Episode 08: Morningstar's Sustainability Research and Metrics

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MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Dr. Jon Hale’s Medium Blog - The ESG Advisor & Twitter Handle - @Jon_F_Hale

Morningstar’s white papers on Sustainable Investing

Sustainable Funds U.S. Landscape Report - download page

Ms. Diane Sobin from Cary Street Partners

TRANSCRIPT

Linda Rogers: [00:00:00] My name is Linda Rogers, and this is Investing Forward.

Linda Rogers: [00:00:21] Morningstar is a financial services firm headquartered in Chicago that provides investment research and investment management services. Financial advisers are very familiar with Morningstar for the most part, and many, including myself, use their platform for research on stocks, mutual funds and ETFs. Investors that are not advisors may still be familiar with Morningstar because they've stumbled across Morningstar.com, which provides some research for free, including the Morningstar RatingTM, also called the "star rating". This rating was originally used in 1985, and according to Morningstar, its website, the star rating is a purely quantitative, backward looking measure of a fund's past performance, measured from 1-5 stars, 5 being the highest rating. About 30 years later, Morningstar launched the Morningstar Sustainability Rating for mutual funds in 2016, also called the Globe Rating, because it is measured with globes. According to Morningstar's website, the Morningstar Sustainability Rating for Funds helps investors measure portfolio level risk from environmental, social and governance or ESG factors. So, for example, a fund with high ESG risk relative to its Morningstar global category would receive 1 globe. The goal with the new rating is to help investors manage total ESG risk in their investments. Similar to the star rating, the Globe Rating is just a starting point, but it is notable that Morningstar has created a sustainability research team that is providing a wide array of new tools, such as the Globe rating and a low carbon designation for funds, as well as publishing white papers and research on impact investing trends and proxy voting data. To learn more, I am being joined today by Dr. Jon Hale, who's the Global Head of Sustainability Research at Morningstar. Dr. Hale will be followed by Miss Diane Sobin from Carey Street Partners. Miss Sobin leads the ESG and Female Focused strategies for Carey Street. She's worked for firms such as Columbia Threadneedle, JP Morgan and Oppenheimer in the past and will share with us about her impact investing process and how it has changed over time. So let's get started with Dr. Hale from Morningstar.

Jon Hale from Morningstar

Linda Rogers: [00:02:41] Thank you for joining us. So please go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Jon Hale: [00:02:46] Ok, great. Well, thank you for having me today. Linda, I'm coming to you today from my home office in snowy Oak Park, Illinois, just outside Chicago. And I have been at Morningstar for really most of my career, at least my career in the investment world has taken place at Morningstar, and that's based in Chicago, our headquarters, although we have many offices around the world now. I started off as a mutual fund analyst at Morningstar way back in the last century and I've done a number of other things as a lead consultant of our Morningstar Institutional Consulting Group for a while, managed portfolios for our investment management team and spent time running our manager research analyst team. So those are all things I've done at Morningstar prior to the current position that I have, which is Head of Sustainable Investing Research.

Linda Rogers: [00:03:50] Great. Yes. And looking at your resume, I did see you were at Morningstar for a long time. So I'm just curious, what led you to your current role and specifically, why that role was created? What was the transition point where Morningstar said, hey, we need a separate research group dedicated to sustainable investing?

Jon Hale: [00:04:09] Well, I mean, I've always been interested in, you know, what we all, what I now generally call Sustainable Investing. But I've personally always invested that way. In fact, I even spent a short time working for Domini Social Investments now called Domini Impact Investments in New York before joining Morningstar. But in 2015, having watched the ESG field start to grow in the years particularly after the financial crisis and seeing growing interest among investors in sustainability, kind of all within the context of the kind of worsening climate and growing inequality and issues like that, I felt like Morningstar needed to sort of step in and start helping investors who were interested in sustainable investing achieve success. That's kind of been the mission of our company, is to help investors through our research and our tools and analytics to to achieve investing success. And I felt that it was time for us to do that through more of a focus on sustainable investing. So, over the time I've been at Morningstar, the company has grown quite large, more than 5,000 employees today, but it retains an entrepreneurial spirit, or at least I had that. And having having been there since the company was small and I literally one afternoon in 2015, sent an email to our CEO and just kind of laid out the idea that ended up becoming the Morningstar Sustainability Rating for funds. And, I kind of half expected him to say, well, you know, good idea, maybe bring it up later or our next annual retreat or something like that. But instead I got an email back from him almost immediately and he said, good idea, run with it. And he connected me with a colleague in Amsterdam who was interested in the idea from a commercial perspective. And all of a sudden in one afternoon, basically, we had a mandate to kind of follow through on this idea of a Sustainability Rating. So that's pretty much how we first kind of started this. And by the time we launched the rating in the spring of 2016, late winter, early spring, 2016, that was my my title was kind of created and I moved from my manager research position and into into this and then we just gradually expanded from that. I mean by that time we had this one product, so to speak, The Sustainability Rating, and it was clear that there was the sort of appetite to to move forward and do things more in this space. So it's been onward and upward from from that point.

Linda Rogers: [00:07:14] So can you tell us about how Morningstar's research and metrics have evolved under your leadership as it pertains to sustainability? So, for example, you mentioned The Sustainability Rating, but you also have now this low carbon designation, there's a way you could look at product involvement data - so to see a percentage of companies that are involved in fracking, or guns, tobacco, things of that nature - and proxy voting data. So I'm sure I'm missing items, but just maybe go into some specifically about how they came about and how advisors and investors can use them to construct portfolios.

Jon Hale: [00:07:53] Yeah, sure. Well, so The Sustainability Rating and sometimes known as the Globe Rating, you might recognize it that way, or some of the listeners may have come across it before, it's really the first time that we were able to assess the holdings in a fund portfolio on the basis of sustainability, let's just call it that for now. And really kind of came up because I was thinking, well, I know that there's a lot of ESG data on companies now. And in fact, there are firms that do ratings of the companies and that information is available. We have the portfolios of literally every mutual fund and managed product in the world, pretty much, So it wasn't even just a US thing. So why not take that data and and kind of roll it up at the portfolio level to characterize funds in their portfolios on the basis of how well the holdings are rated on ESG matters. And so that was the idea. I had talked to a guy who was the CIO of of an institute, pretty big institutional asset owner, who was trying to move his portfolio to all ESG. He said for years, we have done exclusionary investing. And we really think that ESG has gotten to the point where we want all of our managers to be evaluating our almost $20 billion of assets on the basis of ESG. But all my managers are kind of telling me we're now doing that or we consider ESG but I don't have any way of evaluating it, you know, at the portfolio level. So he's kind of looking at me like, you know, like that's something that Morningstar does, right? And so that also that was really what gave me that, even more specifically, the idea for this.

Jon Hale: [00:09:59] So that's what The Sustainability Rating does. It rolls up the ESG evaluations of companies at the portfolio level. And then the rating is really derived from how well a fund is doing versus its category peers. So it's possible for you to go into any investment category. Large cap blend is our large-Cap US category, for instance, tracks the closest to something like the Russell 1000 or the S&P 500, and and you can look in that category and you can rank the funds on sustainability, the ones with the best, the 10% actually with the best scores get five globes and it kind of is normally distributed all the way down to 1 globe is the bottom 10%. So a 5 globe and a 1 globe are like very opposite ratings and a lot of funds rank in the middle. But it was just a way to characterize it. And I thought at the time that a couple of things. One is that for intentional funds that kind of hold themselves out to be focused funds, this is like a proof point for them, because we're not rating them on them saying that they're doing this. We're actually trying to rate them on the basis of, OK, what do you hold in your portfolios? And then at the time, there were not all that many intentional funds. And I was seeing this tremendous growth and interest, at least among investors wanting to invest this way. And I was thinking, well, they're going to look for funds and they're not going to find that many. And maybe their advisor is going to say, well, I don't know much about this small number of dedicated intentional ESG funds, but I do know, you know, this fund and I see that this fund that I use all the time is also perhaps has a 4 or 5 globe rating. So that might be a way to also, you know, at least consider the idea of sustainability in fund selection generally. So that's really what we're trying to do with the with The Sustainability Rating. It's based on company level. And if company level valuations are coming from Sustainalytics, which is one of the firms, that's one of the the most well-established ESG ratings and data collection company out there. Morningstar just acquired Sustainalytics last summer after having worked with them for the last 5 years. So it was a partnership that was very successful. So anyway, that's The Sustainability Rating.

Jon Hale: [00:12:48] And we've added a couple of things since then. Our low carbon designation is based on kind of the same idea, but it evaluates the holdings in the portfolio on the basis of how much carbon risk they have. And carbon risk we define essentially as - another term for it is transition risk. How much risk does a company have given the inevitable transition to a low carbon economy and it has a lot to do with whether that fund will be able to or whether that company will be able to make a transition in a way that doesn't hurt its business. And is it in a position to do that in a way that that's not going to hurt it financially in material way? So what we do there is we give funds, low carbon designation that have what we define as low carbon risk in the portfolio, as well as a lower than benchmark exposure to fossil fuels. So it gives investors kind of a sense of if they're wanting to invest in a low carbon way, this is one way to do it.

Linda Rogers: [00:14:02] Yeah. And I think with Morningstar, maybe we should just clarify, because anyone can go to Morningstar.com and essentially register for free and get some level of data. So I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, they can at least get The Sustainability Rating in the low carbon designation. They can see that. But then as an advisor, so I have, for advisors that are listening, I have Morningstar Advisor Workstation - worth every penny - where I can go into more detail, as I said, and look at is there a sustainability mandate for the funds? And I can screen for that, which gives me a list of options in large cap blend, to your example, or product involvement data if that's important to a client. But I think that is - just to kind of wrap that up, I mean, I think having that Sustainability Rating and low carb designation available to all investors for free, if anything, it can just be the start of a conversation with their advisor. Hey, I'm in these funds. I happen to notice low rating, high rating. Have you looked at that? It could just be the beginning to a conversation for the advisor. Investors are interested in investing this way. Many times advisors are just sticking with what they've done and their model. So this can just be a way to keep them on their toes.

Jon Hale: [00:15:18] Yeah, yeah. And I would also say on the product involvement data that it's very useful for those times when unfortunately in many cases when you might have clients calling up and saying, hey, by the way, do I have, for instance, gun stocks in my portfolio because I'm not into that. And so what you can do and workstation is you could go in and you can see how much exposure our portfolio has to a number of different product involvements, the standard old sin stocks like tobacco and gambling and but firearms, controversial weapons. There's there's a number of them that you can you can check out there. And and the latest thing, Linda, that we've added is proxy voting data. And I think that's really interesting. We've just added at least to Morningstar direct. I actually don't know for sure if it's in Advisor Workstation yet. It's in, but it is in Morningstar Direct for advisors. And that helps you understand how funds voted their proxies on ESG related issues. And on that score, we've also done some recent research, my colleague Jackie Cook and I, about how funds vote their proxies on ESG shareholder resolutions, related shareholder resolutions. And we found that there's quite a range, even among intentional, sustainable ESG focused funds on how they vote their their proxies. I think proxy voting is important because it's a way that investors are sort of indirectly having an impact on the way companies are run, because I can tell you that more and more investors are voting in favor of these shareholder resolutions, higher numbers every year. And companies are taking notice of that and are more responsive than ever before that I've seen in the last 25 years for sure, when investors come to them with ESG concerns that they would like a company to address.

Linda Rogers: [00:17:33] Yeah, no, I think that's a good segue into really the reason why I'm having you on here. You are a prolific writer and you've written some fantastic things, especially as it pertains to the trends of ESG and sustainable investing. And so since we're at the beginning of a new year, I thought this would just be a really good opportunity for you to recap for us the 2020 impact investing trends and highlights that you've seen. What are some key takeaways for investors?

Jon Hale: [00:17:59] Well, you know, 2020, you know, it was the year that began sort of with an optimistic note to it when it came to sustainable investing, because there is this growing, in my opinion, at least because there is this growing debate over corporate purpose, the idea that should corporations continue to view their primary purpose in terms of maximizing shareholder value, or should they view it in kind of more broad terms, recognizing their obligations to other stakeholders and to society, to the planet itself? And and that was it was an interesting debate - it was a bit theoretical in some in some ways - although climate change really, I think, underscored the need for it. But then these two huge events - the global pandemic and then in the US, the the murder of George Floyd and the social justice protests that came out of that, I think really underscored the salience of this new idea, the stakeholder capitalism model, not really new, but this debate that was taking place, that was kind of an encouraging shift which focuses on getting companies to think of themselves as creating sustainable long term value that serves all stakeholders and creates positive societal impacts and really have that be something that's front and center in corporate strategy. And I think more than anything else, this is really the ultimate impact of sustainable investing when it comes to public investing in public companies. And that is to weigh in with your investment capital in support of the stakeholder model. And I just think that as far as the pandemic was concerned, that companies just had no choice last year but to start prioritizing their stakeholders, particularly their workers. And we saw that the firms that did the best tended to be firms that actually acquitted themselves pretty well from an investment standpoint during the year. And so I think the pandemic really kind of underscored for investors the importance of the social dimension of ESG, you hear environmental, social, corporate governance. Given climate change is such a huge existential issue, I think everyone kind of gets the E side of things. But social is like, well, what does that actually? Why is that important? Then I think in the pandemic really helped to underscore that, as did the sort of the social justice movement. And I think that kind of created this like all hands on deck kind of mentality or reaction I think that extends to investing. Right, that among other institutions that need to help address this idea of systemic racism, it's the responsibility of corporations and corporations need to recognize that and and that they have an impact on on these kinds of things and through their diversity and inclusion programs towards what we're finding out, like in 2021 towards, you know, even their corporate campaign contributions and things like that. Are they being focused in a way that promotes racial equity or not? And so I think that also underscores the fact, I think for a sustainable investors, how important the the idea of engagement and proxy voting is, because you can bet that sustainable investors this year will be pressing companies to show them that have followed through or are following through on some of the promises that they made in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing and in particular, things like disclosing EE0-1 information, which is information about the racial composition of your of your workforce. But it's filed with the government. It doesn't have to be made public. Well, sustainable investors are asking companies this year to make those things public so that you can better evaluate how well companies are doing on improving, for instance, the racial makeup of their workforce. So things like that, I think, underscored how important both dimension and ESG is, as well as the importance of engagement and proxy voting.

Linda Rogers: [00:23:01] Good. Well, we're almost out of time. Is there anything else that you want to share?

Jon Hale: [00:23:04] Well, Linda, I would just say and I think that we've had a tremendous amount of uptake in sustainable investing that we saw last year, over $50 billion of new flows into funds that intentionally focus on ESG. That's 10 times the amount that from 2018. So just in two years, a huge amount. And I think for advisors, one of the things to think about is this, that more and more people are coming to the table with sustainability concerns, I guess I would just call them in kind of a generic way. And they're realizing more and more that they can express those concerns or apply those concerns in their investments. And this is something that even 4 or 5 years ago that was pretty, pretty rare. I think there are a lot of folks saying, well, I've got sustainability concerns as a consumer. I'm often now trying to apply those, at least to some degree, in my consumer decision making. Well, now they're starting to I think more and more understand that they can do that in their investment decisions. And that's a very attractive thing because they feel like this aligns with my values, that it helps me express who I am, makes me feel good about my the decisions I'm making. And from a performance standpoint, it shouldn't be a detriment to my ultimate investment performance. I think there's there's evidence that suggests that over the long term it could be a positive. And so a number of those things that I addressed in my landscape report that just came out last week called Sustainable Funds US Landscape Report, I think if you Google something to that effect, you can you can find the download page and get a copy of that. And that kind of gives you the update on the the the funds landscape and all the choices that are out there. Now, among the nearly 400 funds that focus on ESG now that are available to U.S. investors,

Linda Rogers: [00:25:20] Great, and I will be linking to that on the podcast website as well. I did read that and there's a lot of good info there. What's the best way that people can stay in touch with you?

Jon Hale: [00:25:30] Well, I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn as well as my Twitter feed as @jon_f_hale.

Linda Rogers: [00:25:43] Great, and you've got your Medium blog that I'm also going to be linking to you on the podcast website because that one is a must read. I really like that. The end of week notes are fabulous. So wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me and hope we'll stay in touch.

Jon Hale: [00:25:59] All right. Thank you, Linda. My pleasure.

Linda Rogers: [00:26:01] I thought that Jon brought up a good point in that investors can clearly see the benefits of the E in ESG because of climate change and the transition risk that companies will be facing as we move toward a low carbon future. But the components of S can sometimes be less obvious. So next up, I have a Ms. Diane Sobin from Cary Street Partners and she is actively looking at how companies are performing as it relates to social factors. So let's take a listen.

Diane Sobin from Cary Street Partners

Linda Rogers: [00:26:29] Diane - thank you for being here. Go ahead and tell us about yourself.

Diane Sobin: [00:26:32] Well, thank you for having me. It's good to see you again. So I have been an investment portfolio manager in the equity markets for the better part of three decades. And I've spent my entire career with major global asset management firms working on portfolios that have ranged from dividend growth, dividend value portfolios or equities or which combine growth and income strategies and also have been involved with managing core equity portfolios on the growth side in midcaps as well as small caps. I spent my career primarily in the New York market. However, the last company that I was with, Columbia Threadneedle, I spent six years in London, which was exciting for me. I headed up the entire U.S. equity team, which managed about 15 billion dollars.

Linda Rogers: [00:27:36] So tell us about the portfolios that you are managing currently.

Diane Sobin: [00:27:40] So at Cary Street Partners, I'm a member of the Investment Committee and a senior portfolio manager. The strategies that I lead for Cary Street are our environmental, social and governance focus equity portfolios, as well as our female focused portfolios, which are also known as a gender lens impact portfolio. In addition, I also manage or manage our dividend value portfolios with our investment team as well.

Linda Rogers: [00:28:13] Great. And my understanding is these are SMEs, is that correct?

Diane Sobin: [00:28:17] At Cary Street, we manage what are called SMAs, separately managed accounts, which means that within each strategy we hold a portfolio which comprises of about 35-40 stocks for each of our clients, which have unique characteristics in that it gives our clients direct equity ownership as opposed to owning a mutual fund or an ETF where you might have hundreds of stocks within those portfolios. SMAs have really nice benefits, we believe, for individuals in that if you are a, individual taxpayer, we can efficiently manage the gains and losses within those portfolios for our clients over time by taking losses to offset gains that meet your financial needs. Also in an individual portfolio owning stocks, you can gift appreciated stocks individually to family members, for example, if you wish to do that.

Linda Rogers: [00:29:24] Good. OK, well, why don't you tell us a little bit about how you're integrating impact, investing into your process, and I thought maybe we could kind of focus on the gender lens portfolio because we've talked a lot about ESG, but this kind of dives more into that S, right, of ESG, the social aspect. And I know one of the things at least that I saw in your factsheet was you look at differentiating factors such as companies that have board of directors that are at least 25% female, which I thought was really interesting. But what else are you looking for?

Diane Sobin: [00:29:59] Yeah, along with our high prevalence of females and frankly, diversity within the board of directors and in fact in each of our holdings we say 25% percent, but thankfully that number is actually getting higher and we continue to raise the bar. So we're really looking at companies that may even have 30 to 35 percent of women on the boards. Again, because we really want to have our our company holdings emphasize that commitment and intentional commitment to women in the senior levels of the company. Secondarily of the composition of women within executive suites in senior management roles that could be the CEO, could be the CFO, chief financial officer, operating officer. And then I even go down deeper and look at business heads to validate whether companies are actually having representation of women in leadership positions that can obviously be groomed to be elevated to the executive suites. We also look at companies that are champions of women's initiatives. So, for example, in the health care industry, we look at companies that are focused on women's health initiatives. We also have companies in there that are one company that is involved in a global footprint of daycare centers, which, of course, will enable women and couples to access affordable day care. We also look at companies' internal policies. So, again, in our gender lens we focus, as well as our ESG portfolios, I do look very carefully at the company's corporate responsibility reports to see exactly what they are doing within each of the each of the categories. And of course, a gender lens portfolio, we would focus on the social aspects and of course, the governance aspects in that practice.

Linda Rogers: [00:32:10] Given what a year 2020 was, have things changed in your process at all?

Diane Sobin: [00:32:16] Nothing has changed in our process. Again, as I mentioned, I continue to raise the bar. But, you know, sometimes I receive the question - if I own a few shares of a very large company, a hundred billion or even a trillion dollar company, how is that impacting? How do I how do I impact that company? And as you Linda probably well know, the amount of assets that are being directed towards ESG investments and social impact investments is growing tremendously. And what I have specifically noticed in the last year is more companies focused on improving their relationships with all of their stakeholders, including not only their shareholders, but their employees and their customers.

Linda Rogers: [00:33:08] Good. OK, and did you always invest with a gender lens? What led you to start investing this way?

Diane Sobin: [00:33:16] I haven't always invested with a specific gender lens focus within my portfolios. However, I have observed over the years in meeting with managements, thousands of managements, frankly, over the past three decades, the companies that had more diversity and frankly, women in senior positions tended to be more consistent in terms of their returns. They tended to be a little bit more transparent in the delivery of the company's strategy. And from a risk management perspective, which is very important when you're thinking about investing in equities, they seem to have less downside risk.

Linda Rogers: [00:33:56] Great. OK, and for people that are interested in having a slice of their portfolio invested with a gender lens, what percentage do you typically see or recommend? So what I mean by that is, I mean, do people add a certain percentage of their stock portfolio to the strategy or do you consider it more of a supplement?

Diane Sobin: [00:34:15] Yeah, I would consider it as a supplement to a normal equity allocation. I would clearly speak with a financial adviser to determine what is appropriate. But in our portfolios, we consider our benchmark as the S&P 500. It's primarily large cap. So the risk characteristics in our portfolio specifically are very much in line with, should be in line with the S&P returns. We strive to outperform the S&P over time so you can consider it as a subset of an investor's or clients core equity portfolio.

Linda Rogers: [00:34:53] Ok, is there anything else that you would like to share?

Diane Sobin: [00:34:56] Yeah, you know, we didn't really talk about covid and the impacts on covid this year or the past year. But what I would say is, you know, shedding a bright lens on an ESG, sustainable investing really came to the fore in 2020. So we are looking at more closely at how companies have been prepared for a pandemic. Who's well positioned to pivot to do what? New market dynamics. We're looking at health and safety procedures that are put in place, which many companies have talked about in the wake of covid and what they're doing there or how they're helping their employees cope and be safe within, obviously, the pandemic world. We're looking at supply chain, so flexibility - is a company dependent on a limited number of suppliers. We all know that we had to try to find the paper goods, toilet paper and cleaners during the peak of the pandemic. So, again, that's that's the supply chain. And we look to look at the companies to see how well they transitioned and pivoted to change their supply chains to meet their corporate needs or their customers needs. And then finally, sustainability. You know, which companies have the best models, the best businesses to operate in what we think is a new normal. And clearly, there is a new environment going forward. We don't think it's going to change and go back to recovery covid practices, let's say, in our normal lives. So we want to be sure that we're exposed to companies that can sustainably grow in the new environment.

Linda Rogers: [00:36:47] Great. OK, what's the best way for people to stay in touch with?

Diane Sobin: [00:36:52] You know, I think just you can contact me through our website, CaryStreetPartners.com and my email, which is diane.sobin@carystreetpartners.com.

Linda Rogers: [00:37:08] Thanks for joining me, Diane.

Linda Rogers: [00:37:11] Thank you. Two big takeaways from this episode are, #1 - ratings are just a starting point. There are multiple financial services firms that offer ESG ratings and they can differ. That's OK. Moody's and S&P rate bonds, for example, and their ratings can differ. That in and of itself is not a bad thing. It's an opportunity to understand why they are different and the nuances that can result in discrepancies. So ratings such as the Morningstar Sustainability Rating are a starting point and a great way to begin a conversation with your advisor about impact investing. #2 - the social component of ESG is important and multifaceted. From covid to diversity, companies are reporting more data than ever as it relates to the makeup and treatment of their staff, their management and even their supply chains. Investors have been an important part in driving this quest for more data and more transparency, and that trend will only continue. This will be yet another opportunity for investors to support the companies that prioritize the health and safety of their workers and are addressing inequality.

Linda Rogers: [00:38:17] I love the feedback I've been receiving from listeners. Please continue to reach out and let me know what you would like to learn more about as it pertains to impact investing.

Linda Rogers: [00:38:25] My name is Linda Rogers. You were listening to Investing Forward. If you liked what you heard leave us a rating, subscribe, and stay tuned for next time.

Linda Rogers: [00:39:47] Linda Rogers is the Owner of Planning Within Reach, a Registered Investment Advisor. Planning Within Reach produces the podcast and makes it available on its website and through other distribution channels. Linda Rogers and any guest on the podcast are providing their own views and opinions and are not necessarily the views and opinions of Planning Within Reach. Nothing on the podcast should be construed as a solicitation or offer or recommendation to buy or sell any security investment. Advisory services are only provided to investors who become Planning Within Reach clients pursuant to a written Investment Management Agreement. Clients of Planning Within Reach may hold positions in securities discussed in this podcast. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. All investments involve risk and may lose money. The Investing Forward podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied on for any investment decisions. Consult with a financial advisor, accountant, attorney, or conduct your own due diligence.