Market Insights

Disruption and innovation are the very fabric of the American economy. So it’s little wonder that investors get excited about disruptive trends.

But once in a while, it’s worth taking a pause to put current disruption and innovation in perspective. Not only because the statistics can be eye popping, but because they help investors see the bigger picture, and take a long term view with stocks.

With that in mind, we offer a few short, simple statistics that put a few recent innovative and disruptive trends in perspective. The innovations are well known, but the statistics offer perspective on how far the trends have come, and how far they can still push forward.

It’s now been a year since COVID-19 shuttered many businesses, forced stay-at-home orders for Americans, and upended every sense of normalcy. As we cross that one-year anniversary, Dana Investment CEO Mark Mirsberger reflected on the year, what it meant for asset management businesses, and what it might mean going forward.

If there were ever a year to have a reflective conversation with clients, 2020 is it. From the virus, to market volatility to election uncertainty, the year has been filled with tensions. The end of the year provides a natural opportunity to reflect on those issues and make both a portfolio - and a client relationship - stronger.

If you’re an advisor going through year-end meetings with clients, we wanted to provide a few questions, suggestions and resources that may help your clients reflect on 2020 and stimulate deeper conversations. We know the vast majority of advisors will cover these issues in some shape or fashion, and have the pulse on their own clients more than anyone. But given how unusual 2020 has been, it never hurts to think of new ways to ask reflective questions.

In the spirit of sharing, here are a few items that may help you and your client reflect on a year of upheaval. We hope you find them useful heading into the new year:

In the past two weeks, investors got a lot more clarity on two of the largest clouds hanging over the market: the U.S. election and the coronavirus.

We now know who the next president is, and have a better idea (Georgia’s Senate election notwithstanding) of what the balance of power will look like in Washington D.C. And news that Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine has shown a high success rate offers hope that we may be on the path toward addressing the coronavirus pandemic and normalizing the economy, even if current infection spread is alarming.

In this brief Q&A, Dana portfolio managers Joseph Veranth and David Weinstein reflect on what the election and vaccine could mean for markets going forward

To say ESG has hit an inflection point would be putting it mildly. Flows into sustainable funds quadrupled to $21.4 billion in 2019. The first half of 2020 has nearly eclipsed that mark, with flows totaling $20.9 billion, according to Morningstar figures. But amid this surging demand, where do advisors fit?

As client demand for ESG strategies grows, advisors have a tough job ahead of them: finding a strategy that is suitable as a core equity holding. Without proper due diligence on fund construction, a strategy used as a core holding may expose a client to unintended risks.

The details are all in the portfolio construction process.

The financial crisis was painful for anyone working on Wall Street, but the period gets credit for improving at least one industry dynamic: The bar for effective communication from an asset manager has been significantly raised.

As markets plummeted, advisors, consultants, investment committees and other key fund decision makers demanded dialogue from their portfolio managers about the market collapse and what they planned to do going forward. The demand for increased communication continues today, and is an industry trend we applaud.

Advisors and consultants deserve shared insight from their investment managers, and an open forum for communication. In short, they deserve true partnership. We believe boutique asset managers are best positioned to deliver the partnership clients deserve.

As investor interest in ESG grows, so too are the number of ESG strategies to choose from. Already, 23 ESG funds have launched in 2020, and more than 20 others are in registration at the SEC, according to Morningstar.¹ This marks the sixth straight year of more than 20 launches.

With more fund launches, due diligence isn’t getting any easier. We believe one way advisors and other allocators can help their clients find the right strategy is to ask whether they want a fund that is directly engaging businesses to improve corporate policy around ESG issues.

Many ESG funds do not engage management teams on policies, but instead rely on ESG ratings to screen out non-ESG friendly companies and include companies with better ratings. That may well be enough for some clients.

ESG interest is growing and as asset flows follow, so too are the number of strategies dedicated to the space. For investment advisors, that makes the job of matching client objectives with the right strategy increasingly difficult.

In a recent Q&A session, Dana portfolio managers touched on the issue, and where their own ESG fund may – or may not – fit within a portfolio. A brief excerpt from the interview explains:

Growth or value? It’s a question advisors and allocators ponder at every potential turning point in the market cycle. But as the world emerges from a pandemic-induced lockdown, the new investment environment may favor neither.

Instead, we believe heavy tilts toward either style box could punish investors in the coming quarters. Here’s the short case for why:

Scarcity of Growth Has Created a Crowding Effect Among Growth Stocks

So far this year, growth has outperformed value substantially. If the Russell 1000 Growth and Russell 1000 Value Index ended the year where they were at in mid-May, the growth index would have outperformed its value counterpart by the widest level in any year since 1999.¹