Ken Solow's Presentation On Friday Marks A Pivotal Turn For Investment Advice: Active Management Now Respected By Many Mainstream Private Wealth Advisors
The fact that Ken Solow, who runs an RIA with more than $1 billion AUM, is going to speak this week at the A4A webinar series about tactical asset allocation, reflects a major shift in thinking in the private wealth advice business. There was a time not so long ago when active management was publicly frowned upon.
Professing anything but strategic asset allocation was heresy, considered market timing and all but ignored by Certified Financial Planners running RIAs. The roaring bull market from 1982 to 2000 made advisors using simple buy-and-hold strategic asset allocation look like geniuses.
In the introduction to his 2009 book, Solow says that the tech bubble bursting turned him into a heretic. Until then, Solow ran a traditional buy-and-hold, broadly-diversified RIA. The 2000 to 2002 bear market turned Solow, a CLU and ChFC, toward researching tactical asset allocation.
Now, a decade since the 2000 bear market ended and one financial-crisis later, having endured the wrenching 2008-2009 bear market and recent upsurge, Solow has evolved in his thinking. In fact, his firm, Pinnacle Advisory Group, has launched a business providing active investment advice systems to financial planners and wealth managers.
Solow and his co-founder of Pinnacle, John Hill, are smart. Among other really smart moves, they had the good sense to hire and Michael Kitces, give him free rein to pursue his eclectic interests and research, and make him a partner.
This Friday's session should be good.
It marks a real change in thinking about how advisors should manage money.