Venerated Voices™ Q1 2021 Rankings

Advisor Perspectives, a leading publisher and ranked as the most-read e-newsletter for financial advisors by Erdos & Morgan “FAMOUS” Study in 2019 and 2020, has announced its Venerated Voices™ awards for commentaries published in Q1 2021. Rankings were issued in four categories (minimum of four posts annually): The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm and Author, the Top 10 Venerated Voices™ by Commentary, and a new category, The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm and Author by Count (minimum 12 posts annually).

The first three categories require a minimum of one post quarterly and the fourth requires the or more posts quarterly.

The most popular topics in Q1 2021 were related to equity overvaluation, bubbles and fiscal deficits debt. Leading the Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm category was Hussman Funds of Maryland, followed by Mauldin Economics of Dallas, Texas. In third place was Sitka Pacific Capital Management of Edmunds, Washington.

Among individual commentators, the most-widely read was Jeremy Grantham of GMO. In second place was John Hussman of Hussman Funds followed by Alex Picard of Research Affiliates in third place.

The most-widely read commentary of Q1 2021, published on January 22, was Forecast 2021: The Stock Market by John Mauldin of Mauldin Economics. Mauldin stated that the largest difference between this market overvaluation period versus any other is that “accommodative monetary conditions and zero real rates extrapolated indefinitely” have caused excessive investor euphoria. He predicted that 2021 will be the year that active management takes the lead.

John Hussman of Hussman Funds took second place with Detached Parabolas and Open Trap Doors, published February 1. He detailed the difference between investment and speculation, and proposed it as a major reason for the current “everything bubble.” Like the first-place Mauldin commentary, Hussman believes that passive investors in stocks will be hurt due very low or negative future equity returns. He supported overvaluation using charts and metrics with references to previous bubbles. Aptly, he quoted Graham and Dodd regarding the 1929 peak – investors abandoned sound fundamentals partly because ”the rewards offered by the future had become irresistibly alluring.”

In third place was How to Spot a Bubble, again by John Hussman of Hussman Funds, published on March 16. It described speculation and overvaluation, similar to his second-place piece, but also defined bubbles and analyzed a variety of valuation measures as proof of the U.S. equity market bubble and its near-breaking point. Hussman defined a bubble as the inconsistency between expected returns based on price behavoir and those based on valuations. He stated that a good valuation ratio is “shorthand” for the current price and the expected stream of future cash flows. According to Hussman, “…the size of the bubble is the fraction of market price that represents expectational ‘hot air.”

Advisor Perspectives’ website currently attracts more 210,000 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 2021, over 410 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 were normalized using the average score per month or quarter (in the case of annual rankings). 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 is assigned a relative score based on unique pageviews, with a score of 100 equal to average quarterly 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.

The Top 10 Venerated Voices™ by Commentary

The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm

The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm (minimum three posts per quarter)

The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Author

The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Author (minimum three posts per quarter)

Read more articles by Jill Mislinski