Larry Berman is a Co-Founder of ETF Capital Management, (www.etfcm.com) and Prosper Experiential Media, (www.prosperexperiential.com).Over his 25 year career, Larry has worked for numerous top firms in New York, Boston, and Toronto. Prior to founding ETFCM (2006), he was Chief Technical Strategist and Managing Director for CIBC World Markets for nearly a decade where he was ranked as one of Canada’s “Top 3 Analysts” according to Brendan Wood institutional investor surveys. Larry is a Chartered Market Technician (CMT), a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charter holder, and is a US registered Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA). Larry graduated from York University with a BA in Economics and lectures on behavioural finance and technical analysis at colleges and universities. Larry is the primary author of the textbook for the technical analysis course offered by the Canadian Securities Institute (CSI). He is past President of the Canadian Society of Technical Analysts (www.csta.org), past Vice-Chairman (Americas) of the International Federation of Technical Analysts (www.ifta.org), and past President of the Market Technicians Association – where he currently sits on the board of the educational foundation (www.mtaef.org). Larry’s opinions frequently appear in the media, and he is featured weekly on BNN’s Berman’s Call.
We’re witnessing a shift towards a right-wing protectionist society. The election of Donald Trump will likely usher in dramatic change to the global economy. Global growth has been slowing for years and this will likely continue during the Trump Administration. The impact of a “hard” BREXIT is still to come, and European elections in 2017 may usher in more shifts to the right politically – putting additional pressure on Berlin. Insolvency of Italian banks is likely to lead to seeing Italy default on debt and leave the common currency in the coming years. China is slowing and its debt problems are increasing. Trade wars with the Trump Administration will likely compound China’s growth challenges. The US market is trading at historically unsustainable valuations and earnings expectations are unlikely to materialize. With the markets priced for perfection, what can you do about it?
Would you like to build portfolios that will help you through the challenging years ahead of low or even negative interest rates, and slower economic growth? Gold, Energy & Green Energy, Infrastructure, High Dividend, New Technologies, and currencies will all help you diversify some of the uncertainty, but for the future we’re facing your portfolio strategy will need to be smarter than ever before.
A new generation of indexing known as “Smart beta” or “factor-based” investing harnesses the power of technology, and ETF innovation, to deliver some of the strategies that were once the domain of expensive hedge funds – but at a fraction of the cost. Although they can come at somewhat of a premium to plain vanilla ETFs, they do promise to help improve your returns or lower your risk compared with the broad market. Like any investing, knowing what you’re buying is the key, and not all smart beta approaches are the same. Larry will show you how to evaluate the different types of smart ETFs; examining both the pros and cons. He will identify a number of top-performing smart-ETFs that are designed to provide above-average dividend yields for investors. You’ll also get an inside glimpse into how he uses smart ETFs, inverse ETFs, hedged ETFs and options to build smarter portfolios that help investors add extra income and sleep better at night.