Venerated Voices™ Q2 2018 Rankings

by Jill Mislinski, 7/16/18

Advisor Perspectives, a leading publisher serving financial advisors and the financial advisory community, has announced its Venerated Voices™ awards for commentaries published in Q2 2018. Rankings were issued in four categories: 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 (minimum three posts), where we include only those firms who contributed at least three commentaries in Q2.

Leading the Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm category were CMG Capital Management Group of Pennsylvania, followed by Mauldin Economics of Arizona in second. In third place is Hussman Funds of Maryland.

Among individual commentators, the most-widely read were Rob Arnott, Shane Shepherd, and Bradford Cornell, all of Research Affiliates in first place, Steve Blumenthal of CMG Capital Management Group was in second place, followed by Ben Inker of GMO in third place.

Leading the Top 25 Venerated Voices™ Most Posts by Firm category were Mauldin Economics of Arizona, followed by Hussman Funds of Maryland in second. In third place was Blackstone of New York City.

The most-widely read commentary of Q2 was Train Crash Preview by John Mauldin of Mauldin Economics. Published May 18th, Mauldin predicted a worldwide debt-default within 10 to 12 years due to systematic instability and laid out steps in which this could happen. It would begin with massive illiquidity that would lead to a lending drought, followed by political backlash. Mauldin gives a 60-70% chance of recession by 2020. He believes that in the end, a “Great Reset” will occur where there will be a global “debt wipeout” agreement.

Jeffrey Saut of Raymond James took second place with Two of the Most Important Investing Paragraphs We Have Ever Read. The piece was published April 16th and used two paragraphs from Edgar Genstein’s Stock Profits Without Forecasting as a basis for investing advice. Genstein recommends “…sell when you wish you had sold sooner…” and as a result, “…some of your profits will be large, and your losses should be quite small.” Saut described an addition to this that Raymond James has adopted: scale sell partial positions. He claimed this will allow capital gains accruals to the portfolio and will rebalance stock positions to their original intended weightings.

Coming in third was High Yield Train Wreck, published May 26th, once again by John Mauldin. This piece continued the train wreck analogies, stating that the next crisis will be triggered by corporate debt as opposed to housing debt as in the 2008 recession, beginning with high-yield junk bonds. Mauldin used WeWork, the shared workspace company, as an example quoting their massive negative cashflows and lack of real assets. With WeWork’s use of single-purpose entities (SPEs), they’ve limited their risk exposure to the parent company, which falls on property owners in the event of a recession or downturn. Mauldin said this will all flow downstream and that there are many, many companies like it.