Venerated Voices™ 2017 Q3 Rankings

by Jill Mislinski, 10/16/17

Advisor Perspectives, a leading publisher serving financial advisors and the financial advisory community, has announced its Venerated Voices™ awards for commentaries published in Q3 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 were Boston-based Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo (GMO), followed by Mauldin Economics of Dallas in second. In third place is Absolute Return Partners, out of Richmond, UK.

Among individual commentators, the most-widely read were James Montier and Jeremy Grantham of GMO in first and second place, followed by John Mauldin of Mauldin Economics in third place.

The most-widely read commentary of Q3 was The S&P 500: Just Say No by Matt Kadnar and James Montier of GMO. Published August 15th, Kadnar and Montier warned against indexing all of one’s equity exposure primarily to the S&P 500 and detailed the four components of S&P valuation: dividends, earnings, margins, and P/Es. Over the long term, the best returns have been achieved through dividends. GMO’s current 7-year forecast point to poor S&P returns. Their advice: just say “no.”

Coming in second was Three Black Swans, published July 22nd by John Mauldin. He began by warning of the next recession, which he believes will happen by the end of 2018, and described the current state of the economy. Mauldin forecast three possible “black swans” in the near future: too much Fed tightening too soon, the ECBs continuing QE, and a Chinese debt meltdown. He warned that any of the three “black swans” could trigger another recession that will not end well.

Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital Management took third place with Yet Again, his quarterly memo to investors, published September 8th. Marks’ previous memo from Q2 drew a flurry of responses from the media, clients and other readers. He used this quarter’s memo as an opportunity to reflect on many of these comments on topics like Bitcoin, the FANGs and passive investing.

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 Q3 2017, over 560 such commentaries were published and made available through a daily newsletter, Research Perspectives, which the company emails to its subscribers.