Advisor Perspectives, a leading publisher serving financial advisors and the financial advisory community, has announced its Venerated Voices™ awards for articles published in the first quarter of 2016. 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 Oaktree Capital Management of California, followed by US Markets, a website based in the Netherlands. In third place was Hussman Funds, based in Maryland.
Among individual commentators, the most-widely read was Ben Inker and Jeremy Grantham of GMO, followed by Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital. Third place went to Wim Gommen of US Markets.
The most-widely read commentary of Q1 was Warning with a Capital "W" by John Hussman of Hussman Funds. Hussman’s piece was published February 15t and discussed his concerns regarding market overvaluation and poor market internals. He worried that those, combined with market weakness, would cause investor attempts to exit and thus a recession. The S&P has since rebounded from the dip beginning in December of 2015 and its 12-month lows in mid-February of 2016.
Coming in second was another commentary by Hussman, titled The Next Big Short: The Third Crest of a Rolling Tsunami. Published January 3r, Hussman stated his belief that U.S. equities are in a “late-stage, top formation of the third speculative bubble in 15 years.” He said we are at a speculative extreme and that a “run-of-the-mill” outcome would be for the S&P to lose 40-55% of its value before the end of the current business cycle, given then current conditions and historical evidence.
Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital Management took third place with On the Couch, published on January 16t. In it, Marks wanted to send the markets “to the psychiatrists’ couch” to explore the importance of investor psychology in our economy and markets. He pointed out detrimental behavioral traits such as overlooking or understating negatives, emotional rather than objective sentiment and emotional bias. His prescription: understanding psychological irrationality in the markets, controlling emotions and circumstances and being the contrarian.
Advisor Perspectives’ website currently attracts over 160,000 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 2016, over 750 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 Google Analytics. 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, MA. 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 providing quarterly updates to its rankings, as well as issuing annual Venerated Voices™ awards.
