Venerated Voices™ 2020 Q3 Rankings

by Jill Mislinski, 11/9/20

Advisor Perspectives, a leading publisher serving financial advisors and the financial advisory community, has announced its Venerated Voices™ awards for commentaries published in Q3 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 twelve posts annually, three per quarter).

The most popular topics in Q3 among all commentaries were related to extreme market valuations and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Leading the Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm category was Hussman Funds of Maryland in first place, followed by Mauldin Economics of Dallas, Texas in second. In third place was Real Investment Advice of Houston, Texas.

Among individual commentators, the most-widely read was John Hussman of Hussman Funds. In second place was James Montier of GMO followed by Lance Roberts and Michael Lebowitz of Real Investment Advice in third place.

The most-widely read commentary of Q3, published on September 2, was Yikes by John Hussman of Hussman Funds. In it, he details the importance of market internals and observes “lopsided bullishness” among investors. Hussman points out the current extreme market valuations and cautions that Fed policy alone will not “exert any reliable control over unemployment and inflation.”

James Montier of GMO took second place with the Reasons (Not) to Be Cheerful, published August 14. He cautions that over-optimism and overconfidence are a dangerous combination for investors, as it leads to the overestimation of return and the underestimation of risk. Montier stresses investor’s lack of appreciation for risk, their rampant disregard for safe investing and highlights the importance of fundamentals.

In third place was Fundamentally Unsound by John Hussman again, published on July 13. In this piece, he states that market valuations are still informative because we can observe a, “clear inverse relationship between valuations and subsequent market returns, particularly on a 10-12 year horizon,” when restricting data to the period since the late 1990s. Hussman is a proponent of market internals and stresses that valuations are informative over long-term market cycles versus investor psychology that drives shorter segments of the market cycle.