Wealthtrack

Three successful women portfolio managers discuss what it takes to succeed in money management, including their best and worst decisions and crucial career advice.    WEALTHTRACK #1823 published on November 30, 2021 More Info: https://wealthtrack.com/how-to-make-it-on-wall-street-advice-from-three-successful-women-portfolio-managers/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wealthtrack/support

Part 1 of 2 Only 11% of U.S. portfolio managers are women. Three of them describe how they are “tearing down the pink wall” starting with their educational and job choices in part one of our two-part series. WEALTHTRACK #1822 published on November 24, 2021 More Info: https://wealthtrack.com/from-education-to-job-choices-how-3-women-have-become-successful-portfolio-managers/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wealthtrack/support

It's hard to keep a roaring bull market down. The S&P 500 marked its 66th record close of the year today and the NASDAQ Composite also hit a new peak. The strong performance once again raised the question: what to do with the dominant position mega-cap tech stocks have in most of our stock portfolios. It is a particular challenge for growth fund managers because that’s where the growth and performance has been for the last decade, especially the past few years.   This week’s guest, Margaret Vitrano, and her ClearBridge team saw the high concentration of big tech in their portfolios last year as high risk and a threat to the diversification they see as essential to delivering their historically strong returns with downside protection. They met that challenge by reducing some significant winning positions and actually closing out a big one last year. Understanding why she did it and how she feels about it now can help the rest of us who face similar decisions.    We’ll discuss why they made t

Worried about inflation, especially after October’s big consumer price number? The CPI’s 6.2% increase from a year ago was the fastest 12-month gain since 1990 and the fifth month in a row of +5% inflation.  What about rising interest rates? How about America’s economic standing in the world?    Be prepared to question many of the negative assumptions you have been hearing and listen to some other data that shines a different light on the outlook. Our guest is a highly respected economist who is no pollyanna. She is just a top economist who looks at data many others miss.   Nancy Lazar is Partner and Chief Economist of Cornerstone Macro.  Lazar and her team are challenging the assumptions that higher inflation is here to stay, that interest rates have to go higher and that emerging markets will be the driver of global growth post-pandemic.    I began our conversation with the capital spending question. In a traditionally consumer-driven economy, why is capital spending going

The demand for socially responsible investing strategies is growing and the cash flowing into them shows it. Exchange-traded funds with ESG characteristics - ESG of course stands for environmental, social, and governance - have attracted the lion's share of equity money in recent years.  In true “follow the money” form, Wall Street has taken notice. There are now many different kinds of socially responsible investment products to choose from. One you don’t hear a lot about is values and faith-based investing, a niche that has been around for decades through separately managed accounts and a few mutual funds.  This week’s guest just might change their low profile. He is a widely followed market strategist and successful investor, Robert Doll, Chief Investment Officer and Portfolio Manager at Crossmark Global Investments which he just joined this year.   Doll will fulfill two missions for us. He’ll explain what values and faith-based investing means and update us on his current assessment of the

There's a saying on Wall Street that the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.  And there’s a widely held financial theory called “Reversion to the Mean” that asserts that eventually asset classes will return to their long term average in terms of several factors including price, price/earnings multiples, and their performance relative to other asset classes like U.S. stocks. Reversion to the mean for emerging markets stocks has been a long time coming. This week’s guest, Michael Kass who runs Baron Emerging Markets Fund believes their time has come after a very long cycle of underperformance. Kass will make the case for an emerging markets resurgence, especially stocks in the two largest markets, China and India. WEALTHTRACK #1818 broadcast on October 29, 2021 More Info: https://wealthtrack.com/new-world-order-of-market-leadership/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wealthtrack/support

Talk about a seismic shift! Inflation is back with a vengeance.  Higher prices are being felt throughout the economy by consumers and businesses alike.  The Consumer Price Index, the most widely followed measure of price moves at the retail level, has just experienced its biggest year-over-year increase since the early 1990s.  Are these price increases transitory as the Federal Reserve would lead us to believe or are we in a new era of higher prices not seen since the late 1970s?  This week’s guest penned an editorial in The Wall Street Journal recently asking the question: “Does the Fed Have the Will to Fight Inflation?” He is Financial Thought Leader Jason De Sena Trennert,  Co-Founder,  Chairman, CEO, and Chief Investment Strategist of Strategas Research Partners,   Trennert will address the investment and strategy implications of higher inflation.   WEALTHTRACK #1817 broadcast on October 22, 2021 More info: https://wealthtrack.com/financial-thought-leader-jason-tre

The one constant in life is change, even for great investors. Earlier this year The Motley Fool Co-Founder, David Gardner announced that he was changing his focus. As he told fellow “Fools” as the global online investing community members jokingly refer to themselves:  “....where you place your focus in life matters, and now I am choosing to shift my focus from the stock market and invest time in other endeavors. After nearly 30 years focused on publicly picking stocks, this wasn’t a decision I took lightly.” It wasn't a decision The Motley Fool team, members, followers and at least one member of the financial press, namely me, took lightly either, which is why I wanted to talk to David.   The good news is Gardner is not totally leaving the fold. He is Chairman of The Motley Fool Foundation, devoted to bringing “financial freedom to all.” He remains Co-Chairman of The Motley Fool with fellow Fool Co-Founder and younger brother Tom, a very successful investor in his own right, who has also been manag

It can take a long time for a bubble to burst. Four years ago, in 2017, Grant's Interest Rate Observer, a highly regarded financial newsletter, wrote an article about the now infamous China Evergrande group. Back then, it was anything but a familiar name except in China and among some institutional investors. The article was titled “Ever Higher” as Grant published a chart showing the extraordinary rise in China Evergrande's stock price on the Hong Kong exchange that spring. Fast forward to 2021, and indeed, Evergrande, once the world’s most valuable property stock, has become famous as the world’s most heavily indebted property company. With an estimated $300 billion in debt, it also could become Asia's largest bankruptcy as China's government seems less and less likely to come to the rescue. Why should the U.S. investors care? What if any significance does it have outside of China? That is where financial thought leader, journalist/sleuth, and historian James Grant comes in. Grant is the Founder and Editor o

Large-cap U.S growth stocks, particularly tech stocks, have been the overwhelming winners of the last decade. They now dominate the market. The top ten S&P 500 stocks, including the FAANGs, account for more than 25% of the index’s total market value, a concentration that worries some market watchers because it is reminiscent of other market tops such as the dot-com bubble when internet stocks made up over 30% of the S&P and the credit bubble when banking stocks reached more than 20%. With the exception of short-lived spurts value stocks, small-cap stocks and international stocks have badly lagged. This week’s guest believes the days of this concentrated outperformance by large-cap growth stocks are numbered and suggests some underloved and under-owned alternatives. He is financial thought leader, innovator, and investor Robert Arnott, Chairman of the Board of Research Affiliates, which he founded in 2002 as a self-described “research-intensive asset management firm that focuses on innovative products.

One of the biggest challenges for investors since the global financial crisis has been finding income. Despite more than ten years of continuous predictions that yields on U.S. Treasuries and other developed country bonds couldn’t possibly go any lower, they have. This week’s guest can help us. She is Kristin Ceva, Senior Portfolio Manager, directing Payden & Rygel’s nearly $14bn emerging debt strategies. She is also a member of the firm’s Investment Policy Committee. The independent global investment advisor oversees $145.5bn in assets, largely in fixed income for institutional clients but has a broad lineup of mutual funds as well. It is also an active participant in ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance)  investing which we will discuss. Ceva has managed its Payden Emerging Markets Bond Fund since 1998. Emerging market (EM) debt is a large, diverse, and evolving investing universe which is sorely underrepresented in most individual portfolios. I’ll begin the interview by asking Ceva to bring

In this era of indexing the investors who research and buy individual companies are becoming a rarity - some would say a throwback - to another era.   The most obvious example is Warren Buffett, the nonagenarian Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway who is widely considered to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest American investor in recent memory.  Buffett is famous for buying quality companies for the long term, in his words “forever”. He is less well known for his emphasis on seeking “high quality shareholders”, stock owners who stick around for the long-term, whom he has succeeded in attracting to Berkshire Hathaway.  This is part two of our interview with Lawrence Cunningham a Professor of Law at George Washington University who is also a driving force behind the university’s “Quality Shareholders Initiative”, intended to research and report on “high quality shareholders”, as they are dubbed by Buffett - traditional investors that study individual companies, acquire substantial stakes in o

In this week's WEALTHTRACK podcast, an interview with leading financial journalist Jason Zweig.  Since 2008 Zweig has written the widely read "The Intelligent Investor" column for The Wall Street Journal.  That, of course, is the name of the investment classic written by Benjamin Graham, considered to be the father of value investing.  Zweig has an intimate knowledge of the thinking of Graham because he edited the last revised edition of The Intelligent Investor with a forward written by Warren Buffett who calls it "by far the best book on investing ever written". Zweig explains the enormous impact Benjamin Graham had on investing and why we should listen to him now.   WEALTHTRACK #1808 published on August 22, 2021 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wealthtrack/support

50 years ago, on August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon shocked the financial world by ending the convertibility of the dollar to gold, upending the monetary and currency exchange system that had been in place since 1944. This week Nick Sargen, author of Global Shocks, joins us to explain the consequences of that momentous decision which are still being felt today. WEALTHTRACK #1807 published on August 13, 2021. More Info: https://wealthtrack.com/multiple-asset-bubbles-50-years-off-the-gold-standard/ Global Shocks: An Investment Guide for Turbulent Markets: https://amzn.to/3AGasT3 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wealthtrack/support

Part 1 of 2 Warren Buffett, the Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway is considered to be one of the greatest investors of all time. He has become an American icon dispensing investment wisdom and commentary over the years through his annual shareholder letters and meetings where he and his long-time business partner Charlie Munger answer questions for hours on end about a wide range of topics. An industry has developed around Buffett of investment clubs, newsletters, and books mostly focused on his investment decisions.  However, there is another side to Buffett which has been deeply studied and researched by this week’s WEALTHTRACK guest... Buffett as a business manager worth emulating.  We’ll be joined by Lawrence Cunningham, whose official title is a Professor of Law at George Washington University, but over the years he has become an acknowledged authority on corporate governance, corporate culture, and corporate law. He teaches business-related courses that span these fields.  Cunningham has aut

Part 2 of 2 What does history have to teach us about the current geopolitical, economic, and investment environment?  A great deal according to renowned historian Niall Ferguson.    His thesis is that applying the lessons of history to contemporary events can result in better investment outcomes.  One of the biggest, most consequential debates among economists, investors, and policymakers is over inflation. Is the recent global surge in prices a temporary blip from economies reopening from pandemic shutdowns, or is it a more lasting development with serious consequences? In this week’s program we pick up on that point - I asked Ferguson about the opposite view, that the pandemic shock and burden of record amounts of debt could actually impede growth and be disinflationary.  Ferguson shares his views on this, along with his thoughts on China, cryptocurrencies, and the new world of decentralized finance. WEALTHTRACK # 1804 broadcast on July 23, 2021 More Info: https://wealthtrack.com/r

If there is one adjective we have heard repeatedly in the last year and a half it is “unprecedented”. It has been applied to describe the amount of monetary and fiscal stimulus that’s been poured into the economy. It has been used in relation to the pandemic lockdowns and reopenings, and the record-breaking runs in stock, bonds, real estate, and commodity markets. Is there no historical precedent for these events?  Who better to ask than this week’s WEALTHTRACK guest, Niall Ferguson? Ferguson has studied booms, busts, the rise and fall of empires, the power of social networks, and catastrophes of all sorts including plagues and pandemics?     He is one of the world's leading historians and an influential commentator on contemporary politics and economics. Ferguson is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, along with being the author of numerous articles, and a regular columnist for Bloomberg

Part 2 of 2 When legendary value investor Jeremy Grantham turned 80 he made two resolutions: “to be prepared to write a cheque up to the limits of your ability”, and to “say what you think you should say to everybody”.  He is following through on both commitments. He is saying what he thinks he should say to everybody including us, to our benefit!  In the first of our two-part interview last week, Grantham warned we are in a bubble of “epic proportions” in the U.S. stock markets, bond market, and global real estate and commodity markets.  In this week’s show,  Grantham shares his views on climate change, why he calls it the “Race of Our Lives” and how he is investing to combat it.   WEALTHTRACK #1802 broadcast on 07-09-21 More Info: https://wealthtrack.com/jeremy-grantham-shares-his-views-on-climate-change-why-he-calls-it-the-race-of-our-lives/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wealthtrack/support

Part 1 od 2 We are celebrating the launch of WEALTHTRACK’s 18th season on public television this week! We feel so fortunate to serve you. When WEALTHTRACK launched in July of 2005 our mission was to help our audience and ourselves build financial security to last a lifetime through disciplined, long-term, diversified investing. We vowed to seek out the best minds in the financial business to guide us. This week’s guest is unquestionably one of them. We’ll be joined by legendary value investor Jeremy Grantham, Co-Founder of the global investment management firm, GMO, Grantham is known for his prescient calls about market extremes and game-changing turning points. I will add that being far out of consensus is never popular. He saw the tech stock bubble inflating in 1997, three years before it actually burst. It was an early call that cost GMO half of their asset allocation book of business at the time. In the late 2000’s he warned of the developing subprime mortgage and credit bubble and came close to calling t

For financial historians and serious market observers, the current era has all the signs of a developing market bubble.  Money is abundant, a wide range of financial assets have risen to record or near-record levels, and enormous amounts of money are flowing into stocks. Private equity funds are flourishing and bonds continue to attract huge sums.   Demand for residential real estate is soaring as are home prices. And despite recent dramatic declines, innovative products such as digital currencies have appreciated at breathtaking speed. Speculative trading by individual investors has also increased as a new growing community of online traders has emerged as a potent market-moving force.  The combination of all of these forces caused me to reach out to this week’s WEALTHTRACK guest.  We’ll be joined by Jason Zweig, a leading financial journalist who since 2008 has written the widely read The Intelligent Investor column for The Wall Street Journal. Zweig will share his analysis of the curr