Venerated Voices™ Q1 2023 Rankings

Advisor Perspectives, a leading publisher and ranked as the #1 eNewsletter for financial advisors by the Erdos & Morgan “FAMOUS” Study (2019-2022) has announced its Venerated Voices™ awards for commentaries published in Q1 2023. Rankings were issued in the following categories:

1. 1. Top 10 Venerated Voices™ by Commentary
   2. Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm
   3. Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Author
   4. Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm – Frequently Posted
   5. Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Author – Frequently Posted

The frequently posted categories require a minimum of three posts quarterly, whereas the first three categories require only one post quarterly. We added the two frequently posted categories to highlight and reward those authors and firms who post regularly.

The most popular topics in Q1 2023 among all commentaries were related to market risk, inflation, asset bubbles, and where to invest should a recession hit.

Leading the Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm category was Hussman Funds of Maryland, followed by Mauldin Economics of Florida. In third place was GMO of Boston, Massachusetts.

Among individual commentators, the most-widely read was Jeremy Grantham of GMO. In second place was John Hussman of Hussman Funds, followed by John Mauldin of Mauldin Economics in third place.

The most-widely read commentary in the first quarter of 2023, published on January 24th, was After a Timeout, Back to the Meat Grinder! by Jeremy Grantham of GMO. Grantham discussed the state of the market, the economic outlook for the future, and the uncertainty that lies ahead. He stated that market growth has been “crushed” and large losses have taken place, thereby completing the first step in bursting the economic bubble. While this downturn was to be expected, market valuations remain unusually high, making the market vulnerable to a significant correction and the next step in the bubble deflation more difficult to predict. Grantham explained:

Almost any pin can prick such supreme confidence and cause the first quick and severe decline. They are just accidents waiting to happen, the very opposite of unexpected. But after a few spectacular bear market rallies we are now approaching the far less reliable and more complicated final phase. At this stage housing markets, which are always slower to react, have not fully rolled over yet; neither has the economy gone into recession nor have corporate profits yet been severely hit. The length and depth of continued market decline from here depends on how precisely the deterioration from perfect conditions will play out.

Edge of the Edge took second place, written by John Hussman at Hussman Funds and published on March 21st. Hussman warned that the stock market is extremely overvalued due to excessive monetary stimulus and speculation. He suggested investors should be cautious and prepare for a market downturn, as the market conditions are like those that led to past market crashes, and advocated for the Fed to shrink its balance sheet as quickly as possible by rolling off securities once they mature.

In third place was How It Started/How It’s Going, by John Mauldin of Mauldin Economics, published on March 4th. Mauldin began by reviewing the sequence of events that led to the 2008 financial crisis and showed how it led to where we are today. He used the popular meme referenced in his title to illustrate how the Fed’s initial intentions of “aggressive, unprecedented intervention,” a.k.a. the “How It Started,” did not produce the intended results and led to more drastic intervention for a much longer period than originally anticipated, a.k.a. the “How It’s Going.” Mauldin warned that the Fed’s actions will end up distorting market incentives, and what started out as bad will be made worse.

Advisor Perspectives’ websites attracts more than 141,000 unique visitors per month, virtually all of them financial advisors serving high- and ultra-high net worth individuals. The company, which is part of VettaFi, publishes economic and market commentaries submitted by fund companies, advisors and independent research firms. In Q1 2023, over 400 such commentaries were published and made available through a daily newsletter, Research Perspectives, which the company emails to its subscribers.

Venerated Voices™ rankings were determined by the number of unique readers of each commentary, using data provided electronically by the third-party web analytics service Google Analytics. The data were normalized using the average score per month. Any participant is eligible to receive a quarterly award. Each firm and author is assigned a relative score based on unique pageviews, with a score of 100 equal to average quarterly readership.

Advisor Perspectives was founded in 2007 and is based in Lexington, Massachusetts. In October 2022, it was announced that Advisor Perspectives became a part of VettaFi. In addition to Research Perspectives, it publishes a widely read weekly newsletter, Advisor Perspectives, which contains original articles on the markets, the economy and practice management.

Advisor Perspectives will continue providing quarterly updates to its rankings, as well as issuing annual Venerated Voices™ awards.

The Top 10 Venerated Voices™ by Commentary

The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm

The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Author

The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Firm – Frequently Posted

The Top 25 Venerated Voices™ by Author – Frequently Posted