Tag Archive for: investment commentary

Introducing Susan to marketing managers at investment and wealth management firms

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White papers, articles, and investment commentary are great marketing tools. But it’s not easy for your firm’s experts to find the time—or maybe the skill—to turn their insights into compelling prose. I can help. I can interview your subject matter experts, review research materials, and write a piece your company can publish under its name. If you prefer, I can edit your draft. Or even teach you how to do it yourself.

You may benefit from my writing, editing, or training services if you are a marketer or communicator for

  • Investment managers—especially if you’re marketing to financial advisors
  • Wealth managers
  • Vendors to any of the above

What you want to write–and how I can help

If you are bursting with ideas, I can turn them into

  • White papers
  • Articles
  • Market or investment performance commentary—commentary may be based on interviews or on attribution analysis and other materials provided by you

If you want to write a piece—or improve your draft—you have several options. You can hire me to

  1. Interview your experts and write your piece
  2. Turn source materials you provide into a polished piece
  3. Use a combination of methods 1 and 2

When you contact me, ask for the graphic of my typical writing process. You’ll get a better idea of how we can work together.

 

How you’ll benefit from working with me

  • Your content will attract a bigger audience because the value you provide will be highlighted in reader-friendly text.
  • You receive your finished product quickly and on schedule. Having worked as a staff reporter for a weekly trade publication, I understand the importance of deadlines.
  • You don’t have to explain yourself in endless detail because I understand your industry. I’m a CFA charterholder who can use language as a financial professional and a journalist.

Contact me today to learn more! You can also check my testimonials on LinkedIn.

 

Boost your writers’ skills

Want to help your subject-matter experts and writers deliver better content? Take advantage of my writing workshops. I’ve presented “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read” to CFA societies across the U.S. and Canada. I’ve also spoken about “Writing Effective Emails and Letters” and developed customized writing workshops for corporate clients.

This post was updated on Dec., 19, 2013

How do you define outperformance by stock funds?

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Portfolio managers want to outperform their benchmarks. There’s no question in my mind about this. But how much of an advantage do you need before you can claim outperformance?

Outperformance for stocks

To keep things simple, let’s focus on portfolios investing in stocks.

Is it okay to claim outperformance if your return exceeds the benchmark’s by more than 1 basis point (0.01%), 25 bps, 50 bps, or 100 bps?

Or should the margin be calculated relative to the benchmark’s return? After all, exceeding the benchmark’s return by 26 basis points (0.26%) looks better when the benchmark returns 0.01% than when it returns 45%.

Please answer the poll in the right-hand column of this blog. I’ll report on the results in my February e-newsletter.

Diverse opinions on “outperform”

I’m literal-minded. To me, a fund “outperforms” when it beats its index by the tiniest margin, though I doubt that I’d crow about that. However, asset management companies often report such returns as “in line with” or “closely tracking” the benchmark. The concerns of their legal or compliance departments probably influence this decision.

Here’s one example:

…the Wasatch Heritage Fund posted a return of 6.22% for the quarter. These results closely tracked those of the Fund’s benchmark, the Russell 1000 Value Index, which returned 6.78% over the same period.

Meanwhile, some managers–including the manager of the Wasatch Global Science & Technology Fund–question whether their returns should be compared to benchmarks.

Typically, the first paragraph of our quarterly letter to shareholders includes a statement regarding the Fund’s performance relative to its benchmark. We intend to move away from this approach beginning with this letter, as
we think the industry norm of tracking performance versus a broad index on a quarter-by-quarter basis distracts from the Fund’s long-term investment strategy. Our new mantra, forged by the pressure of the 2008–2009 credit crunch, is that we must invest “away from the market” as we attempt to deliver exceptional long-term returns.

I’m looking forward to learning what YOU think.

Dec. 27. Oops. I made a miscalculation in discussing the Heritage example, so I’m deleting the offending sentence thanks to David Lufkin.


Reader challenge: What’s the writing lesson from Physicians Mutual?

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You’re getting smarter about writing investment and financial communications, so I’m giving you a challenge: watch this video and then tell me what lesson it teaches writers.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Guest post: “What’s a tomato got to do with getting your fund discovered?”

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Mutual fund marketing is the focus of this week’s guest post by Dan Sondhelm. His post originally appeared on SunStar Strategic’s FundFactor blog.

What’s a tomato got to do with getting your fund discovered?

by Dan Sondhelm

Have you ever grown a tomato? If so, you know it’s not as simple as just putting a seed in the ground. In fact, passionate tomato farmers often start their seedlings indoors several weeks before planting season. Once outside, they need a good dose of sunshine and the right amount of water, not to mention great soil, shelter from chill winds and a strong trellis. You get the idea.
Growing a fund requires similar specialized knowledge and attention. According to Morningstar, in the open-end mutual fund industry of over $7 trillion assets, the top 10 fund firms hold 58%. That’s one big tomato! The next 40 hold 28%, while you and the remaining 600 plus firms compete for the remaining 14%. And, fund flows follow a similar pattern.
In the past few weeks, I’ve been privileged to speak on panels addressing distribution for smaller funds. I’ve met dozens of smaller fund managers there. Some are managers with unique investment processes. Others are experts in their asset classes, still others have amazing performance. Yet, they’re frustrated by lack of fund flows, anxious about mounting expenses and hungry for ideas about how to get the recognition they deserve in this crowded market place. So, how do you differentiate your fund from the others and get discovered?

Like growing tomatoes, gaining visibility – and resultant sales – requires commitment. As a small firm, you’re competing for attention with firms who spend significant dollars on their marketing activities, both in the advisor market and at the retail level. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for TV commercials, glossy magazine style annual reports and sponsorships with major distribution platforms and public venues.

Making the Commitment to Grow.
Distribution is at the heart of the potential for success. But just getting on platforms is the equivalent of tossing your tomato seed in the dirt and hoping for the best. Successful distribution lies in nurturing the effort. Like adding water and light, protecting from the frost and spraying for bugs, growing your fund requires consistent attention. You have to ensure you’re in the right channels, and that advisors and investors know you, know your people and know your products.

We understand smaller firms are often made up of a handful of people. Not all firms can afford a wholesaling staff or have resources to sustain a significant marketing presence. So, how do you make it work?

Design a Distribution Strategy.
Write it down. Make someone accountable for each step. We all know that what gets measured gets done. Traditional marketing wisdom says you must address the four P’s: Product, Price, Place (Platforms), Promotion. This applies to fund distribution, too. But what about a fifth P, Performance? It’s true, not many investors will flock to a poor performing fund, but relying solely on performance is risky business. While performance may get you your 15 minutes of fame, performance chasers will drop your fund for the next hot item if they don’t really understand your investment philosophy and process or know the fund manager well.

Cover all the bases
Product

• Build a story around your investment process that highlights the opportunities of your asset class and process and differentiates you from your competition.
• Add personality by discussing your current sector strategy and top investment selections. Let investors know about the good decisions you’ve made in the past and the fund’s current positioning.
• And of course, commit to excellent performance.
Price
• Set competitive pricing – You’ll notice I didn’t say lower than average. Many managers think this is important, but many funds with lower-than-average expenses don’t sell. What does matter is how your fund compares overall to other funds that are selling.
• Set your share classes so that you are priced appropriately for the advisor types you are targeting. The preponderance of flows are going to no-load and load-waived shares. For smaller firms without existing relationships or sales teams, no load may be the way to go.
Place (Platforms)
• Select the distribution channels and share classes that make sense for your fund.
• Get on Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, and Pershing – these are the most appropriate for smaller firms with limited distribution. Then, establish a relationship with your account manager, who can guide you through the maze of opportunities available to reach platform advisors.
• Be realistic in your expectations. If you have no prior relationships with wirehouse firms, you are too small to meet their criteria and/or there is no demand from their representatives, it’s unlikely they will add you to their platform in the short term.
Promotion
• Establish relationships with advisor firm research teams to get and stay on their radar. Where applicable, find out and work toward meeting criteria to be placed on preferred/recommended lists.
• Take advantage of marketing opportunities offered by some platforms. Develop a strong relationship with your account manager so you are alerted to and aware of opportunities for proprietary mailings or sponsorship opportunities at local and national events.
• Consider Virtual Wholesaling – use third party endorsements and technology to communicate with advisors in a structured and timely way to attract and retain investors, while building your brand.
o Proactively engage the media. Let the financial press sell you; third-party endorsed news coverage in national and local business publications adds credibility.
o Leverage third-party endorsed reprints in your other sales and marketing efforts, in print, through social networks and on your website.
o Keep your website up to date with timely commentary and news coverage. Regularly post themes about your fund and the good decisions you made. If your site doesn’t allow you to add timely information, upgrade it. Advisors won’t come back if there is nothing new.
o Communicate. Regular communication with advisors is critical in order to keep your story top of mind. Consistently offering useful, meaningful information will position you in their minds as the expert on certain topics.
o Use monthly email newsletters to drive advisors to new content and fresh ideas on your website such as recent commentaries, Webinar promotions and media coverage.
o Host Webinars or conference calls for advisors on a quarterly basis.
o Take advantage of platform outreach programs to stay in front of their advisors; many of these are free.
o Develop a social media strategy to distribute timely information in the networks investors frequent. Social media allows you to listen to shareholder concerns and become part of the conversation.
Growth will happen if you take the right steps. Like a tomato, the more care and attention you provide, the greater the likelihood for success. Healthy growth depends a great deal on creating relationships. With today’s email, internet and social media opportunities, expanding your reach is easier than ever before. Make a commitment to building strong relationships where advisors and investors can learn to trust and respect your firm and its expertise.
Dan Sondhelm provides personalized services to money management firms and service providers, REITs, public companies and pre-IPO companies seeking to attract and retain investors. Dan is also the executive editor of the company’s online blog, Fund Factor.

Six tips for snaring reporters with your market commentary

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Chief investment officers, strategists, and portfolio managers sink a lot of energy and brain power into their quarterly market commentary. If you’re among them, your return on investment should include greater visibility in the media.

Here are six tips to help you achieve your publicity goal.

1. Publish your investment commentary – or at least some brief observations – prior to quarter-end.

Most newspapers publish their quarterly stock and bond market report the day after quarter-end. So they must conduct their interviews before asset management firms receive final benchmark returns and other analytical inputs. Journalists can’t wait for you to polish your commentary. Consider writing a first draft of your quarterly commentary two to three weeks prior to quarter-end, so you can send it to reporters on the timetable that works best for them, not you.

In calm markets, you may only need to drop in benchmark returns after quarter-end. This was often the case when I wrote economic as well as stock and bond market commentary with Columbia Management’s chief investment strategist. Even in volatile times, you’re unlikely to find yourself discarding all of your pre-quarter-end writing.

2. “Think different.”

Just as Apple successfully, although ungrammatically, markets itself as different from other computers, you should stress to reporters how your views differ from other investment commentators.

This is easiest when, for example, the crowd fears inflation, but you foresee deflation. But even when you agree with the consensus, you can distinguish yourself with a striking analogy, statistic, or sound bite.

3. Make it easy for reporters to grasp your market commentary’s main points.

Just like you, journalists are busy, so they may only skim your headline or first paragraph. Don’t title your piece “Fourth Quarter 2010 Commentary” or lead with “During the fourth quarter, the S&P 500 returned X.X%…” Instead, smack the reader with your most interesting point. For example, “Trading volume indicators suggest a less volatile 2011.”

Follow your provocative headline with a brief summary of your main points. A few bullet points may make your introduction easier to scan.

4. Connect electronically with reporters.

Your commentary will get stale if you wait to send a professionally printed copy via U.S. mail. This is why I recommend email and social media.

As for email, you’ll get better results if you ask reporters’ permission before adding them to your quarterly email. Plus, a phone call gives you the opportunity to start a personal relationship with the reporters by asking about their “beats” (the topics they cover) and what kinds of sources they need.

Social media are also a great way to circulate your commentary. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook can get broader exposure for your compliance-approved material with little additional effort or legal risk.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to post your commentary as your Linked In status update, as I explained in “How can I post my investment commentary on LinkedIn?”

5. Find reporters who are looking for you.

Your professional association may have a media relations manager who fields requests from reporters looking for sources. Wearing my reporter hat, I’ve often contacted the CFA Institute, Financial Planning Association, and National Association of Personal Financial Advisors for help finding sources. Some associations send email blasts to any members who sign up. Others hand-pick interviewees. Some handle PR locally; others work best at the national level. Contact your professional association to ask how its PR activities work.

6. Make it easy for reporters to work with you.

  • Reply promptly to journalists’ inquiries. They’re almost always in a hurry.
  • Give your full name, title, company name, city, state, and phone number in your emails to ensure any article gets your details right. This also makes it easy for the reporter to contact you with follow-up questions.
  • Listen carefully to reporters’ questions before answering them.
  • Offer to email related materials to the reporter. Sometimes a graph or table can earn you bigger play in an article.

What are you waiting for? You can start today by posting your firm’s third quarter commentary as your LinkedIn status.

Image courtesy of Sujin Jetkasettakorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Four lessons from Wasatch Funds on reporting underperformance

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Have you ever struggled to report your investment strategy’s underperformance to your clients or customers? Let’s look at what you can learn from how one firm tackled this challenge.

Wasatch Funds’ President Jeff Cardon did such a great job in “Perspective on Performance: Energy Trends and Their Impact on Wasatch Returns” in summer 2008 that I’ve held onto his article, waiting for an opportunity to share with you.

Cardon’s commentary illustrates the approach that I recommend to portfolio managers who underperform.

  1. Admit your underperformance. Don’t ignore it and hope no one notices.
  2. Put it in context. For example, one quarter of underperformance shouldn’t matter for a portfolio that has consistently delivered positive returns and beat its benchmark.
  3. Explain what caused the underperformance. Discuss whether it’s simply a matter of your style being out of favor or you were early into a sector or whether you’ve made some sort of error.
  4. Say what you’re going to do about your performance. When your investors believe that you’ve developed a good response, they’re more likely to stick with you.

Let’s look at how Cardon’s article illustrates these lessons.

1. Admit your underperformance

“…in recent periods, we have struggled to stay ahead of our benchmarks,” says Cardon in the second sentence of his article. He’s open about the fact that the fund complex’s products have underperformed. However, the focus of this article, which appeared in the firm’s Summer 2008 newsletter, The Wasatch Advisor,  is to explain why this happened.

2.  Put weak performance in context

Cardon does this by emphasizing his firm’s consistent investment philosophy and process. He also notes, “This strategy has produced considerable success over the years.”

“Through periods of market volatility and changing market trends, our goal at Wasatch remains steady: to deliver good long-term returns using our time-tested, fundamental approach to stock selection,” says Cardon in his first sentence. A key part of how Wasatch seeks this goal, says Cardon, is by “capturing earnings growth.”

Cardon stresses the firm’s success, even in tough times, in capturing earnings growth in its traditional areas of strength: the health care, consumer discretionary, information technology, and financials sectors. “Our thorough and collaborative investment process has continued to deliver above benchmark performance in these core sectors,” says Cardon.

Cardon reinforces this positive perspective on Wasatch’s core capabilities with graphs comparing Wasatch Small Cap Growth Fund’s performance in these sectors vs. that of their Russell 2000 counterparts. Adding a visual element is a good idea because some people absorb information better through pictures than words.

3. Explain what caused the underperformance

So, how could Wasatch underperform if it was doing such a great job in the sectors mentioned above? Because those sectors underperformed the rest of the market, which was led by the energy sector. But energy stocks didn’t meet the firm’s criteria for a good investment. “We clearly missed an opportunity in energy, but we were uncomfortable straying from our investment discipline,” says Cardon.

4. Say what you’re going to do about your underperformance

Acknowledge investor frustration. Cardon says, “If our underweight position in energy leaves you feeling uncomfortable, you may find it appropriate to supplement your Wasatch investment with a targeted investment in the energy sector.”

However, Wasatch is sticking with its investment discipline, says Cardon, because it expects “the market to return to equilibrium.” This gives readers hope for a better future.

Consistently tackling underperformance

Wasatch has another nice, although shorter, discussion of underperformance in its Summer 2010 newsletter (which isn’t online as I write this, or I’d give you a link). Again the firm’s message stresses the consistency of how the funds are managed.

Image courtesy of Goldy at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Guest post: “How Seeking Alpha Can Build Your Professional Reputation”

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SeekingAlpha.com looks like a great way for investment professionals to share their opinions and market themselves. So when I met Geoff Considine and learned he’d done exactly that, I asked him to guest-blog about his experience.

How Seeking Alpha Can Build Your Professional Reputation

by Geoff Considine

Writing for SeekingAlpha.com has helped me develop my professional reputation and gain attention for my quantitative modeling software and consulting services. Financial professionals can build a substantial brand from SeekingAlpha.  Quite a few writers, advisors, consultants, and others have developed enormous reach on the basis of SeekingAlpha.  I am certainly not even among the most successful.

If I can do it, so can you, especially if you follow the six rules I give at the end of this article.

My experience publishing on SeekingAlpha.com

I have been writing for SeekingAlpha.com since January 2006.  At that time, I had fairly recently launched a software tool for financial advisors and individual investors and I was trying to drum up some attention.  All in, I have written 127 articles on SeekingAlpha.com, even though I have not written for them since September 2009.  I have written a lot over the last year, but I have developed a sufficiently deep audience that I have only been writing for advisor-focused publications such as Advisor Perspectives.  I am quite confident that I never would have been able to write for these professional publications without the experience and reputation gained from writing for SeekingAlpha.com.

Quantext, my small company, gets about 100,000 hits a month on its website in a good month.  I sell software and e-books, along with doing consulting on analytical models for portfolio management and asset allocation.  The only marketing that I have ever done for my business is writing—and SeekingAlpha.com was the only place that I published articles (aside from my own website) in the first couple of years of building out the software side of my business.

Once something is published on a site like SA, people will go back and look at what you have said in the past—it’s a fairly permanent record.  This can be great when your thinking is validated, but can pose reputational risk if you make some outlandish statement.  Back in 2007, for example, one of The Motley Fool’s best-known columnists came out and said that he risk measures such as Beta and volatility just didn’t matter at all, not matter what all the academics say.  His timing was very unfortunate.  Investors who ignored standard risk measures are likely to have suffered disproportionately large losses in the subsequent decline.  This type of reputational risk is quite easy to avoid if you stay away from making assertions in articles that strain common sense or that fly in the face of all standards of practice.

One of the ways to build credibility with articles is to identify thought leaders with whom your thinking is consistent.  One of my early articles looked at Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio using my portfolio analysis software.  My software identified a number of ways that Berkshire’s portfolio looked very attractive.  If my analysis had suggested that Warren Buffett didn’t know what he was doing, I would have had something of a problem.  I have also analyzed portfolios and strategies proposed by David Swensen (head of Yale’s endowment), Mohammed El-Erian (co-head of PIMCO), and Jeremy Grantham.

The previous paragraph notwithstanding, I am not suggesting that writers steer away from controversy.  If you can make a really solid case for a contrarian theme and publish it in an open forum, you can really stake out territory for your thought leadership.  One of my major early themes that I wrote about in 2006-2007 was that there were a number of really robust reasons to believe that market volatility would skyrocket.  This theme in a number of my SA articles got the attention of an editor at Kiplinger’s and resulted in an interview that appeared in the magazine in early 2008.  As the market conditions have evolved, my writing on this theme has continued to get me very positive attention.

If SA is so great, why don’t I publish much there anymore?  The answer is that I have found that my audience is mainly professional advisors, there are better publications to reach this targeted audience, and I get paid to write these days.  There is a significant opportunity cost for me to write a piece for SA.  If I have more time on my hands in the future, I would certainly put more pieces in SA.

How YOU can thrive on SeekingAlpha.com

There are a few guidelines that I would offer for financial professionals who want to use Seeking Alpha to develop their professional brands:

1)     Make sure that you have something to say, and good arguments to support your ideas

2)     Craft your writing carefully

3)     Use feedback on your articles to develop your writing style

4)     Respond to comments—be an active member of the community

5)     Write regularly and consistently

6)     Learn your special niche

Seeking Alpha can be a powerful channel for reaching your audience, but you need a long-term strategy for how to tap this channel.  If you simply plan to write one article, SA won’t do much for you.  If you write a consistent series of articles that is well articulated and make sense, SA can be enormously powerful.  When I started writing there, I thought of SA as a somewhat narrow channel for getting my ideas out there.  Whether or not I was correct then I am not sure, but this is certainly not the case today.  SA has enormous reach.

Great blog posts don’t matter…

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…if people don’t read them. As the saying goes, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Don’t count on readers for your financial advice or investment services blog posts to come to your blog. Grow your audience by making your content available the way your readers prefer.

A client recently reinforced this lesson for me. She said, “Susan, I love those links you post on LinkedIn!” I was surprised. This client had declined my offer to send her my e-newsletter, which is the main way my clients read my blog posts. However, my content developed greater appeal when delivered via LinkedIn, a way that suits her style. Linking to my blog posts in my LinkedIn status updates is a bigger success than I’d realized.

Here are some ways you can make your blog posts available to satisfy your readers’ preferences.

1. LinkedIn status updates. I explain how to post links in “Reader question: How can I share my investment commentary on LinkedIn?”

2. LinkedIn groups. If you’ve found a LinkedIn group that gets good traffic, then share your post there.

3. E-newsletter. An e-newsletter is a great way to package your blog posts for readers who’ll never visit a blog or use an RSS feed.

4. Other social media: Twitter, Facebook, and more. You can post links to your blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites much as you would on LinkedIn. Of course, link-posting will reach a point of diminishing returns. Figure out which sites yield your best results, and then focus on them.

You may find that more of your prospects are on Facebook than Twitter or other social media sites.

5. Guest posts. Appearing as a guest on someone else’s blog is another way to get your content seen. While many blogs want original content for their guest spots, some don’t. You can learn more in “How to guest-blog on personal finance or investments, Part I: Your approach” and “Part II Blogs that accept posts from financial advisors.”

If you’re not using any of these methods, it’s time to re-think your approach to blogging.

Introverts, steal this idea for your next conference!

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Conferences can be shy financial advisors’ worst nightmares. You spend so much time among so many strangers. You feel intimidated if many attendees seem to know one another. As an introvert, I feel your pain. My shyness inspired an idea that may help outgoing as well as shy financial professionals.

Create a provocative badge.
“If I can’t strike up conversations about my professional services, can I make people ask me about them?”

This is the badge that helped me meet people despite my being an introvert.

That’s the question I asked myself before I attended the CFA Institute’s annual conference in Boston. So I created a homemade badge to spark conversation. My badge, printed on bright yellow paper and slipped inside a name tag holder, said “Ask me about top 10 tips for investment commentary.”

You can customize your badge to use any good conversation starter.

Offer an incentive.
Everybody likes to get something valuable for free, so offer a free report, consultation, or other benefit to the people who ask about your badge. At the CFA Institute conference, attendees who asked about my badge could give me their business card to receive a free special report via email. It was a win-win situation. They got tips honed by my investment commentary presentations to CFA societies across the U.S. and Canada. I got the chance to deepen my relationship with them.

Note: I tweaked this post on May 30, 2013.

Shy/Bold image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Poll: Should you make investment predictions that can backfire?

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The investment strategies of Bill Gross, founder and co-chief investment officer of PIMCO, influence the asset allocations of investment professionals around the world.  Should he also influence your approach to your market commentary?

“Vigilante on the move,” a profile of PIMCO that appeared in The Economist, got me thinking with the following paragraph.

“Some colleagues might welcome a lower profile for Mr Gross, whose utterances occasionally backfire. In a typically punchy commentary in January he recommended avoiding British government debt, which was ‘resting on a bed of nitroglycerine’. But gilts failed to explode, and PIMCO was forced to reverse course.”

When you make investment predictions, you’re bound to be wrong some of the time.

Is this embarrassment something that you should avoid at all costs by shunning predictions and strong opinions? Some managers hedge their bets with wording such as “a continued recovery is more likely than a double-dip recession, however….” Or, should you embrace controversy?

What strategy will help you most with clients, prospects, and referral sources?

Please answer the poll that will appear in the right-hand column of this blog until I take it down next month. I’ll comment on the results in my September e-newsletter. Or you can leave comments below.

Poll question

Clients and prospects will respond best when asset managers’ market commentary…

  • Never makes predictions
  • Makes qualified predictions that give them an “out”
  • Sometimes makes predictions
  • Always expresses at least one strong opinion
  • None of the above (Please leave a comment)