Tag: Robo Report
Posted on December 24, 2019
Winter is upon us, but a little snow doesn’t slow us down here at Backend Benchmarking! In this email, we share how the top robo advisors are using our rankings in their marketing, a status update on the progress of our application’s development, more information on our upcoming study of traditional accounts, and the best way to stay up to date on breaking digital advice news.
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Posted on September 20, 2019
SoFi, a company initially focused on consolidating student loan debt, has been aggressively expanding into other areas of financial services. Within the past two years, they launched a robo-investing platform, high-interest cash account, and a self-directed brokerage platform with commission-free trading. Most recently, they announced proprietary ETFs offering an introductory 0% expense ratio through June 2020.
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Posted on September 6, 2019
In recent years, socially responsible investing (SRI) – also commonly categorized as environmental, social, and governance investing (ESG) – has gained popularity with retail investors and investment managers alike. Between 2016 and 2018, assets invested in ESG-themed mutual funds grew 34%, while assets in ESG-themed ETF funds more than doubled. Driven by consumer demand, a natural expansion has been undertaken by digital advisors to offer separate SRI portfolio options. Within the past few years we have opened and funded SRI accounts at each of the providers that offer sustainable investing options. With a year of performance to review, we have assessed the risk and return statistics of SRI portfolios offered compared to their standard offerings. While today’s focus is on performance, we will publish a full report on the composition of SRI portfolios, including costs and sustainability scores, later this month.
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Posted on September 4, 2019
After faltering at the end of last year, U.S. and global markets have returned to a period of strong growth in 2019, with the S&P 500 returning 4.30% in the second quarter. While this was considerably less than the first quarter’s return of 13.65%, due largely in part to markets rebounding sharply following a December selloff, the combined return marks the best first half-year performance for domestic markets since 1997. Many trends from the first quarter continued through the second quarter, as mid-cap continued its outperformance and growth once again outperformed value. Growth has experienced a multi-year dominance, outperforming value YTD, as well as over the trailing one-, two-, and three-year periods.
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