Advisor Perspectives, a leading publisher serving financial advisors and the financial advisory community, has announced its Venerated Voices™ awards for commentaries published in Q1 2017. Rankings were issued in three categories: The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm, The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Author and The Top 10 Venerated Voices™ by Commentary.
Leading the Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm category was Maryland-based Hussman Funds, followed by Real Investment Advice of Houston, Texas. In third place was Hoisington Investment Management of Austin, Texas.
Among individual commentators, the most widely read were Ben Inker and Jeremy Grantham of GMO, followed by John Hussman of Hussman Funds. Third place went to Rob Arnott, Noah Beck, and Vitali Kalesnik of Research Affiliates.
The most-widely read commentary of Q1 was “The Economic Risk of Ignoring Arithmetic” by John Hussman. Hussman’s piece was published January 9 and identified investor risks going into 2017, namely the 50-60% probability of a market retreat over the remainder of the current cycle. He discussed the arithmetic that makes up GDP growth – employment growth plus productivity growth. Hussman predicted that GDP growth will be low in the coming years given current and future labor and employment conditions. He also warned against pursuing retaliatory or corrective trade policies that would lead to a reduction in Gross Domestic Investment and thus foreign savings. He also reminded readers of the 1929 and 2000 market peaks.
Coming in second was “Schwab Market Perspective: Not So Fast!” by Liz Ann Sonders, Brad Sorensen, and Jeffrey Kleintop of Charles Schwab. Published February 10th, the piece detailed investor sentiment, describing the slight fall-off since the election as evidenced by low levels of equity market volatility. The commentary discussed investor cautiousness and how politics have played a central role in market behavior and confidence measures.
Lance Roberts of Real Investment Advice took third place with “The Long-Term Investing Myth,” published January 3. Roberts stated that investors tend to do the opposite of what they should. Despite extremely high market valuations, flows into equities remained negative. Roberts’ advice for long term investing, especially if one is close to retirement: pay attention to capital preservation and focus on returns at a rate that offsets inflationary pressures.
Advisor Perspectives’ website currently attracts over 160,000 unique visitors per month, virtually all of them financial advisors serving high- and ultra-high net worth individuals. The company publishes economic and market commentaries submitted by fund companies, advisors and independent research firms. In Q1 2017, over 550 such commentaries were published and made available through a daily newsletter, Research Perspectives, which the company emails to its subscribers.
Venerated Voices™ rankings were determined by the number of unique readers of each commentary, using data provided electronically by the third-party web analytics service Google Analytics. The data was normalized to reflect the fact that usage of Advisor Perspectives’ website grew steadily over the course of the quarter. For the annual awards for the firm and author, a minimum of three commentaries must have been submitted during the year. Any participant is eligible to receive a quarterly award. Each firm and author was assigned a relative score based on unique pageviews, with a score of 384 equal to average Q1 readership.
Advisor Perspectives was founded in 2007 and is based in Lexington, Massachusetts. In addition to Research Perspectives, it publishes a widely read weekly newsletter, Advisor Perspectives, which contains original articles on the markets, the economy and practice management.
Advisor Perspectives will continue providing quarterly updates to its rankings, as well as issuing annual Venerated Voices™ awards.
