The Gift and the Curse of the Pandemic

Advisors are being faced with monumental decisions on how to stay relevant to their clients today and in the near future, just to keep things together.

Over the last decade there’s been a meaningful shift in the way retail investors consume investment advice.

Technology, Data and easily accessible Analytics have become readily available, for the savvy investor or even those that are somewhat interested in exploring the DIY route, never in history has investing been more accessible.

As EFTs continue to offer avenues to unbundle beta and alpha, there’s been a shift by the larger institutional investors to move their run of the mill beta strategies internally, beta is available everywhere and cost very little to access market returns. But alpha is different, inconspicuous, and requires greater expertise and specialization, for this reason, institutional investors are more likely to pay a premium for alpha strategies, i.e. the managers that have a distinct strategy that is likely to outperform market returns.

But how about retail investors, do they care much about achieving alpha or are they simply satisfied with generating market return…