In the immortal words of Dwayne Johnson, we "smell what the (Black)Rock is cooking": the asset manager turned out a better-than-expected earnings update on Friday.

What does this mean?

The world's biggest investment manager has earned that moniker: the amount of money it looks after - its "assets under management" (AUM), as the number crunchers say - rose to a record $11.5 trillion last quarter, helped by investors handing over $221 billion of fresh cash. And at BlackRock, the more the merrier. The firm charges a fee on all the cash under its stewardship, see, so more AUM means more revenue and profit. And last quarter, the resulting earnings were enough to lay the proverbial Smackdown on investors' overly pessimistic expectations.

BlackRock's updates say a lot about where folk are putting their money. Take last quarter as an example: the firm's report shows investors piled into passive stock and bond exchange-traded funds (ETFs), actively managed bond funds, money market funds, and "alternatives" - think real estate, private debt, and other long-term, hard-to-trade assets. That stacks up with the recent Modern Investor Pulse. Almost half of the retail investors surveyed planned to invest in ETFs in the next six months, while around 20% are considering investing in alternatives, bonds, and money markets.

For markets: Fine wine and art are good for more than boring first dates.

Speaking of alternatives, BlackRock's been making strides with more out-of-the-ordinary investments. The firm just spent $13 billion to acquire a private market assets business, as well as $3 billion on a UK data firm that specializes in alternative investments. The reason's straightforward enough: firms like BlackRock can charge investors more for hard-to-access alternatives than they can for old faithful stock and bond investments.