and we don’t take it for granted. Serving you is a real privilege.

Sincerely,

Laurence Fink
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer