Eric Balchunas – The Past, Present & Future of ETFs

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, methods, stories, and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. You can learn more and stay up to date at investorfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:59)
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**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (1:24)
My guest this week is Eric Balchunas, the Senior ETF Analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence and the author of the book, The Institutional ETF Toolbox.
This episode is intended for those in the asset management or wealth management industries who have considered using ETFs in their portfolios or for the individual investor who likes to stay up to date on trends in the markets for asset management products. We cover all aspects of ETFs in some detail and luckily in ways that have little overlap with a few other recent ETF-centric episodes on two of my favorite podcasts, the Meb Faber Show and Capital Allocators with Ted Seides. Those conversations were with Matt Hougan and Tom Lydon respectively. We open with Eric's favorite ETF tickers, discuss the pros and cons of ETFs versus other investment vehicles and explore the largest areas of opportunities for new ETFs coming to market in the years to come. ETFs have become the vehicle of choice for many investors so it's about time we covered them in depth in this forum. As you'll hear, Eric is the right person to teach the world about ETFs thanks to deep domain knowledge and unflagging enthusiasm. Please enjoy my conversation with Eric Balchunas on the past, present, and future of ETFs.
Fun question, which is for your favorite couple of ETF tickers, which I think is back to single ticker marketing, this is an important thing to pick.

**Eric Balchunas** (2:41)
Yeah, absolutely. Tickers matter. I mean, TAN and KWT were launched the same week, same mid-size issuers, TAN got all the assets.
Block and BLCN were launched the same week. Block has the majority of that. People call it a ticker premium.
So to me, the greatest, the Mona Lisa of ETF tickers, I know, I'm deep in this stuff, is Moo.
Moo to me is the standard, every analyst would agree, it's just a little above everything else. It's got it all. It's agribusiness, you know, who doesn't love cows, and the key is it's a verb. And then that's also a cynic dope, which I hope I pronounced that word right, which is a word that represents a bigger issue, like the badge, meaning the police force.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (3:22)
Interesting.

**Eric Balchunas** (3:23)
Like some small thing about this represents the whole entity.
And Moo is that. And so it works on so many levels. It's friendly, it's inviting, and you kind of know what it is. Now tan is also arguably a verb, that one's up there. And there's a couple that, you know, hack is also a verb, that one's a killer one. And then Meb Faber, who I know you know.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (3:44)
He's the king of this idea.

**Eric Balchunas** (3:46)
If anything's going to unseat MJ, which is the marijuana ETF, which has a huge head start on the rest, it's toke.
Toke rules. It is a verb and it's a good verb.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (3:55)
Meb's the Leonardo of ETF tickers.

**Eric Balchunas** (3:58)
That's right, that's right. Yeah, a little Picasso action there.
Yeah, no, I think that will be really helpful in that space in particular, but those are two that are a couple that come to mind.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (4:07)
Fantastic. So, Eric, maybe you could begin just by giving a brief bit of background of how you got started in your career and how that led into ETFs because you're sort of the most one of the most prolific writers on all things ETF, something we've never explored on the podcast before, so I'm excited to do it with you.