Advisor Perspectives, a leading publisher serving financial advisors and the financial advisory community, has announced its Venerated Voices™ awards for articles published in Q3 of 2015. Rankings were issued in three categories: The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm, The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Author and The Top 10 Venerated Voices™ by Commentary.
Leading the Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm category was Boston’s Grantham Mayo van Otterloo (GMO), followed by California’s Oaktree Capital Management. In third place was Austin’s Hoisington Investment Management.
Among individual commentators, the most widely read was Jeremy Grantham of GMO, followed by James Montier and Ben Inker, also of GMO. Third place went to Steven Vannelli of GaveKal Capital.
The most widely read commentary of Q3 was Ten Quick Topics to Ruin Your Summer by Jeremy Grantham of GMO, published July 29. His summer quarterly commentary detailed 10 potential threats or problems we are facing. Grantham discussed each threat in detail and offered his comments. He began with low GDP growth, continued with global resource problems and income issues and concluded with problems in the investment world (i.e. Fed-induced investment bubbles) and the “limitations of homo sapiens.”
Second place went to 20 Dividend Growth Stocks to Buy Today for Your Retirement Portfolios: Part 1 by Chuck Carneval of F.A.S.T. Graphs, published August 7. In this piece, Carnevale analyzed dividend growth stocks in search of value and attractive dividend yields. He found 20 such “attractively-valued high-quality dividend growth stocks that could produce an average yield greater than 3% in the aggregate.” He provided his methods for finding these and detailed the 20 stocks.
In third was The Idolatry of Interest Rates Part II: Financial Heresy by James Montier and Ben Inker of GMO. The first of two parts was written by Montier and questioned the role of interest rates in equity valuation and whether it really matters. Specifically, he doubted the equity risk premium’s (ERP’s) usefulness. Inker added his thoughts in the second part of the article, pointing out Montier’s radical opinions but acknowledging their importance in challenging the status quo.
Advisor Perspectives’ website currently attracts over 175,000 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 that were submitted by fund companies, advisors and independent research firms. In Q3, over 770 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 based on the number of unique readers of each commentary using data provided electronically by the third-party web analytics service WebTrends. The data were normalized to reflect the fact that usage of Advisor Perspectives’ website grew steadily over the course of the quarter. While 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 was assigned a relative score, with a score of 100 equal to average readership.
Advisor Perspectives was founded in 2007 and is based in Lexington, Massachusetts. In addition to Research Perspectives, it publishes a widely read weekly newsletter, Advisor Perspectives, which contains original articles on the markets, the economy and practice management.
Advisor Perspectives will continue to provide quarterly updates to its rankings, as well as issuing annual Venerated Voices™ awards.
