Venerated Voices™ Q1 2018 Rankings

Advisor Perspectives, a leading publisher serving financial advisors and the financial advisory community, has announced its Venerated Voices™ awards for commentaries published in Q1 2018. 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 Hussman Funds of Maryland, followed by Grantham Mayo van Otterloo (GMO) of Boston in second. In third place is The Blackstone Group of New York City.

Among individual commentators, the most-widely read was Jeremy Grantham of GMO, Rob Arnott, Vitali Kalesnik, Jim Masturzo of Research Affiliates in second place, followed by James Montier of GMO in third place.

The most-widely read commentary of Q1 was Bracing Yourself for a Possible Near-Term Melt-Up by Jeremy Grantham of GMO. Published January 4th, Grantham analyzed the great bubbles of the past, looking at price acceleration and the outperformance of quality- and low-beta stocks. He also mentioned the importance of extreme overvaluation and the Fed’s role in bubbles breaking. Grantham concluded by summarizing his predictions and offering a few suggestions for an action plan moving forward.

Rob Arnott, Vitali Kalesnik and Jim Masturzo of Research Affiliates took second place with CAPE Fear: Why CAPE Naysayers Are Wrong. The piece was published January 5th and discussed the CAPE ratio’s ability to forecast long-term returns and the causes for the sustained elevated levels. Arnott, et al, provided rebuttals to CAPE skeptics and explained possibilities for the sustained high levels. They suggested two reasons for a possible CAPE decline: the aging workforce and further changes in EPS growth. The article emphasized the ratio’s impressive accuracy in forecasting long-term returns, not just in the US, but globally.

Coming in third was The Arithmetic of Risk, published March 5th by John Hussman. The commentary is another of Hussman’s on current market valuations and future returns. Hussman discussed major bubbles and their corresponding market valuations compared to today’s numbers. He continued by reviewing what he believes are the best market valuation methods, which include Nonfinancial Market Cap/GVA, Q-Ratio, and CAPE. The last section of the commentary debated the idea that high risk equals high return and detailed the “arithmetic of risk,” highlighting the importance of the investment horizon.

Advisor Perspectives’ website currently attracts over 130,000 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 2018, over 500 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 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 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 Author

Read more articles by Jill Mislinski