Vanguard

Best Blogs of the Week vol. 175

Posted by Anu Heda on Feb 09, 2015, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with , , ,

4 interesting posts to share this week with three built around the philosophy of investing.

2014: A Year of Blogs (Part III)

Posted by Anu Heda on Jan 28, 2015, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with ,

We’re highlighting lessons from evaluating 1,500 blog posts in 2014. Part III builds from part II and part I. Industry blogs have come a long way from 2011 when there were 3 – 4 nascent blogs. In that time, the firms with the best blogs provide a point of view. No longer should any firms rely on providing a market summary or recapping the week’s top financial news. This institutional Vanguard post clarifies their perspective on smart beta (basically no bueno). The Russell post below ends with a bottom line that addresses FA’s thoughts/concerns over municipal bonds. The bottom line is direct without being condescending.

vanguard

russell 

Digital Lesson from Robo-Advisors

Posted by Anu Heda on Jan 26, 2015, in Thoughts , tagged with , ,

Throughout 2014, we read much about the emerging robo-advisor industry and how it may be the disruptive technology to ‘revolutionize’ the traditional financial advice/guidance industry. Personally, I think revolution is probably a generation away, if at all. Regardless of the potential disruption, asset managers can improve their digital execution by learning from robo-advisors. To my eye, the best example is in tax-loss harvesting. Tax loss harvesting is a popular topic with financial advisors and many asset managers develop related FA support materials. Look at these blog posts from Russell, Vanguard, and BlackRock (best of the three).

Yet typical materials and blog posts rely on the user reading a lengthy, uninterrupted piece to better understand tax-loss harvesting. This Betterment implementation surpasses those by mingling text, video, graphics, and multiple sub-sections. Simply, Betterment presents a relatively dry and important topic in an engaging manner that asset managers could benefit from studying.

betterment

Best Blogs of the Week

Posted by Anu Heda on Dec 22, 2014, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with , , , ,

We close in on the New Year and multiple more “2015 outlooks” pop up. We won’t bore you with any of them though. We noted over 10 posts related to oil prices this week, showing the industry’s continued capability to respond nimbly towards headline news.

  • Franklin Templeton – Though highly technical, we found this the most thorough and singularly helpful post related to oil prices.
  • JPMorgan – Quick hits on the year in review. Not scintillating yet highly effective.
  • Principal – A post for retirement plan sponsors; fantastic. I appreciate question four and continue to see a large gap in participant education throughout the value chain.
  • Vanguard – This post on explaining ETFs hits a particular note with us. In our proprietary research, we proved that a large FA population continues to avoid ETFs primarily because of missing education and a lack of knowledge.
  • WisdomTree – Excellent post on alternative investing and the impacts from macroeconomic factors (including oil prices!)