Eric Balchunas
The Navigator
Judgement in the fog, money, risk and the call others cannot make.
Eric Balchunas earns the Navigator designation by making the ETF landscape legible to anyone willing to look. His frameworks, from 'the terrordome' to 'the great cost migration,' turn fee compression and investor psychology into repeatable, orienting language.
“And where's the money going to come from? The investors or your clients. And that is a vicious tension to live in. And people try their best. And some companies, like you take a BlackRock, good people work there. They like to serve their clients.”
“So keep in mind that trust it gets built over 30, 40 years because people ask me all the time, how isn't Vanguard's market share eroding when everybody has cheap index funds now? Even JP Morgan Goldman, who have armies of advisors, they could just move them all in.”
“Overseas, smart beta international. He would take giant craps on all, like 80% of the funds that they serve. Because he kind of honed it on, you know, and I found that really interesting. And he'd be on campus doing it, especially ETS. That really pissed them off. Smart Beta, all of that. He just thought it was needless distraction.”
“But Wells Fargo had tried one, but it was equally. And because of the Glass-Steagall, they couldn't do mutual funds. There was a lot of things that made it, it was, you know, Steve Jobs wasn't the only one in a garage thinking about PCs, okay? Right. Something was in the air.”
Masters in Business: “At the Money: Why Fees Really Matter”
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