Venerated Voices™ 2017 Rankings

by Jill Mislinski, 1/8/18

Advisor Perspectives, a leading publisher serving financial advisors and the financial advisory community, has announced its Venerated Voices™ awards for commentaries published in 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 ETF Momentum Investing of Indianapolis, followed by Guggenheim Partners of Chicago in second. In third place was Transfer Solutions.

Among individual commentators, the most-widely read were Matt Kadnar and James Montier of GMO in first place, Scott Minerd, Brian Smedley and Matt Bush of Guggenheim Partners in second place, followed by Stephen Powaga of ETF Momentum Investing 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 warn of indexing all of one’s equity exposure primarily to the S&P 500 and detail the four components of S&P valuation: dividends, earnings, margins, and P/E ratios. Over the long term, the best returns have been achieved through dividends. GMO’s current seven-year forecast point to poor S&P returns. Their advice: just say no to an indexed exposure to the S&P 500.

John Hussman of Hussman Funds took second place with The Economic Risk of Ignoring Arithmetic. Hussman’s piece was published January 9th and mentioned investor risks going into 2017, namely a probable 50-60% 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 parallels to the 1929 and 2000 market peaks.