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June 04, 2013 at 06:25 AM
When it comes to building investment portfolios that can meet client needs regardless of how the markets and the economy are behaving, advisors are eager to use insights from world-class money managers. That’s exactly what will be delivered by two winners of the Investment Advisor/Envestnet |Prima 2013 SMA Managers of the Year awards in a web seminar on Thursday at 2 p.m.
During the free one-hour session, David Rolfe, chief investment officer of Wedgewood Partners, and Mary Fitzgerald Kane, portfolio manager for Gannett, Welsh & Kotler, will be guided by Envestnet Vice Chairman Gib Watson in an exploration of each manager’s unique alpha thesis and investment process, and will address the challenges that the markets and the economy are likely to present to advisors and their clients for the rest of 2013.
In a ceremony during the Envestnet Advisor Summit on May 1, Rolfe and St. Louis-based Wedgewood were named an SMA Manager of the Year in the U.S. large-cap equity category for their Large Cap Focused Growth strategy (Wedgewood won in the same category in 2011). Rolfe (left) was also named the inaugural overall SMA Manager of the Year, acknowledging his “deep experience and sole focus on this strategy that gives this team a competitive edge” over his peers in both the large-cap space and in the entire SMA universe.
In that same ceremony on May 1 in Chicago (see our news article on all the winners) in which the 9th annual SMA Managers of the Year awards were announced, Kane and GW&K were named an SMA Manager of the Year in the fixed-income category for their Enhanced Core Bond Strategy. GW&K also was named a manager of the year in 2013 for its Small-/Mid-Cap Equity Strategy, and last year, the Boston-based firm won SMA Manager of the Year for its municipal bond strategy.
During the Thursday seminar, the two managers—both CFAs—will explain their strategies, suggest where they might fit into a client’s portfolio, and look ahead for what the rest of the year will hold for both equities and fixed income.
As for GW&K’s Enhanced Core Bond Strategy, Kane (left) and her team are active bond managers who use top-down analysis to determine the overall sector allocation of the portfolio along with the firm’s own bottom-up fundamental research to select individual securities for the portfolio. The team does not attempt to forecast short-term interest rates, but its research and analysis allows it to form a view of the business cycle and the longer-term outlook for interest rates, which then determines sector allocation, maturity and duration benchmarks for the portfolio.