Gaining Perspective

It will soon be possible for guests at Marriott hotels in China to bypass lines at the registration desk and check in at a kiosk using facial recognition. Halfway across the globe, Marriott workers are going on strike, seeking higher wages and workplace safety.  Artificial intelligence and robotics are at the heart of those highly promising but disruptive innovations. I am speaking today with some...

One billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and this number is likely to grow to nearly 3 billion by 2050. To complicate this problem, 60 percent of the world’s population lives in crowded water basins shared by multiple states — many of whom are failing or are at war with one another. There is a lack of fresh water resources to meet water demand. It affects every continent and was list...

I speak with Steve Deroian about the future of the partnership between Dimensional and John Hancock, and explore the reasons behind their fee reductions and the new products coming from this relationship.

In the U.S., $12 trillion of investments carry an environmental, social and governance – or ESG – mandate. That is nearly a quarter of all professionally managed assets in the U..S. – and the same percentage of global assets have an ESG mandate. Boston-based Grantham Mayo van Otterloo and its chairman, Jeremy Grantham, are among the leading and most outspoken proponents of ESG investing and relate...

Private equity funding is behind many of the big roll-up firms, including High Tower Advisors, Atria Wealth Solutions, Edelman Financial Services and the Carson Group. Most prominently, PE investments fueled Focus Financial Partners, which went public in July of last year. James Poer, the CEO of Kestra Financial, recently partnered with a private equity investor and discusses the role of private e...

With consolidation looming in the ETF industry, who will be the likely winners? Will advisors continue to shift allocation to passive products and will ETFs be the primary recipients of those flow? Two industry experts sort out those issues.

ETFs have become a cornerstone of portfolio construction across the advisory industry. Over the last three decades, they have grown from zero to a $4 trillion market. My guest today is Ed Rosenberg, who will help us understand the key trends in the ETF market and what they mean for advisors.

Making sense of the complex global economic environment is essential for advisors, at least for the very important reason of being able to intelligently answer their clients’ questions. Today, the greatest uncertainties are in Fed policy, China and Brexit. We hear from Gene Tannuzzo, whose job it is to make sense of those issues for advisors and their clients.

A compelling feature that draws investors to ETFs is “thematic investing.” We’ll discuss how it allows investors to target companies that are poised to benefit from structural shifts in technology, people, demographics and infrastructure development.

Sue Thompson oversees the distribution of the SPY ETF, which now has over $250 billion in assets. She discussed what SSgA is doing to ensure the SPDR product line is priced competitively.

Dividend growth strategies showed their worth during the most recent stock market turbulence. While the S&P 500® declined more than 8% in October and November last year, dividend growth strategies fared far better. And that wasn’t limited to the domestic large-cap stock universe. It applied to mid-cap and small-cap stocks as well. I talk to the person behind the products that benefitted the mo...

Robo advisors suffer from a common flaw, according to Zvi Bodie. They don’t use a “safety first” methodology and are exposing users to unnecessary risks.

According to research from Cerulli, nearly half of advisors use a model portfolio to manage $2.7 trillion in assets. We’ll discuss how those models are permeating all aspects of investment management in the financial advisory industry.

2018 may have been the toughest year for investors insofar as federal regulations are concerned. That goes back to when the SEC began reviewing conduct standards in 1995.  We’ll look at what changed in the fiduciary landscape in 2018 and the outlook for 2019.

The chief goal of society should be to maximize wealth, according to Tyler Cowen. Pursuing that goal has delivered everything from nutritious and abundant food to air conditioning and smartphones in the developed world, and those benefits are spreading rapidly to the developing world. We’ll look at whether Cowen’s single-minded focus on growth make sense and what it means for investors.

One of the most remarkable developments in the financial markets over the last 25 years is that the number of publicly traded companies has declined by half. We’ll look at the reasons for that decline and what it means for investors.