Venerated Voices™ 2020 Q1 Rankings

by Jill Mislinski, 5/4/20

Advisor Perspectives, a leading publisher serving financial advisors and the financial advisory community, has announced its Venerated Voices™ awards for commentaries published in Q1 2020. Rankings were issued in four categories (minimum of four posts annually): The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm and Author, the Top 10 Venerated Voices™ by Commentary, and The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm and Author by Count (minimum 12 posts annually, three per quarter).

The most popular topics in Q1 among all commentaries were related to COVID-19, a recession, investment returns and general investment advice.

In first place among the Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm category was Cambria Funds of California, followed by Hussman Funds of Maryland. In third place was ReSolve Asset Management of Toronto, Canada.

Among individual commentators, the most-widely read was Meb Faber of Cambria Analytics. In second place was Jeremy Grantham of GMO followed by Liz Ann Sonders of Charles Schwab in third place.

The most-widely read commentary of Q1, published on February 24, was Heartbreaker: Spreading Impact of Coronavirus by Liz Ann Sonders of Charles Schwab. She detailed the immediate effects of the coronavirus in China and its impact on the rest of the world. Sonders described the larger role China has moved into in terms of manufacturing, supply chains, tourism and more. The impact of the coronavirus on the U.S. was only starting to be seen when this piece was published.

Meb Faber of Cambria Funds took second place with the The Stay Rich Portfolio (or, How to Add 2% Yield to Your Savings Account), published January 23. “The portfolio that helps you get rich isn’t necessarily the portfolio that’s going to help you remain rich” – this statement from Faber summarized his piece. He uses Eike Bautista, a self-made Brazilian billionare, as a prime example of wealth gain and loss. In his article, Faber described ways to minimize losses and retain wealth.

In third place was Coronavirus Helicopter Money by John Mauldin of Mauldin Economics, published on March 13. Mauldin devoted a good portion of this piece to discussing fiscal and monetary policy as a result of the pandemic and said that monteary policy will be limited in its effect on the economy – “Interest rates are already near zero and below zero in some places. Plus, easier credit doesn’t address the problem. Cheap financing won’t speed up the supply chain or make people want to travel again. Nor will it help corporate earnings if customers aren’t spending.”

Advisor Perspectives’ website currently attracts over 187,000 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 of 2020, over 530 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 using the average score per month or quarter (in the case of annual rankings). 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 is assigned a relative score based on unique pageviews, with a score of 100 equal to average quarterly readership.