Best Blogs of the Week
Only one very strong post this month and it comes from MFS. This post does the best job of looking back at the 5 years since Lehman’s collapse.
Author: Anu Heda
Best Blogs of the Week
This edition captures some excellent blog posts related to the bond market. All these posts are highly pertinent. This summer we spent time with dozens of FAs heard many advisors express concerns with fixed income and they are coming up with many different techniques to handle the concern. Below are four fixed income posts.
Best Blogs of the Week
No rest for industry blog authors – posts are coming as frequently as they were in May. Two posts in this week’s review.
Naming a fund…
As I mentioned in a post last week, we’ve been speaking with advisors around the country. In those discussions, we hear a lot about products (typically funds but also SMAs and annuities). Something striking: how few FAs get a fund’s name right. Many FAs know specific details like effective duration, turnover ratio, or up/down capture ratio. But, they rarely get the name right. Because many product names are so long they either rely on the ticker (Oh, I really appreciate the process behind JSOAX. Very straightforward for strategic income.) or mix up the words (It’s the FundCo High Income [pause] Opportunity Strategy [pause] fund.).
Only one fund was consistently referenced frequently and correctly: PIMCO Total Return Fund. Not surprising considering how frequently the fund makes news.
These experiences (along with some other marketing work ) reminded me of the difficulties in naming a product. You want to use terms familiar to your target. You also don’t want to blend into the others, especially in industries with many choices.
That led me to … contact lens solution. Saline? Yes. Walk into any pharmacy and you’ll see seven or more brands. Below are four I tried recently. The names are “Biotrue®,” “PureMoist®,” “renu® fresh™,” and “OcuTec®.” All 3 companies (B&L, Opti-Free, and Abbott) lean heavily on legal ownership of their names. Two interesting points to me. First, they could all be anything (I swear the wipes we used when the kids were small were “PureMoist.”). Second, there’s no “contact” or “lens” in the name.
Best Blogs of the Week
August brings the start of “back-to-school” blogging and while we didn’t find any very compelling, there are a lot out there. What was compelling? The two posts below!
- Oppenheimer – This post overlays equity fund flows onto the S&P. Helpful.
- Vanguard – This post provides 4 data-driven reasons not to leave bonds for stocks. That’s definitely counter to the current movement we hear.