As the U.S. economy shows signs of slowing and market jitters rise over a bubble around artificial intelligence companies, state treasurers tasked with shepherding billions of dollars in public funds say they are safely hedged against any potential market corrections.

In interviews, many treasurers said their investment strategies are pegged to long-term goals, designed to reap cautious returns without overexposure to the marketplace, or to the tech-heavy companies that are delivering the highest returns today — but that carry the highest risk of a downturn tomorrow.

“You don’t invest based on what’s going on today in the short term. You look at things from a longevity perspective,” New Mexico Treasurer Laura Montoya, a Democrat whose office manages nearly $20 billion in state funds, said in an interview. “Because we don’t know that there’s going to be a COVID, or any other situation in life, you put little pieces everywhere.”

States proscribe the types of investments their pension funds or other public investment accounts can make. Most bar treasurers or other investment officers from owning stakes in publicly traded companies.

“We’re in the business of fixed income investing. We don’t have wild swings in investment theses,” Nevada Treasurer Zach Conine, a Democrat, said in an interview. Nevada saw returns of about $400 million in the last year, more than 10 times the return generated in 2019, Conine’s first year in office.

Many treasurers say they follow the most common advice any investment expert can give: Investing for the long term, rather than trying to pick the perfect moment to buy and sell.

“We are long-term investors with diverse allocations that are expected to hold up in a variety of scenarios over full market cycles,” said Steve Chizmar, a spokesman for Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity, a Republican. “We monitor the portfolios daily, and we also have built our systems to monitor real-time data. We rebalance and can react as situations warrant, but we do not try to time the market.”

Democratic treasurers interviewed for this story largely said they see weakness in the economy. Some blamed President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Others blamed Congress’s failure to act on those tariffs.

“The uncertainty that changing tariff environment causes for not just the markets but for good business decisions is very difficult,” Colorado Treasurer Dave Young, a Democrat, told Pluribus News. “It’s hard for businesses to make solid business decisions when the environment they’re working in is constantly shifting. These efforts to stand up a huge manufacturing plant or operation can’t be shifting from day to day.”

High interest rates set by the Federal Reserve have had a surprisingly positive impact on state budgets. While those high interest rates can depress business spending or home buying, they mean more money from safer investments that typically yield little in the way of returns.

In Fiscal Year 2024, New Hampshire generated more revenue growth from interest returns than from any other source, according to the Pew Research Center. Alabama’s interest earnings grew 902% between Fiscal Years 2022 and 2023, while Illinois’s earnings grew 1,257%.

Treasurers said they are wary of a potential downturn, and that their primary jobs are to keep state money safe and ensure the flow of funds through state governments. That has been a challenge this year, some said, because of the Trump administration’s on-again, off-again efforts to shut down funding for various education, infrastructure and climate programs — efforts many states have challenged, successfully, in court.

“We think there’s softness out there, and we’re preparing as we have for a long time, as we kind of constantly are, for things to go sideways,” Nevada’s Conine said. “It might not be our fault, but it’s our problem.”