Gaining Perspective

Advisors are being asked to provide their clients with a full suite of solutions, ranging from estate and tax planning to portfolio management, and everything in between. Clients are increasingly eager to gain access to fully customizable solutions that meet their individual needs. Advisors, meanwhile, are facing constraints while grappling with a volatile market, and their relationships with clie...

As 2023 is nearing its end, tax-loss harvesting season is in full swing. This is often top of mind for advisors and their clients.  But Capital Group is seeing some advisors hesitate to harvest losses due to ongoing volatility in the equity and bond markets, and general uncertainty about 2024. My guest, Courtney Wolf, joins me today to talk about why to deploy cash and use tax-loss harvesting via...

Investors were taught a lesson in 2022 when equities and fixed income delivered double-digit, negative returns.  No longer could the major asset classes be counted on for diversification.  That outcome has led to a surge of interest in alternative investments.  My guest today will argue why alternatives are important for advisors to consider and how doing so in a cost-sensitive way is important. H...

According to a recent J.D. Power study, fewer than 15% of clients say their advisor provides an ideal advice experience; and yet many advisors likely suffer from Dunning Kruger cognitive bias, where they think they are among that 15% when for the majority, that’s impossible.  Why is financial advice in such a state? Because, despite their best efforts, financial advisors aren’t hitting the core at...

With Americans living longer and deferring retirement for lots of reasons, the retirement planning landscape is changing. Employers are not offering pensions. All these factors make planning for retirement income crucial. We’ll explore this in depth with my guest, Matt DiGangi. - Here are some resources to learn more about MassMutual Strategic Distributors (MMSD) and its offerings: Learn More abou...

We are speaking on November 3, but the big headline for 2023 has already been written. This will be the year of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Not only have AI and ML driven the soaring valuations of stocks like NVDIA, but they have also demonstrated the potential to increase the efficiency of advisory practices. My guest today will provide an update on the latest in AI/ML...

Investing in “smart beta” was the rage in the early 2000s, as small-cap-value stocks vaulted over large-cap-growth stocks. But like all supercharged investment strategies, it didn’t last. Factors premiums have not materialized since the financial crisis. For most of the last decade, value has underperformed growth, driving the underperformance of the largest category of smart-beta strategies.  We’...

As of last week, Morningstar Direct calculated that 391 new ETFs had begun trading in 2023. That's significantly higher than the 311 that had debuted by the final week of October in 2021, the year ETF launches set a record of 475.  Active strategies are playing a key role in that record-breaking pace. Despite holding about 6% of total assets, actively managed ETFs still added almost one-third of t...

In mid-September, Rockefeller Asset Management, the asset management arm of Rockefeller Capital Management, and KraneShares, a leading global ETF provider specializing in China, climate, and uncorrelated assets, launched the KraneShares Rockefeller Ocean Engagement ETF (ticker: KSEA) . The fund invests in public companies with significant impact on oceans and ocean resources, reflecting the meanin...

Free-cash-flow yield is the surplus cash after expenses and investments divided by the price of the security. Free-cashflow yield has been used for a long time by active hedge funds. Now it has become part of the indexing landscape, competing for assets with other quantitative approaches. It has historically outperformed in markets that favored value stocks and shown resilience in growth markets....

 With relentless market volatility and other stubborn headwinds, advisors must find an adequate portfolio balance for their clients. What role will alternative investments play in offsetting market challenges? In this episode, we dive into this question with Andrea Mody, U.S. wealth private markets head at Macquarie Asset Management. We discuss how Macquarie continues to be a trailblazer for the d...

My guest, Sam Reid, is here to discuss the role and impact of structured credit within a retail investor portfolio. In an environment of rising rates and accumulating debt, this asset class offers investors a chance to alleviate risks and further enhance their portfolios. Sam uses a process-driven approach to minimize the impact of rising rates, and his underwriting standards allow for enhancement...

What if everything you’ve been told about cultivating client assets from one generation to the next is wrong and unhelpful? Yes, the ”great wealth transfer” is a massive opportunity for financial advisors and wealth managers, but Meg Carpenter believes the advisory profession is looking at the opportunity through the wrong lens. In this conversation, we will focus on why the next generation of cli...

Are you curious about what a transition in the digital age truly entails? My guest, Lizzie Warner, and I will step inside the world of broker-dealer/RIA transitions and unveil the timeline and milestones of these transformations. We want this to be your gateway to making your move smoother and more accessible than ever before. Lizzie Warner, vice president of transition and strategic acquisitions...

On October 24, 2022, precisely a year ago, we published an article by Allan Roth in Advisor Perspectives, The 4% Rule Just Became a Whole Lot Easier.  The idea for that article came from a conversation that Allan and I had.  I noted that real rates, as expressed by TIPS, were about 1.75%.  I thought that it would be possible to lock in the proverbial 4% safe withdrawal rate.  Allan did the analysi...

Earlier this month, I attended Bob Veres’ Insiders Forum conference in San Antonio. As it is every year, the highlight of the conference is Bob’s presentation of the Insiders Forum leadership award. This year’s recipient was Angie Herbers, my guest today. I cannot overstate the significance of this award. Virtually every other award in the advisor profession is part of a pay-for-play scheme, where...

Zacks Investment Management has been managing money for more than 30 years. It is a subsidiary of Zacks Investment Research, which is one of the largest independent research providers in the United States. In 2021, Mitch Zacks, its CEO, decided it was time to bring the research-driven approach to investing that the firm has become known for to the exchange-traded product market. The firm's first a...

 Calamos Investments and Aksia joined forces this year to launch the Calamos Aksia Alternative Credit and Income Fund (CAPIX), an interval fund designed to provide advisors and their clients access to private debt investments – most of them historically only accessible to institutions – with the liquidity investors demand. The accessibility concept was nothing new for Calamos – it created one of t...

 Andrew Altfest has had a unique journey through the advisory profession. He joined the firm founded by his father, Lew Altfest, and rose to become president of Altfest Personal Wealth Management. He then founded the technology firm, FP Alpha, and became its CEO. Andrew will walk us through his journey to become an advisor and how that experience led to the creation and evolution of FP Alpha. The...

 As interest rates have risen dramatically over the past year, income-oriented funds have become more attractive. With the income finally back in fixed income, advisors are searching for new opportunities to generate yield while mitigating risk in their bond investments. That’s why Madison Investments, an independently owned investment firm managing $22.9 billion in assets, recently launched its f...

My guest today is here to talk about an asset class that is often misunderstood. It wasn't until recently that all investors had access to collateralized loan obligations (CLOs). Institutional investors have benefitted from the ownership of CLOs for over 25 years, and the asset class has grown to over $1 trillion. These are not the same bonds that eroded the economy in 2008 during the global finan...

Northern Trust’s Capital Market Assumptions (CMA) report, an annual report of long-term average annualized return expectations for a wide range of asset classes, forecasts below-trend global growth at an annualized rate of 2.4% over the next 10 years, moderating developed-market inflation of 2.4%, and a lower global equity return of 6.3% a year on average. The CMA report’s asset class forecasts ar...

Managing volatility is a high priority for advisors. The right investments can stabilize a portfolio and dampen volatility, while keeping goals on track. Increasing bond allocations used to be the standard way to reduce volatility, but with bonds more correlated to equities, their diversification value has decreased. With high inflation, bonds also aren’t providing enough real income for many inve...

Artificial Intelligence has been a category-killer among investment themes in the past year. Its impact on the wealth management profession has been profound, from gravity-defying value creation on the stock market to optimizing the day-to-day operations of an advisory practice. Every participant in financial services, in companies large or small, needs to embrace and integrate this powerful techn...

The rise in global interest rates is driving a “great reset” of real estate values. With the ongoing correction in private markets, REITs offer an attractive entry point with valuations at historic lows. In addition, a number of factors favor REITs: Large differences in valuation between public and private RE markets, while rare, have historically benefited REITs. REITS have historically outperfor...