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The BlackRock CEO expects big institutional investors to set a clear tone on ESG. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has made no secret of his belief of the importance of ESG. In his annual letter to clients last year, he noted that the risks posed by climate change will lead to a ‘fundamental re-shaping of finance’. Speaking online as part of BlackRock’s 2021 market outlook, he said that this shift is as significant as anything he has ever seen in the industry. ‘In my 40-plus years of being in finance, I have witnessed two big changes,’ said Fink (pictured). ‘The first one was when I was young and I started in the mortgage industry. I saw what securitization was going to do to capital markets and how that was going to transform housing in America, and global capital markets. ‘I believe sustainability is going to be as transformational.’ Acceleration Fink added that the global environment at the start of 2021 only adds to the impetus. ‘I believe, more than ever before, that environmental issues and sustainability issues are going to become more and more dominant,’ said Fink. ‘That is because of the change in administration in the US and the emphasis that the Biden administration is going to place on climate and sustainability. ‘At the same time, the push in Europe is accelerating, and what’s even more extraordinary is that countries like China and Japan are pushing more towards sustainability.’ The realities of the current global pandemic are also raising awareness of how critical external risks are. ‘I think the healthcare risk that we’ve witnesses with Covid is not dissimilar to the healthcare risk we have to our planet,’ said Fink. ‘I think we are seeing greater and greater evidence of the physical risk of climate risk, and, if anything, in 2020 we saw an acceleration of interest worldwide from clients.’ Big bet What all of this adds up to, in Fink’s view, is that investors are rethinking the risk in their portfolios. And, in the indexing world, they are making more demands on providers. ‘With technology, we now have better ability to customize indices that have more sustainability structures,’ said Fink. His belief is that this is not going to be something that happens on the fringes, but in fact will be what drives the industry. ‘I believe that in coming years more of the large pension funds are only going to be investing in sustainable, customized indexes,’ said Fink. ‘I think you are going to see huge movement away from the standard indexes. ‘This is one of my real big bets going forward. Public funds are going to have a harder time to say that they are going to be investing in an index when the overall index is not able to meet the Paris Accord standards. I would urge every investor to be focusing on what this all means.’

Uma coisa é falar de toiros, outra coisa é entrar na arena com eles em pontas. Descodificando: Se quisermos ganhar dinheiro a sério com o negócio dos toiros, não podemos estar confortáveis na bancada da arena só a vê-los e a falar com os amigos sobre as melhores faenas que o toureiro vai rematando, é preciso sim descer da bancada, vestir o vestuário mais apropriado para o jogo do toureio e ir a jogo com o devido controlo do downside risk  senão, quando menos se espera, podemos levar com uma cornada que nos pode pôr definitivamente fora do jogo e numa mais atingirmos o break even do investimento, logo, depois, nem uma bezerra mansa podemos tourear.  Todo o toureiro de sucesso tem o seu corpo cravado de cicatrizes provocadas pelas cornadas, não fatais, que o jogo do toureio lhe foi causando, quais drawdowns, não fatais, que o investidor foi tomando ao longo do seu processo de investimento. Todo o investidor de sucesso apanha drawdowns, só que os melhores são aqueles que melhor conseguem controlar o downside risk e nem tanto a volatilidade ou o rácio de Sharpe. 

Posso estar equivocado, mas penso que o bankinter também atribuiu cashback (no primeiro ano) no pagamento de serviços. 

Vale a pena ou não consoante os teus objectivos. Para que quererias 2 PPRs? (Não estou a dizer que é bom ou mau, é mais para pensares...)   Aproveitar vantagens fiscais de entrada num, e o outro ser tipo fundo de investimento?   Combinar as estratégias de investimento dos dois? Tipo um ser mais de acções e outro de obrigações?    Qual a tua ideia?    

Can Cathie Wood keep ARK on top of the world? ARK's size and reputation may make it harder for the firm to match anything like the level of success it enjoyed in 2020. But CEO Cathie Wood has plans for new funds and backs herself to keep beating the market. How do you follow up a spell of unprecedented success? It is a question that many - from the Beatles to Bezos - have wrestled with, and one that now faces Cathie Wood as she comes off the kind of year most investors can only dream of. Before we look at the challenges Wood and her firm, ARK Invest, face following their tremendous 2020, it is worth briefly reflecting on just how successful the year was. Performance was incredible – five out of six of ARK’s ETFs posted returns of more than 100% - and flows of $20.6bn flooded in, according to data from Morningstar Direct. The firm went from having $3bn of ETF assets at the end 2019, to having $34bn by the end of 2020, making it the 11th largest issuer. When flows outside of US ETFs are taken into account, the firm has more $50bn. And the money has not stopped coming in 2021. Since the start of the year, the firm’s ETFs have taken in $5.7bn – behind only Vanguard and State Street - winning the company a place in the top 10 issuers by AUM, according to Bloomberg. In numbers Performance too has held up so far this year with the firm’s flagship ETF, ARK Innovation (ARKK), up 17.3% in the first 19 days of 2021, thanks in part to a strong run for top holding Tesla, a stock that powered the fund’s performance in 2020.  But how likely is that Wood (pictured above) and her team will get anywhere close to last year’s numbers and will the flood of money attracted by these outsized gains leave just as quickly as it came, if performance takes a turn for the worse? ‘I think ARK is going to keep growing. Are they going to continue 2020’s pace? History would tell us that’s unlikely,’ said Todd Rosenbluth, director of ETF and mutual fund research at CFRA. Recent research from Morningstar’s Jeff Ptak has shown that 80% of funds to have posted triple digit returns in a calendar year go on to post losses in the following three years. Ptak notes that many of the 18 funds and ETFs that posted 100% or more last year were tech-heavy, US growth funds – ARKK included – and the high price of many of the stocks in these portfolios leaves managers little room for mistakes in 2021. He writes:‘It’s true that these funds entered 2020 owning a basket of pricey stocks and despite that went on to bag big gains. And it’s also true that these managers could rotate away from these expensive stocks, opting for those that don’t cost as much to own. But if history has shown anything, it’s that it’s tough to thread that needle. And with these portfolios valued as dearly as they are -- roughly three and four times that of the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 indexes, respectively -- the margin for error is minuscule.’ Wood, for her part, does not seem troubled about the possibility of having a bad year, nor indeed is under the illusion that 2020’s triple digit returns will be the norm. In a December 2020 interview with Bloomberg, she said: ‘One bad year will not worry us. Our investment horizon is five years.’ She went on to say: ‘For the next five years, we believe our returns will compound at an annual rate of something in the low 20% range.’‘We still think there is a lot of room, or runway, ahead, because what we think is not well understood is exponential growth.’ In that same interview she acknowledged that Covid-19 was a significant factor in the performance of many of the fund’s holdings but reiterated her confidence that the firm’s portfolios could double investors’ money over the next five years, highlighting genome stocks as the most likely drivers of outsized gains. Size matters While Wood’s successful philosophy remains the same as last year, her ticket sizes will be far bigger than before, and this could prove a challenge. A good portion of ARK’s positions are mid-cap companies that the firm owns in a number of ETFs. Given ARK’s growth, it is not difficult to see the firm owning more than 20% stakes of a handful of companies by year-end. CFRA’s Rosenbluth noted that Wood may have to look at adding positions in the Faang stocks and Microsoft, which could support larger ticket sizes she will now have.  Wood told Bloomberg that she would reconsider owning the Fangs and Microsoft in a meaningful way, as a proxy for cash, if the return profile of her more favored picks dipped.  The emerging technology names – many of which served ARK so well in 2020 - also tend to be more volatile. That can create a wave-like performance profile that ETF investors might not be used to. If Tesla shares drop, or any other of ARK’s high conviction positions get cheap, it’s likely that Wood and her team will add shares instead of selling. That may be beneficial on a total return basis, but that’s not what some ETF investors might be used to. ‘It’s important to remember that these aren’t vanilla index products,’ Rosenbluth said. ‘Investors that understand the strategy will probably stay. But performance chasers don’t tend to be long term investors.’ And when it comes to flows, the firm does not enjoy many gates keeping investors in ARK’s funds. Unlike other ETF issuers in the top 10 – such as Vanguard and BlackRock - ARK doesn’t come to the ETF space with a built-in client base of retirement plans and mutual fund converts, the kind of steady money that can act as a buffer against hiccups in performance.  Competition Were ARK to stumble, there are no shortage of other ETF providers waiting to take advantage. Many of these firms invest in broadly similar themes to ARK but are unencumbered by the size issue that Wood now faces, or are less concentrated and so might prove less volatile. Global X, for example, has a deep lineup of thematic funds that invest in many of ARK’s favored stocks, but with more of a traditional index approach and smoother profile. Global X’s funds didn’t exhibit the same wild growth ARK had in 2020, but they had a good year overall. Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence ETF (BOTZ) - a competitor to the ARK Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF (ARKQ) - was up over 30% last year, for example. Rosenbluth said issuers like Global X are the ones to watch. ‘If there is a theme you want to have in your portfolio, Global X probably has a fund for it. Those funds might appeal to investors that want exposure to an idea but with a little more diversification.’ Stars align Still, 2020 was a banner year for Wood, and the way she manages and markets the ARK ETFs may help her navigate some of the aforementioned headwinds. Wood stands out as a star manager in an area that wasn’t supposed to have star managers. ETFs often have named portfolio managers, but investors rarely know who they are, let alone are drawn to the fund by them. Even within increasingly popular thematic ETFs, few other portfolio managers or firms have the name recognition of Wood and ARK. A star manager in a high performing, tax efficient fund is a hard proposition to beat. It is well marketed too, with a heavy presence on social media. Wood told Bloomberg: ‘We are punching so far above our weight because of social media… it has given us a competitive advantage.’ And ARK is striking while the iron is hot. Wood hinted to Bloomberg that the firm was exploring the launch of a strategy that would invest in private markets and might launch a fund focused on the United Nations Sustainability Goals. Already this year it has added to its lineup – it filed to launch a space-themed ETF last week – a move that could help keep new investors coming through the door.  After a year of world-beating returns, ARK is shooting for the moon.