ETF Addicts to Get Fill at Year’s Biggest Event

Fee wars, actively managed ETFs, new products are among the topics addressed; featured speakers include Jack Brennan and James Grant

A screenshot of the InsideETFs conference home page. A screenshot of the InsideETFs conference home page.

The world’s largest gathering of advisors, investors and service providers focused on exchange-traded products opens Sunday in sunny Florida where the temperatures should be about 80 degrees but where discussions of “hot” relate strictly to investments.

That is because all the usual subjects on the minds of investment conferees—generating income in a low-rate environment, managing volatility, promising international markets—are the subjects discussed at the three-day Inside ETFs conference.

Yet all is seen through the prism of many investment connoisseurs’ favorite investment vehicle—the tradable, transparent, thrifty and tax-friendly products that come in every imaginable flavor these days.

ETF addicts, who often pride themselves on their miserly approach to investment costs, will likely be anticipating the address given by the Vanguard Group’s Jack Brennan on Monday.

The chairman emeritus of Vanguard, a key sponsor of the event, plans to address a perennial question in his presentation—how low can costs go?—in addition to examining trends such as product proliferation and the emergence of actively managed ETFs.

And a closing keynote by the cerebral James Grant should keep investors and advisors in their chairs till the conference’s Tuesday afternoon finale. The publisher of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer will explore the effects of loose monetary policy and the rise of ETFs on the fixed-income market.

In between and throughout, topics that keep ETF investors awake at night, or at least supercharged by day—the soundness of underlying indexes, commission-free ETF trading platforms, ETFs in 401(k) plans, new products—will all be addressed. And AdvisorOne will be tweeting, blogging and covering these issues as the conference progresses.

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Check out AdvisorOne’s InsideETFs 2013 enhanced landing page for complete conference coverage.

About the Author
Gil Weinreich, AdvisorOne

Gil Weinreich, AdvisorOne

Gil Weinreich has been the editor of Research magazine since 1997. During his editorship, the magazine, which reaches some 90,000 investment advisors, has gained broad acceptance within the wirehouse advisor community. Research has also won the prestigious award for Excellence in Financial Journalism conferred by the New York Society of Certified Public Accountants (NYSSCPA) in each of the seven years from 2003 to 2010. Gil himself won the first two of those awards for a pathbreaking column he wrote in 2003-2004 called “The Ethical Advisor.”

At Research, Gil has participated as a speaker, panelist or moderator at numerous industry conferences — from the World Series of ETFs to the Retirement Income Industry Association to various broker-dealer conferences; he’s lectured on ethics at Credit Lyonnais and keynoted at Dalbar’s financial professional conference.

Prior to Research, Gil worked as an international news reporter at Voice of America (VOA), where he wrote news for VOA broadcasts, mainly on the Africa and Mideast desks, and covered international news events. He produced live news shows, documentaries and feature programs, and won a journalism award for his coverage of breaking events in the Middle East. Earlier in his career, he worked at U.S. News and World Report in Washington, D.C., where he produced the weekly letters page.

Gil’s first book — on a non-financial topic — was published in 2010, prompting appearances on the Michael Medved show and other national radio programs.

Gil received his Master’s degree at American University in Washington, D.C., where he studied international relations. He earned his Bachelor’s degree at U.C. Berkeley, in political science.

Gil and his wife Nedra and their children live in Los Angeles’s Westside.

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