YouSaid · the spoken record

Salim Ramji

lines on the record: 61
first: 2020-08-28
most recent: 2020-08-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And for investors like me, and I think for many investors who are able to take a long-term view, that's probably the soundest and best way to build wealth over the long term.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I'm going to give you a boring answer to this one, Barry, which is that in the late 90s, I was a very unsuccessful occasional day trader, and I had a good run up, and then it all ended in tears around the late 2000 and 2001. It took me away from the market. I was shy about the market for a few years after that. And I think that the thing that I wish I knew was just the importance of staying invested. Now that's a boring and reliable answer, but I am the beta guy. So, you know, believe in boring and reliable over the long term. But it really has paid off. And just so the thing I wish I knew was that I'd stopped worrying about kind of timing the market and I just really focus on staying in the market.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Got to get joy out of that aspect of it, which I think is inherent to both of those businesses as much as constant radical changes as well.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the important thing is each of those industries. So just take wealth management, which you are very familiar with, having built a firm, or asset management. They're going through vast changes. And I think that, you know, it's all great to talk about change in the abstract. Real time, it can be painful. And it can be challenging. And so I think they're really exciting industries. They're industries that I've been part of for a few decades, two decades. But I think for a new graduate, it's really making sure that one, they're up for that. And two, that they really love client service. Because whether you're a fiduciary wealth manager, or whether you're a fiduciary asset manager, you've got to be comfortable with the notion that you're here to serve the client, that it isn't your money, it's theirs.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was reading a little bit earlier on what I'd call a bunch of disaster and despair books. My wife thankfully talked me out of it because there's a whole genre about like the Twilight of Democracy is one. It's actually a really good book. But I've now moved to reading a biography of Wellington, which looks to be very good. And I'm also reading a book called Wolf Hall that I have owned but haven't read. And so I'm using this to make a dent in both of those. I'm a big Anglophile in case you haven't guessed, but Wolf and Wellington kind of a bit better and at times, at least the Wellington piece can be uplifting.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got a crash course in a couple of years through Charlie that I will certainly always be grateful for, along with him course correcting my career with his own blunt style when I had mistakenly turned the firm down.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know gosh, there have been so many people along the way, Charlie Halleck, our late partner saved me from, not just saved me from making a real career mistake, but I think was also in the couple of years that we worked together at the firm before he had passed was both a really important mentor. And at times a really harsh critic. And I think some of the things that people sometimes misunderstand about mentors is that if they think mentorship is just being a good cheerleader and a good supporter, sometimes mentorship is really about tough love. Charlie, for me, was very much about tough love, but he really became a really, really important guide for me to really understand BlackRock, to really understand how it worked, to really understand some of the genius of the firm that a relative newcomer might take years and years to appreciate.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've been watching it, it's kind of an obscure TV show. It's called Kim's Convenience. It's about this family up in Canada, which is where I grew up that runs a small convenience store. And my dad used to run a small convenience store, and I used to work at it when I was a kid. And so that's my kind of, if you will, comfort food TV that I've been watching. It's a great show, but I think it's more any other people who grew up in Canada and worked in the convenience store would love it. So it may not have broad appeal, but for me, it has a lot of comfort appeal.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Outperformance. And so I think it's important to understand that full set, I won't bore you with their two other segments that I didn't talk about, precision instruments being among them. But I think we operate in all those different segments with very different segments of clients from DIY, self-directed investors, all the way through to other active managers, as well as the biggest segment being firms that you well know, which is large discretionary wealth managers. And so each of them have different factors that they look at in terms of price, tax efficiency, tracking error, liquidity, and just the underlying quality and the ability to deliver that quality at scale. And that all goes into the formula around it.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our core, which is really that price sensitive segment. And that's important to us. That's where a lot of our pricing action has been concentrated. But in areas like fixed income, particularly those fixed income instruments that are outside the core, what clients really care about is they care about the liquidity, or they care about the bid offer spreads, or they care about other aspects of cost, which as we talked about earlier, are often 10 times as important to their total cost of what they own. But for a very low fee. And so when they look at us in factors or when they look at us in ESG, they're often looking at us because we're a bargain, because we're 80% off what they were paying an active manager in terms of fees to deliver them.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is that there are a segment of clients who are very sensitive to the TER. And many of those clients, if you change it, they will invest more money with you. And that's what we found over the past five years, over the past three years, over the past year. And that's why we've made the investments that we have over the past number of years that I mentioned, the $600 billion. And that's why we've been pretty public that every year we intend to reinvest another $1.5, 2.5% of our revenues. So call it another $100 million within pricing so that the benefits as we grow also accrue to our fund holders as being a real benefit of our scale. So that's kind of one lens to look at it through. I think the other lens, which sometimes is less appreciated, is just all the different segments in which we operate within iShares. There's one segment which is defined by”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, look, I'd say one thing, actually two things about that. One thing we've been pretty public and vocal about, I think the other piece we've tried, but we'll try and be more public and more vocal. The first thing is just from our own perspective, what we see in terms of pricing, and I think in this case you're talking about the expense ratio of the funds itself.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you get the real underperformance. And so our own conclusion from that is that too many active managers are charging too much money for what it is that they deliver. So it'll be interesting to see if they really tackle that from a fee perspective in the context of the ETF wrapper or not. They could, of course, do that in the mutual fund wrapper at any given time. They've chosen not to. But I think those are really the fundamental issues. The ETF is just a wrapper. We think it happens to be better than the wrapper that was invented in 1924, but it doesn't solve all problems. It just helps bring greater efficiency and greater transparency, which benefit certain aspects, but not every aspect.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you've got an underperforming, expensive, active manager in a mutual fund, and then you put them in an ETF, you then have an underperforming, expensive, actively managed ETF. And so it's not some magic that's going to recreate things. There certainly are efficiencies to the wrapper. There certainly are areas about it that are compelling. But I think that the real test is going to be twofold. One, do the active managers deliver in this wrapper or not? The evidence from the mutual fun part of the industry has been, I think you could say, mixed. And second, is active management willing to tackle the fundamental thing, which I think is fees. And when you look at it, at least in our own analysis, active management on a growth basis, many firms do quite well. It's just that after fees.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we're certainly seeing a lot of supply starting to brew. I don't think a week goes by that you don't see a new filing from some manager. Look, I'd sort of say. Including us. And we've launched one or two truly active ETFs already. We've done it under the BlackRock brand to make the distinction clear. And we obviously have plans to expand. But what I'd say is two things. First, when you look at ETFs through the lens that not actively managed, but what takes active risk? So things that deviate from a market gap weighted index, like factors or ESG or thematics, growing active risk-taking ETF firm. We've got over $200 billion in those categories. Those are growing at a very nice pace. And we're very optimistic that that will grow significantly into the future. When you look at actively managed ETFs, I think the perspective to keep in mind is that the ETF itself isn't some magic bill that solves problems, that if you solve all problems,”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of these products versus what's the right circumstance in which to hold back until the data is better, until the offering is better, so that when we launch, we can launch something that we can stand behind. So we are doing more, a portion of the 120 products that I mentioned, while most of them are in equities. Many of them are also in fixed income. And we want to maintain our kind of innovation, but we also want to do it only when we feel we can really underwrite the true integrity and quality of the products that we offer.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very carefully. We have launched ESG in fixed income. But it's a much more complicated set of circumstances in part because of data and being able to really understand the data well to be able to craft the right set of scores and scores that we believe in. And we're selective as to where we are expanding. And I think that's one of the benefits of having BlackRock.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For clients that can deliver superior returns over time. And secondly, those are the types of trends that we want to get behind and what we want to be known for. So we study what other firms do, but there's a lot that others can launch, and we're happy not to launch because of our own stance in terms of we want to innovate, but we also want to be able to look our clients in the eyes. A year from now, two years from now, three years from now, ten years from now, and be able to say that we put them in a good investment vehicle and not be able to let them down.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That are good for our investors and aren't just the one hit wonders. And there are many things that we have declined to do over the years, which could have been commercially successful for a year or several months or so, but really just aren't what we want to be into. But we are big believers in things like thematic ETFs. And we did a lot of research in concert with our active investing teams around what do we think are the four or five biggest trends that are going to impact investing for the next decade or two, things like generational wealth change, things like urbanization, things like the advent of new and disruptive technologies are examples of that. And we've then developed ETFs that cater to those particular trends. And we've done that first and foremost because we think those are good long-term investments.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who knows and know the answer to your question. Our general philosophy is we want to get behind things that are long-term.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Income, which as we talked about is a little bit more opaque, and we're bringing transparency and some modernizing forces. But some of the really exciting things are that we're developing in things like ESG or in things like FATCA or in things like some of our thematic ETFs. ETFs that essentially take active risk. They deviate from market cap weighted index. But what we're doing is that we're doing it in a way which is efficient, which is rules-based, which is transparent. And ultimately, we think that can offer a better deal for investors. And this is just the next evolution that we're not just seeing an ETFs, but we're trying to lead the charge within eye shares is the ability to do more things, whether it's ESG or factors or fixed income or thematics, even as we continue to build out and expand in the traditional market cap wayed arenas.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Seeing an ETF form is also coming from the fact that we can offer this type of choice, you know, 120 different offerings, that we can offer things that are at a fraction, you know, typically one-fifth of the fee of a traditional ESG active fund. And I think those pieces which have really been driving the ETF business to go from nothing to nearly $7 trillion over the past two or three decades are now being brought to ESG itself. And I think this is fundamental to what I think that the ETF is now doing, disciplines. We obviously started in market cap weighted indices, and that was really the basis of iShares, particularly in developed and emerging market equities. We've expanded into fixed”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The $20 plus billion dollar number I cited in flows this year, I thought it would be three, four years before we could start to cite those kind of numbers. But I've been surprised to the upside at the client demand that exists for this particular type of investing capability. So I think that we're tapping into something which is deeper than just a niche. And it's pretty widespread amongst the demand or the latent demand. It's amongst institutions, amongst wealth managers in the United States, in Europe, in all different kinds of investors looking to access this. But the second thing I think has been also overlooked, which is that indexation hasn't been brought to bear in sustainability much at all over the past several years. And maybe that's because it was such a niche area of investing. And I think part of the demand that we're”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think it's two things. I'll look forward to returning to your show in 10 years. If we're still doing podcasts in 10 years to see how accurate our projections are. But it's really two things. The first thing is just the nature of this client demand. And I've been surprised to the upside.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Europe, in Asia. And the thing that surprised me about that has been, I always thought demand existed in Europe, but if you look at the just over $20 billion that we've raised in ETF, ESG assets to date, most of that has come from U.S. investors who really just wanted the ability to, for a provider to offer choice, but still provide it with the same transparency and efficiency and all the other aspects that they've come to enjoy around ETFs.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the client's money. And so one of the things that from an index lens that we can do within our iShares and index investing is to be able to offer clients choice. And so that's the reason why we've expanded our product lineup. Part of it was based on the investment thesis. And part of it was based off of the client demand that said, I just want this choice and I want the ability to choose which types of exposures I put my money in. And one of the great things about indexation is that you can offer that at scale. And so just as context, like a couple of years ago, we had about 20 ETF and index fund offerings. And they mostly catered to socially responsible investing kind of a niche category largely in Europe. Today we have over 120, just a couple of years later. And it's really catering to a much more broad and mainstream audience all across the world in the United States.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is rooted. So we have no problem with that as a screen, if you will, because it's very fundamental to how we think about kind of the issue. The second thing that I'd say is that from an index lens, and actually from across all the assets that BlackRock manages, it's not our money.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think without getting into all the specifics of the DOL proposal and I think BlackRock has commented on that separately, I think the fundamental and positive aspect is the notion that for us as fiduciaries, we have to be able to have conviction ourselves and be able to ensure that our clients equally have conviction that these are the right risk-reward trade-offs and we're doing it to be able to improve their long-term investment returns. And so the facts and the analytics and the evidence behind that and our discussions with clients are really going to be the determinants of that. So we're actually totally fine with saying the bar should be about value, not just about values. And it's really from that value lens that our whole thesis and the letter that Larry Authored back in January.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Terms of the trade offs that they're making. And for index investors, or the area that I'm responsible for, what we set out to do was to really increase access through launching the breadth of product offerings in ESG investing so that investors who wanted to be able to invest through an ESG lens could do so with ETFs or with index funds while benefiting from all the efficiency and all the transparency and all the choice that we're able to offer through being a scale ETF and index provider. And so it's really that fundamental piece, Barry, which is it's about investment risk that influenced Larry's thinking and then influenced our thinking as fiduciaries.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As really being fundamental to the risk-reward trade-off of investments or said differently through research we've done within BlackRock, research we've read and worked with other third parties, it becomes a better way to do longer-term investing is through an ESG lens. And so we really saw it, and Larry really saw it as fundamental to our fiduciary duty to help clients invest and help clients invest mindful of the different risks. And our firm was founded on the principle of risk management. And so just as we look at liquidity risks, just as we look at credit risks, just as we look at geopolitical risks, we also have to look at ESG oranged risks. And the practical application of this meant that for our active investors, they integrated ESG risks alongside all the other risks into”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think when I look at particularly the letters around weed issued in January, that the most important thing for me coming out of this year's letter was the notion that ESG risks, and he particularly focused on climate risk, is an investment risk. And I think that's a really important and fundamental concept because it's not about cajoling people into certain behaviors. It's just recognizing that for long-term investors, and index investors are the ultimate long-term investors because I can't, I'm not permitted to sell the stock if it's in the index. I've got to hold it for as long as it's in the index. So we're the ultimate long-term investors that we're thinking about risk-reward trade-offs for companies and asset classes. And it's about ESG risks, in this case climate risk being an example.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“End of March, end of April in the bond market is accelerating this force because people see how they performed under stress and even the skeptics are now becoming our clients in terms of fixed income ETFs.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And in the case of exchanges and exchange-traded funds, people are buying and selling in moments of stress many tens of thousands of times a day. And that's where they're really becoming the point at which prices are discovered. And the final point I'd say to this, Barry, is just that this isn't true for every fixed income ETF. It's not even true for every ISHR's fixed income ETF. But there are a number of what we look as flagship or tier one iShares ETFs that are trading on average more than $100 million a day. And many of these or most of these exhibit these price discovery aspects. And we think that that price discovery, coupled with the transparency of being on an exchange, is really the modernizing force that we're talking about. And I think that if anything, the stresses of February,”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you combine it with the point that you'd made earlier about HYG trading $168,000 in a day, what's happening is that the exchange or the exchange traded fund in moments of stress is becoming the place in which actionable markets are made. In normal markets, they track pretty clearly, but in dislocated markets, the thing that's trading many, many thousand times in a given day is really where actionable prices are relative to where the best assessment of the previous day's NAV might have been. I almost think about it by analogy is that if you think about, and this isn't a perfect analogy, but if you think about, you know, you might get an appraisal on your house, an appraisal on your house is based on the best comparables in your neighborhood and for other houses like yours. But the market for your house is the price at which you buy or sell.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, in normal markets, and we're tracking several dozen measures around the quality of our ETFs, the quality of our competitor ETFs relative to the markets in which they operate, and particularly in times when markets are closed or you have certain dislocations in certain markets due to natural disasters or other events. The bond market, though, as you said, is really quite unique. And I think the important facet of it is that it trades largely over the counter. And I think that the important modernizing aspect of the ETF is all about the E, which is that it trades out exchange. Once it trades out exchange, prices become more transparent and access becomes much more widespread because whether you're an institutional investor that's looking to be able to access the ETF or you're an individual that may be going On to a”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bond trading to move to a more efficient way of bond trading and to really start to modernize aspects of the bond market kind of like the equity markets did 15 or 20 years before. I think the big thing that's changed is that the ETF is bringing this degree of liquidity and bringing this degree of technology that starts to work in unison with how dealers operate, how some of these alt-all trading venues operate, as well as how issuers like ourselves operate to be able to remove some of the more antiquated aspects of the bond market, which aren't really serving the needs of clients in the way that they”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In emerging markets, in a whole series of different categories across the bond market of investors turning to ETFs in times of volatility. And I think the latest period of volatility made that happen in a much more significant way. And when you dig underneath it, what's also happening underneath it is that ETFs are part of a modernizing force in the bond market itself. And so whether it's dealers on Wall Street not having to deal with individual bond trades because they can do it in a basket for certain low size, high efficiency, high-scale bond trades, it's easier to do it through a portfolio trade or through and with the ETF, that the ETF is becoming a way in which certain segments of the market can move to a more electronic means.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wouldn't go that far, but let me explain two interesting things that have been going on. The second one answers kind of your question, which is that the first one is really what's happened. And I think it's happened across a dozen different instances of stress, including the financial crisis in the bond markets, is that when the bond markets turned volatile, more and more investors turn to ETFs as a means by which to get good price discovery and good liquidity. And I think in that heightened period of volatility, probably the most significant volatility we've seen since the financial crisis of February and March and April, that the numbers you're citing show exactly what was happening, which is that more investors were turning to the bond ETF, in this case HYG, but I could paint you the same example with very similar numbers a week before in LQD in the treasury market.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That the reason why the Federal Reserve looked to them was actually pretty similar to the reason why other central banks or other big institutional investors looked to them, which is that there were a transparent, easier way to access the bond market.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Significant size and in their use of fixed income ETS. And when I look at why official institutions, why other asset managers, why pension funds, why insurance companies, so a whole range of institutional investors are turning to fixed income ETFs, you know, they're quite straightforward. They're much cheaper to trade than the underlying bond market. I think the events of February and March and April showed that they were much more liquid than the underlying bond market itself. I think they also showed that you could get better, more actionable prices in the ETF. And they really are an improvement or a modernizing force relative to certain antiquated aspects of the bond market itself. And so for many of these institutional investors over the past few years, they've been turning to fixed income ETFs to get cheaper trades, more liquidity, better prices. I suspect”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think at first, just as a disclosure, Barry, the mandate that BlackRock has with the Federal Reserve is behind a wall with our financial markets advisory work. So I'm not involved in any way in terms of the Fed and BlackRock's work there. But if I could just paint a broader context and then answer your question. And the broader context is this, which is that fixed income ETFs are now a couple thousand products and over 1.3 trillion dollars of assets. And they've been around for nearly 20 years. And when we look at uses by central banks around the world, they're well over 30 official institutions, about half of them would be central banks that already use fixed income ETFs in one form or the other. The Federal Reserve is kind of the next and obviously a very significant central bank, but it's joining a group that's already pretty”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Being able to provide that degree of clarity for investors to know exactly the type of structure that they're getting into.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But if you've got a commodity fund, including we've got some commodity funds in things like gold and silver, that should appropriately be called a exchange-traded commodity because it's different than some of the funds and the fund structures. And some of the products out there that call themselves ETFs, they're really just structured products. And I think that some of the providers that do that should really own that. And if clients or investors want to buy them, power to them. But I think that having clarity around what is a transparent, rules-based, diversified investment fund versus what's something else, be it a commodity or be it like a structured product or a note, I think really helps investors and helps the industry. And so that's why we've been a really vocal part of this coalition. And I think that the time has come and the industry has come of age that it's worth”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think the ETF has now been around for just over 30 years, and ICER has been around for just over 20 years. And there now are several thousand ETFs. And I think that there is, you know, it's time that there was a more consistent way of naming and naming conventions around what appropriately should and shouldn't be called an ETF. For us, we think ETFs are really transparent, rules-based, diversified investments in a Forty Act fund structure. And we had joined with a coalition of about half a dozen other ETF providers that accounted for well over 90% of the assets of the industry who felt pretty much the same way that a number of things that fit that description are appropriately ETF.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Terms of our own fiduciary mindset and in terms of the engineering, more clients will come to us. And I think that's what really matters. And that's where we really keep the area of our focus. We always look at the facts, but every time we look at the facts on things like pricing or on things like concentration, it's kind of the opposite of what has been speculated about is actually the truth. So it's those two things that are really, I try and stay focused on and some of the fringe theories get annoying from time to time. But I try and keep a relatively level head. And look, if the facts say something different, we'll come to a different conclusion. But I think we're a long way away from us reaching some Marxist singularity that some have speculated may happen.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Income securities, indexation in all forms, ETFs, funds, separate accounts, were one-tenth of that. Active is about 25% of that total marketplace. And if you look at it from an ETF lens, ETFs are 5% of the equity markets and 1% of the bond markets. And as we look at things like price discovery, ETFs have really been a vehicle that's aided price discovery. It's especially true in the bond market. There are a number of third parties, Bank of England published a report a few months ago around this about how ETFs aided price discovery and other third parties have also come to similar conclusions on the facts. But the real thing I look to is our clients. And, you know, we now have tens of millions of investors in RETF. And ultimately, if we provide something that's transparent, we provide something that's good value, we provide something that has integrity, both in”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, look, one is with a bit of a grain of salt, and these have been going on for 40 years. There's an ad that I keep in my office when we get back to our office, which is from the late 70s, which talks about indexation being un-American because no American would want just average returns. And so this narrative around indexation has been around for a while. And in any given period, even in the past few years, I'll see indexation be accused of being right at the center of concentrated capitalism. There was a piece a few years ago which accused us of being Marxist. And so, you know, I don't, to be honest, Barry, I don't pay a huge amount of attention to some of those kind of fringe theories. What I look at is two things. I look at the facts and then I look at our clients. And what the facts say is that in the $180 trillion marketplace of equity and fixed”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the benefits I would say of having a single technology platform, which we view through Alatin, is the ability to really scale that across many trillions of assets and being able to bring a degree of precision and a degree of expertise to it. But if you look at across our teams who manage our index investing, And it's pretty fundamental element of data science because we're always looking out in the securities markets, looking at our indices, looking at how our exposures track, and particularly around the times that you have major index rebalances every quarter or twice a year all around the world. It's just making sure that that happens precisely really defines, I think, a good quality and a high quality index provider from someone who is a lot less precise or just not as well engineered.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like liquidity, things like tracking are even more important financially to investors. And I wish they got the same kind of focus. I hope they will get the same kind of focus in the minds of investors and those who advise them.”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of tax drag inequities. And that's a huge headwind for most taxable investors. And so the tax efficiency of the wrapper becomes a really important aspect to what the investor takes home at the end of each year. Liquidity and the ability to get in and out of an exposure relatively easily, that can add anywhere between 50 and 100 basis points or more of cost at the time of the trade. And I think that's underappreciated as well. And the third piece, which is a cost, is really the cost of not tracking precisely to the index. We invest a lot in terms of people and technology to make sure we track precisely. 25 basis points, that's ultimately a cost that's going to the investors. So I think the expense ratios had a lot of attention. Some of the attention we've caused, but I think things like tax efficiency,”
2020-08-28 · Masters in Business · Salim Ramji on ESG Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source