Gaining Perspective

The last decade has been hard on value investors. Even the most disciplined disciples of Graham and Dodd, who have diligently sought bargains that were out-of-favor with the market, have fared poorly relative to growth investors. But the market volatility that began in February has exposed the kind of market dislocations that value investors crave.

A Wall Street Journal article at the beginning of April reported that actively managed U.S. stock funds lost an average of 24.6% in the first quarter of this year. But there were some noteworthy outperformers, including the Baron Opportunity Fund. That journal article noted that this fund had the second-best performance over 12 months ending in March 31, and that it lost only 6.7% in the first qua...

In a down market, one of the types of investments that should perform well is long-short funds. But not all those funds have given investors the downside protection they need. I am talking today with the manager of a long-short fund that has delivered this year. That fund is the 361 Global Long/Short Equity Fund (AGAZX). Although it is down 8.21% this year, that is 132 basis points better than the...

I am in Gloucester, MA at the home of the noted economist Dr. Horace “Woody” Brock. I visited Woody here two months ago and recorded a podcast as the coronavirus crisis was unfolding. Today, I am going to ask Woody some follow-up questions.

On May 15th we learned that both Industrial Production and Retail Sales took a dive for April.

In this era of pandemic-induced market volatility, advisors are systematically searching for investment products that limit downside losses. They are willing to give up some upside potential to reduce their exposure to painful, black-swan events like we have seen. One of the product types designed to do this and that has benefited from strong asset flows is defined-outcome ETFs. Here today to talk...

This is the first major market downturn experienced by most advisor technology platforms. My guest will discuss some of the unique challenges facing fintech vendors as a result of the newly enforced virtual work environment and by the sudden market correction.

Over the last decade, the dominant trend in the asset management industry has been the flow from active to passive products. According to Morningstar , actively managed U.S. stock funds posted outflows in 11 out of the last 12 years. Indeed, as of the middle of 2019, passive and active U.S. equity funds each had a total of about $4.3 trillion in assets, essentially reaching asset parity. What has...

This morning we learned that there was a loss of 20.5 million jobs in April and the unemployment rate is now at 14.7%.

Yesterday’s release of Q1 GDP showed a contraction of 4.8% and was slightly worse than expected. It was the first contraction since 2014 and the largest contraction since the financial crisis.

I was invited to travel to Mumbai, India in January this year to speak at an investment conference. It was my first trip to India and, in fact, my first trip to Asia. It was a great experience and an opportunity to learn a lot about India’s history, economy and culture. But the India I visited four months ago is very different from today – at least from an economic and investment perspective. Here...

I was invited to travel to Mumbai, India in January this year to speak at an investment conference. It was my first trip to India and, in fact, my first trip to Asia. It was a great experience and an opportunity to learn a lot about India’s history, economy and culture. But the India I visited four months ago is very different from today – at least from an economic and investment perspective. Here...

On March 24, I hosted a webinar with my guest today on how advisors can capitalize on the explosive growth in e-Commerce. In our interconnected world, significant disruptions underscore the need for resilient supply chains. We explored the risks posed by COVID-19 to economic growth, particularly with respect to the consumer, cold storage, and cannabis. That webinar was so popular that we were over...

Look in your email, and it’s a sure bet that in the last 24 hours you will have received offers of millions of dollars from Nigerian princes or lottery winners looking for ways to share their riches with you. You probably wondered how anyone could be so gullible to fall for those scams. But, as my guest today will explain, at some point we’ve all been tempted by the prospect of easy money, improve...

A proven strategy to increase income on an equity portfolio, while maintaining some of the upside potential, is to sell call options against the holdings. That strategy is often implemented with the S&P 500. But what advisors may not know is that this buy-write strategy can also be pursued with Nasdaq indices.

If China is a benchmark for the scale of economic disruption caused by the coronavirus, the impact has been colossal. Industrial production declined by 13.5% year-over-year in January and February. Retail sales and auto sales declined by 20.5% and 37.0%, respectively, during the same period. Now that the peak of the outbreak seems to have passed in China, its economic growth is starting to recover...

MSCI is a leading provider of indices for a variety of asset classes. Its factor Indexes, which we are going to talk about today, are designed to capture the return of factors which have historically demonstrated excess market returns over the long run. These are rules-based, transparent indexes that target stocks with favorable factor characteristics – as backed by robust academic findings and em...

My guest, Rob Arnott, is here to discuss the big questions that should concern all advisors and their clients. How deep and how prolonged will the expected recession be? Have we reached a tipping point where we have passed the maximum level of fear? If so, how should advisors allocate their clients’ assets? What is in store for the capital markets over next decade?

The last decade has been a painful one for investors who believe in a factor-based approach to investing and have stuck with those factors that historically performed well – namely the value factor, which has severely underperformed growth over those 10 years. But a breed of products have avoided that plight. Funds and ETFs that have were designed to be nimble and allocate across a range of factor...

Today’s release of employment data confirmed what we were all expecting – a precipitous collapse in the number of Americans who are gainfully employed.

Crises call for leadership. But leadership is not something that can be precisely defined. On an intellectual level, it combines an understanding of risks and opportunities, and a realistic assessment of one’s strengths and weaknesses. But it also demands a realistic vision of what the future holds and how to get there. And then leadership calls for the skills to communicate that vision and motiva...

The coronavirus put an end to America’s longest post-war expansion. We are all but certain to face a recession this year. But that recession will be wholly different from any other in our economic history. It will inflict its damage primarily on the service sector of our economy: travel, hospitality, entertainment, restaurants and a host of other services. I am here today to talk with one of the w...

For many businesses, the sudden transition from a physical to a virtual company has been jarring. But other businesses have been operating remotely since their inception. One example is Advisor Perspectives, and another is the marketing platform, Twenty Over Ten. I am joined today by two of the principals of Twenty Over Ten, who will talk about their unique story, what they did to create an effect...

Over the last two weeks, our collective focus has been on the equity markets. But the sharp drop in prices among U.S. stocks has been matched by a dramatic spike in municipal bond yields. That has created a compelling, but little-noticed opportunity to buy safe, highly rated muni bonds at exceptional spreads to U.S. Treasury bonds.

When this podcast was recorded, on March 11, U.S. equities were down 13.7% since February 21, when the threat of the coronavirus infected the markets. At best, advisors are faced with clients asking what this means for their future. At worst, clients are calling to demand that advisors sell and de-risk their portfolios. My guest and I will focus on the importance of client communication, especiall...