Kevin Mahn, portfolio manager of SmartGrowth Mutual Funds, spoke at today's session of the Financial Crisis Webinar Series about investing in exchange-traded funds amid the global financial crisis. He explored the caveats of ETF investing and explained how his firm’s funds have used ETF investments to outperform the S&P 500 by more than 20 percentage points in 2008, despite the fact that 92% of ETFs lost money over the same time period. ETFs are growing faster than ever, in both number and investment volume, according to Mahn. Today there are thousands of ETFs, representing over $1 trillion in assets and invested over all major asset classes and geographical regions. Investing in ETFs is a good way to diversify client assets while incurring expense ratios that are often lower than mutual funds.

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Financial Crisis Webinar Series
Friday, January 30, 4 p.m. EST
If you are wondering how you can best communicate with clients about the market fallout and what type of response clients expect from you, then you’ll benefit from attending our next webinar. Bruce Peters, CEO of CABHQ, a facilitator of client advisory boards (CABs), will talk about findings from recent client advisory board sessions he has led for financial advisory firms. He’ll tell you how you can alleviate client fears and how you should speak with them about the emotional stress they’re feeling after seeing their portfolio values tumble this year.