Exchange is the event where financial services transforms from an industry into a community. Accordingly, VettaFi interviewed several strategists, giving them an opportunity to share their story and investment philosophy. Astoria Portfolio Advisors CEO and Founder John Davi offered his insights.
Astoria Portfolio Advisors
“We serve as an outsourced Chief Investment Officer firm to other independent RIAs,” Davi said, noting that Astoria provides ETF model solutions and back office capabilities. They also serve as subadvisors to two ETFs. One of those ETFs is the AXS Astoria Inflation Sensitive ETF (PPI). The other is the Astoria US Quality Kings ETF (ROE).
Davi on 2024 Outlook
Davi shared that his firm is more optimisitc on 2024 than they were on 2023. “The last two years you’ve had to deal with rampant inflation, a Fed that was hiking interest rates, at points in time in the last two years you had negative real rates.” As such, Astoria has made a number of strategic shifts, including overweighting equities and rotating out of market cap weighted indices into more equally weighted ones. “Within fixed income we’ve rotated out of treasuries and more into corporate bonds.” Davi also noted that his firm has trimmed back on alternatives.
Challenges Ahead
Despite the optimism, Davi noted that there are some challenges on the horizon. “The US economy is so strong right now, rate cuts are getting pushed further out.”
There have also been economic slowdowns in China that Davi sees not enough investors talking about. “There’s a lot of other stories besides the Magnificent 7. I would encourage advisors to not myopically think about just a few select growth stocks and think about other sectors and sizes and styles.” If markets are going to be healthy, they will need to broaden out beyond these seven stocks, according to Davi.
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