You already have a relationship with a
financial adviser or brokerage firm. Do you also need a service to manage a
portfolio of exchange-traded funds?
These days, many advisers and
financial firms are suggesting exactly that.
A class of uber-advisers
dubbed "ETF strategists" has arrived on the investing scene, seeking
to help individuals make smart choices among the nearly 1,600 easy-to-use and
generally low-cost ETFs listed in the U.S. Providers include units of big
brokerage firms and specialized wealth-management firms that direct billions of
dollars.
At the end of 2013, investment researcher Morningstar Inc. tracked
$96 billion in "ETF managed portfolios" spread across 648 different
strategies offered by 153 firms. (To be counted, at least 50% of each portfolio
had to be ETFs.) That asset figure may understate the influence of the ETF
strategists: Many of them also advise retirement plans and mutual funds, and
even sell their fund-trading "signals" to other advisers.
Click here
for the full article in the Wall Street Journal.