Category: Investment Methodology
188 posts categorized as "Investment Methodology"
What Do ETF Strategists Stand For?
December 3, 2015
Content provided by Joe Smith, CFA, CLS Senior Market Strategist Over the last 20+ years, exchange traded funds (ETFs) have captured the hearts and minds of investors. These investment vehicles have empowered everyday investors to build portfolios that help them reach their financial goals – with greater transparency, lower costs, and more precision. ETFs have…
Fixed Income ETFs: A Don’t Buy?
November 25, 2015
Content provided by Marc Pfeffer, CLS Senior Portfolio Manager One of the newest trends in the densely populated world of ETFs now includes fixed income. As investors turn to the safety of bonds in anticipation of higher interest rates, fund companies are launching new, and increasingly complex, fixed income ETFs. But as I recently told…
A Smart Idea
November 4, 2015
Content provided by Rusty Vanneman, CFA, CLS Chief Investment Officer Smart beta ETFs, sometimes known as strategic beta ETFs, represent the fastest-growing segment of the booming ETF landscape – and for good reasons. In 2014, smart beta accounted for $170 billion in assets, according to a report for Institutional Investor by Howard Moore. The concept…
What You Need to Know About Closed-End Funds
October 7, 2015
Content provided by Marc Pfeffer, CLS Portfolio Manager At the annual NorthStar Summit in Nashville last month, there was a lot of interest from financial advisors about CLS’s new active income strategies. Some of that conversation focused on closed-end funds (CEFs), which we’ve begun to use within active income strategies. Many advisors may be unfamiliar…
Market Horror Picture Show
July 14, 2015
By Kostya Etus, CLS Associate Portfolio Manager I love watching movies. It is one of my favorite things to do in my spare time. I really enjoy all types of movies, and I will give almost any film a chance except for one genre: horror. I find horror films typically do not have well-developed plots,…
Emerging Market Divergence
July 8, 2015
Content provided by Sierra Morris-Fuchs, CLS Investment Research Analyst Emerging markets have shown favorable valuations and stronger global growth prospects recently, which have presented intriguing opportunities. But lumping these markets together as a single country or region can be quite deceiving. Instead, the emerging markets should be analyzed individually because their characteristics vary widely —…
The Other 40 Act Fund
July 2, 2015
Content provided by Joshua Jenkins, CLS Associate Portfolio Manager The ETF industry spends a substantial amount of time educating investors on the relative merits of the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) structure. In doing so, a comparison is typically made to a close relative, the open-end mutual fund. There is, however, another investment vehicle defined by…
Are You Loss Averse?
June 30, 2015
Content provided by Paula Wieck, CLS Manager of Investment Research/Portfolio Manager Ever go to a movie only to realize pretty quickly that it’s not going to be any good, but yet you stay and watch it anyway? In retrospect, you wish you would have left the theatre. Wasn’t it bad enough you wasted your money, but…
First Take on Fed’s June Meeting
June 24, 2015
Content provided by Marc Pfeffer, CLS Senior Portfolio Manager Round one of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) communication delivered mixed messages to markets, as expected. The FOMC statement was upgraded to acknowledge better data, while movements in the “dots” (assessments of appropriate monetary policy) implied a slightly more accommodative fed funds rate path. The communication released…
Time Investments
June 17, 2015
Content provided by Sierra Morris-Fuchs, CLS Investment Research Analyst Figuring out how to spend your money can be difficult. If you are like me, even a decision as simple as where to go for dinner can turn into a lengthy quest of nearby restaurants, researching menus for plates and prices, and making a persuasive argument…