Join AGF Investments for a discussion on growth equities and an overview of AGF U.S. Large Cap Growth Equity Strategy – a high-conviction mandate that focuses on capturing leading growth companies which exhibit exceptional innovation and corporate leadership in every investment cycle. The discussion will include the team’s dynamic investment approach, how they adapt to regime changes, as well as the sectors and themes that they are viewing as long-term growth opportunities.

Workshop Objective: You will learn about AGF U.S. Large Cap Growth Equity Strategy and the team’s distinct investment approach to capture leading, innovative large-cap companies to achieve growth through all market cycles.

Why you should have mid-cap stocks in your asset allocation and how Argent Capital invests in the asset class.

Through a proprietary blend of quantitative and fundamental analysis, the Argent Mid Cap strategy seeks to build a portfolio of enduring businesses that reflects alignment between a positive quantitative score and strong company fundamentals. To Argent, an enduring business is growing cash flows, has a durable competitive advantage and allocates capital wisely.  

Argent’s Mid Cap strategy is a high conviction portfolio of enduring businesses designed to outperform the Russell Midcap Index over a full market cycle. We believe that Argent Selectivity, our long-term investment horizon and our focus on our organizational culture are competitive advantages of our Mid Cap strategy.

Workshop Objective: In this workshop, you will gain a greater understanding of the numerous advantages of mid-cap stocks through the lens of the Argent Mid Cap strategy.

Company Profile: Since 1998, Argent Capital Management has been helping institutional investors, investment advisors and high net worth individuals meet their investment goals. We are a boutique investment management firm specializing in U.S. equities. Our focus is on seeking attractively valued, enduring businesses that have the potential for superior investment results over the long term.

Argent Capital Management offers five actively managed domestic equity portfolios: Mid Cap, Large Cap, Dividend Select, SMID Cap, and Focused Small Cap. 

Financial science and our understanding of what drives asset prices have evolved considerably. The implications on the financial services industry have also been significant, including the introduction of passive index funds, single-factor and multi-factor strategies. But has factor-building been overdone, and are there risks to becoming too factor focused?

Recent studies have highlighted that the rise in indexing has been driven by asset class segment, or non-total market index funds. While index-based strategies offer transparency in exposures, any non-total market index involves active decision making in both design and ongoing execution.

Workshop Objectives:
-    Examine similarities and differences in how indices define asset classes and manage reconstitution
-    Review the rise of strategic-beta ETP offerings and provide context for how allocators can navigate this ecosystem
-    Highlight some of the constraints portfolio design decisions can place on index trackers
-    Propose how a systematic approach can deliver benefits commonly associated with indexing while removing artificial constraints

Company Profile: The innovations of Avantis Investors® rest on the established foundation of American Century Investments, an asset manager known for industry-leading client care, stewardship and stability. Founded over 60 years ago, American Century Investments boasts an institutional-quality investment management platform with more than $200 billion* in assets under management.

Many asset allocators have given up on their Emerging Markets allocation, or they have decided to ‘pack it in’.   We understand, investing in Emerging Markets is meant to give you better returns to compensate for higher risk. With high levels of volatility, it has tended to be viewed negatively. And it has significantly underperformed Developed Markets for over a decade. Volatility needn’t always be a bad thing though when it comes to active management. EM has done its job for investors before, and we believe now is the time it can outperform developed markets again. This is about the worst time to pack it in.

Workshop Objective: To provide reasons to be positive on Emerging Markets. A comparison to developed markets, a discussion on why active and where we believe there is growth. 

Company Profile: Baillie Gifford & Co, headquartered in Edinburgh is one of the UK’s oldest independent fund management firms founded in 1908. We are, we believe, unique for a company of our size in being an independent partnership with no outside shareholders and unlimited liability to our clients, for whom nowadays we invest US$247bn as at the end of October 2023. Our single focus is on providing outstanding investment returns and service for those clients. 

Baillie Gifford International LLC is wholly owned by Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited which is the legal entity that provides client service and marketing functions in North America. Baillie Gifford Overseas is wholly owned by Baillie Gifford & Co.

In this presentation, Capital Group’s Fixed Income Investment Directors Anmol Sinha and Ingrid Parl will share an overview of the growth of the ETF market, the background on what ETFs CG brought to market & why and then a deeper dive on ETFs in the fixed income space.  They will cover the reasons why ETFs offer a number of benefits to investors, particularly in the fixed income space.  

Workshop Objective: An opportunity to examine the active advantages and overall benefits of ETFs within the fixed income space.  

Company Profile: Capital Group has been singularly focused on delivering superior long-term results for investors using high-conviction portfolios, rigorous research, and individual accountability. Known for our American Funds® mutual funds, we’ve brought the same time-tested active management to ETFs. We offer a growing lineup of active transparent ETFs that are distinct strategies yet steeped in our more than 90-year history of active management. As of December 31, 2023, Capital Group manages $2.5 trillion in equity and fixed income assets for millions of individual and institutional investors around the world. American Funds Distributors, Inc

Navigate the ever-evolving world of fixed income and gain insights into the bond markets with institutional portfolio manager, Beau Coash. In this session, we will seek to unravel why investors looking to strategically craft a well-balanced portfolio might look to bond funds to deliver income, diversification, and liquidity as well as discuss potential strategies to help investors make astute investment decisions and ensure their portfolio thrives in today’s dynamic environment. 

Workshop Objective: Review opportunities in the fixed income bond markets and how the Fidelity Advisor Total Bond Fund leverages research to seek consistent, competitive, and risk-adjusted returns. 

Company Profile: Fidelity Institutional® offers investment insights, strategies, and solutions, as well as trading and prime brokerage services, to a wide range of wealth management firms, asset managers, and institutional investors.

Gateway’s investment philosophy holds that the equity market is the most reliable source of long-term real returns and consistency is the key to investment success over time. Seeking high-quality, durable companies paired with steady income enables broad market participation while maintaining the potential for defence and may benefit from rising markets or provide protection during times of uncertainty. Options-based strategies, like those managed by Gateway since the 1970’s, have the potential to enhance risk-adjusted returns by accessing the implied volatility risk premium, generating robust and consistent cash flow for investors, and reducing the risks associated with equity market exposure. This combination, prevalent in today’s challenging environment, provides investors potential to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns, with attractive yields, over the long-term.

Workshop Objective: Gateway’s strategies seek to provide equity market-driven capital appreciation combined with positive cash flow generation through derivative trading. Gateway can help investors improve their risk-adjusted return profile and generate income.

Company Profile: Gateway is a pioneer in options-based investing. Since 1977, shortly after the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (Cboe®) first began trading modern option contracts, Gateway has provided quantitatively driven equity strategies paired with options-based investing to meet the needs of risk-conscious investors. Gateway has maintained a focus on reducing the risk of equity investing with strategies seeking to capture the majority of the returns associated with equity market investments while accessing a persistent implied volatility risk premium and generating consistent cash flow.

Impax has nearly five decades of experience in sustainable fixed income and has an investment team that’s helped shape market innovations first-hand. Join our presentation where we will describe a multi-sector investment grade bond strategy focused on quality, sustainability and impact in a diversified portfolio. 

In this discussion, we will share why we believe the economy is in a transition from a depletive model to a more sustainable model and what this means for fixed income investing. The presentation will highlight our approach to managing disruptive change, mitigating fundamental risks through proprietary ESG research, including the Impax Sustainability Lens, and how we derive positive impact as a natural outcome of our approach to structured products and government securities.

Workshop Objective: Understand how material sustainability risks and opportunities can be integrated into US investment grade fixed income portfolios.

Company Profile: Impax is a specialist asset manager investing in the opportunities arising from the transition to a more sustainable global economy. Impax believes that capital markets will be shaped profoundly by global sustainability challenges, including climate change, pollution and essential investments in human capital, infrastructure and resource efficiency. These trends will drive growth for well-positioned companies and create risks for those unable or unwilling to adapt. The company seeks to invest in higher quality companies with strong business models that demonstrate sound management of risk. Impax offers a well-rounded suite of investment solutions spanning multiple asset classes seeking strong risk-adjusted returns over the medium to long term.

In the face of volatile and uncertain market conditions, investors turned to multifactor ETFs, seeking outperformance across cycles. In 2023, Invesco’s flagship multifactor ETF (OMFL) surpassed a 5-year track record, and interest soared as investors pursue the more active exposure offered by the strategy. Join Invesco to explore the range of multifactor ETFs offered and how to best position dynamic strategies to optimize portfolio outcomes. 

Workshop Objective: This session will offer a deep dive on multifactor ETFs, examining market adoption, advantages of the strategy, and an overview of Invesco’s Dynamic Multifactor methodology. 

Company Profile: Invesco Ltd. (Ticker NYSE: IVZ) is a global independent investment management firm dedicated to delivering an investment experience that helps people get more out of life. Our distinctive investment teams deliver a comprehensive range of active, passive, and alternative investment capabilities. With offices in more than 20 countries, Invesco manages US$1.6 trillion1 in assets on behalf of clients worldwide.
1    Invesco Ltd. AUM of $1,585.3 billion USD as of December 31, 2023.

 PineStone’s investment philosophy is rooted in the belief that one can achieve sustainable, above-market returns by investing in a concentrated portfolio of remarkably high-quality companies and holding them for as long as possible, often decades. 

These are companies that as a result of unique competitive advantages can:
• Generate a strong return on invested capital (ROIC)
• Provide ample long-term growth potential at incrementally higher ROIC
• Generate strong and predictable free cash flow
• Consistently compound shareholder wealth 
• Preserve capital

One key ingredient to generating high return on capital is pricing power, and companies with pricing power may be able to combat inflation and macroeconomic volatilities. 

In this presentation, you will have an opportunity to learn about PineStone and several case studies that help bring their investment approach to life.

Workshop Objective: Introduce the group to PineStone, educate them on our approach to investing, and provide several case studies that help illustrate the merits of long-term, quality-focused global equity investing. 

Company Profile: spinning out of Fiera Capital. The firm is private and 100% employee-owned. PineStone serves its clients by investing in what we believe to be the highest quality companies worldwide and owning them for as long as possible, often decades. 

We stand by the following principles:
•Our vision: To be the gold standard for fundamental research, portfolio construction, and dedicated long-term quality investing.
•Our mission: To create excess value for our clients and their beneficiaries over the long run.
•Our values: We foster a culture of commitment, integrity, drive, diligence, and patience.

While cash and cash alternatives remain an attractive place to be, don’t let the allure of ‘risk-free’ returns distract you from the benefits of thinking strategically about optimizing and sizing your cash allocation. Growing dispersion in cash investment options has increased the potential opportunity cost of not optimizing its full potential. Given the current yield environment and stage in the monetary cycle, we believe that reinvestment risk, often underestimated, should be near the top of investor’s minds. Strategically sizing and tiering cash allocations can help manage this risk by better aligning investment horizons with expected liquidity needs and locking in current yield levels.

Workshop Objective: Explore and discuss different approaches to short-term investment solutions to optimize portfolio outcomes given the current market environment.

With the fed funds rate at its highest level in decades and wide market dispersion across sectors investors have the opportunity to participate in the high-quality securitized credit space at historically attractive yield levels without taking unnecessary risk.
PGIM Fixed Income co-head of securitized products Edwin Wilches will discuss the reasons why this often-overlooked segment of the market is a strong compliment to traditional Core bond portfolios with their attractive spread levels, diversifying characteristics and ability to customize exposures.

Workshop Objective:
·    To build awareness for PGIM's securitized credit capability 
·    To establish PGIM Investments team as the Professional Buyer window to PGIM investment offerings

Company Profile: At PGIM Investments, we provide access to active investment strategies across the global markets in the pursuit of consistent outperformance for investors. We’re part of PGIM, the global investment management business of Prudential Financial, Inc.— the world’s 14th-largest investment manager with more than $1.3 trillion in assets under management (AUM) and a company that individuals and businesses have trusted for over 140 years. Our scale and investment experience allow us to deliver a diversified suite of actively managed solutions across a broad spectrum of asset classes and investment styles.

Can investors allocate to environmental thematic equities for the betterment of portfolio performance and positive impact? We think the answer is yes, as shown by Pictet’s flagship Global Environmental Opportunities (GEO) strategy, which has helped investors around the world achieve both goals since its inception in 2014. Based on a scientific framework, “The Planetary Boundaries”, we construct a portfolio of the companies set to win in a future where new environmental technologies will be necessary, such as those that will drive the energy transition. Not only does this approach improve risk return prospects for clients, but it also offers measurable impact metrics that improve the environmental performance of a portfolio. Active engagement with companies is core to an approach that focuses on long term investing based on bottom-up research.

Workshop Objective: Learn about Pictet Asset Management’s flagship active thematic Global Environmental Opportunities strategy, and the scientific framework that has been adopted for the accurate and robust construction of an environmental equity universe with high purity based on a full lifecycle analysis of firms’ impact.

Company Profile: For almost 30 years Pictet Asset Management has pioneered a megatrends-based thematic investment approach that has captured the imagination of investors across the world. Today we manage over USD 68bn across 17 thematic equity strategies across Environment, Technology and Health. 

Pictet Asset Management is part of the Pictet Group, founded in Geneva in 1805. Privately owned and managed by 8 Partners, the Pictet Group has more than 5,300 employees in 30 offices around the world and USD 752bn in assets.

With emerging markets trading at multi-decade lows compared with global counterparts, Portfolio Manager Naomi Waistell will assess why tailwinds are gathering for the asset class in 2024, as interest rate policy pivots and China plays a different global role. She will discuss the emergence of a ‘multi-polar’ world and explain why this presents a new paradigm for investing in this ever-dynamic region, and provides a constructive backdrop for the Polar Capital Emerging Market Stars Fund – an investment approach which marries analysis of macroeconomic shifts with select, bottom-up exposure to the world’s fastest-growing sustainable companies.

Workshop Objective: The objective is for delegates to understand how the funds’ integrated ESG process helps to generate responsible and sustainable alpha as well as explaining the most exciting themes/opportunities they are seeing in emerging markets.

Company Profile: Polar Capital is an experienced, investment-led, active fund manager with a collegiate and meritocratic culture. Since its foundation in 2001, it has grown steadily and currently has 13 autonomous investment teams managing specialist, active and capacity constrained portfolios, with combined AUM of $24.9billion (as at December 29, 2023).

We will discuss the current opportunity in listed infrastructure and what makes it a good fit for investors looking to achieve compelling financial returns and positive sustainability outcomes. Today, the asset class offers attractive valuations, resilient fundamentals that offer defense in light of market volatility, and complements existing investor allocations. We believe GLI will outperform equities in 2024 and will continue to deliver comparable long term returns to equities at meaningfully lower volatility.

Workshop Objective: Explore listed infrastructure’s compelling financial returns, positive sustainability impact, and investment potential.  Understand GLI’s resilience amid market volatility, current attractive valuations, and potential outperformance compared to equities in 2024.  

Join George Milling-Stanley, Chief Gold Strategist at State Street Global Advisors, to discuss gold’s:
Economic outlook - Soft landing, “extended period of below trend growth”, or recession?
Geopolitics - Actual: Ukraine, Israel and broader middle East. Possible: Increasing China aggression, ugly US election.

How will gold react? Demand outlook, especially jewelry, investment, and central banks. Supply outlook, including mine production and recycling.

Gold’s role in a portfolio.

Outlook for the gold price.

Company Profile: For four decades, State Street Global Advisors has served the world’s governments, institutions and financial advisors. With a rigorous, risk-aware approach built on research, analysis and market-tested experience, we build from a breadth of index and active strategies to create cost-effective solutions. As stewards, we help portfolio companies see that what is fair for people and sustainable for the planet can deliver long-term performance. And, as pioneers in index, ETF, and ESG investing, we are always inventing new ways to invest. As a result, we have become the world’s fourth-largest asset manager* with US $3.48 trillion† under our care. *Pensions & Investments Research Center, as of 12/31/21. †This figure is presented as June 30, 2022 and includes approximately $66.43 billion of assets with respect to SPDR products for which State Street Global Advisors Funds Distributors, LLC (SSGA FD) acts solely as the marketing agent. SSGA FD and State Street Global Advisors are affiliated. *Pensions & Investments Research Center, as of 12/31/21.

Fixed income investors are grappling with a potential Fed pivot, macro uncertainty, and geopolitical instability. We believe this environment presents an opportunity to take advantage of volatility and periodic price dislocations to drive attractive returns in an uncertain environment. We discuss areas of the fixed income market where we see fundamental relative value. And we discuss how the siloed nature of fixed income analysis allows us to exploit opportunities in a way that is unique in the marketplace.

Workshop Objectives: Discuss the Thornburg Strategic Income Fund as a solution to provide notably higher return than core bond portfolios while providing sufficient downside protection when markets dislocate.

Company Profile: Thornburg is a global investment firm delivering on strategy for institutions, financial professionals, and investors worldwide. The privately held firm, founded in 1982, is an active, high-conviction manager of equities, fixed income and multi-asset solutions. With $42 billion in client assets ($41 billion in assets under management and $1 billion in assets under advisement) as of November 30, 2023, the firm offers mutual funds, closed-end funds, institutional accounts, separate accounts for high-net-worth investors and UCITS funds for non-U.S. investors. 

Thornburg’s U.S. headquarters is in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai. For more information, visit www.thornburg.com. 

Ares Portfolio Manager will discuss the fund’s team, objective and investment style.

The fund seeks total return, primarily from income and capital appreciation by investing primarily in global debt securities.
•    Employs flexibility by allocating assets among core investments and opportunistic investments as market conditions change
•    Identifies companies and securities that are believed to offer attractive relative values when compared to their fundamental credit risk
•    Actively hedges portfolio risks, including credit, interest rate, and currency, in an effort to preserve capital
•    Consists of several broad investment categories, including high yield bonds, bank loans, special situations, structured credit and hedges

Workshop Objective: Touchstone Investments believes in being Distinctively Active. To us this means delivering active investment management via institutional assets managers recognized for their particular expertise, delivering our industry leading practice management tools to help you actively manage your practice and offering unique perspectives on the economy and markets via our in-house thought leadership.

Company Profile: Touchstone Investments is a Distinctively Active fund company committed to providing investors with access to strategies sub-advised by institutional asset managers. Touchstone’s diverse but focused product offering gives investors a full breadth of investment options across styles and asset classes, includes U.S. equity, international equity, income and multi-asset funds. 

Income is back. After a couple of barren years, yields in high-quality bonds that were not too long ago returning just 2% or 3% are now set to bring in 7% to 8%. And this jump in yields looks to be a game changer for investors.

The ability for investors to get the outcomes they want from fixed income, in a stable and reliable fashion, has returned.  Our presentation will focus on why we believe the time is right for fixed income and where we see particular value for investors.

Workshop Objectives: To help the audience understand why now is the right time to allocate to fixed income, which parts of the market we see value and why staying in cash will cost you.   

Company Profile: TwentyFour Asset Management is a specialist fixed income fund manager, headquartered in the city of London and a boutique of the Swiss based Vontobel Group. Since inception in 2008, TwentyFour has built an enviable reputation for performance, expertise, and innovation in its chosen sector. 
We specialize in fixed income, nothing else. This focus means that all our resources and people are managing one asset class with no distractions. This allows us to concentrate on delivering the best outcomes for our clients. We currently have $23.27bn in assets under management (as at 1/31/2024). Our product offerings are for both professional and institutional clients, and our portfolio management teams cover three distinct business areas with a high degree of collaboration.

DWS Research Institute and the Xtrackers Sales Team will discuss thematic investing as it relates to how an economy will evolve in the future, and how investing in long term trends plays in to portfolio construction and diversification.  We’ll also discuss trends in High Yield Bond Investing along side the Xtrackers High Yield suite of ETFs as well as non US companies and dividend growth strategies such as the Xtrackers MSCI High Dividend Yield Equity ETF.

Company Profile: Xtrackers by DWS provides investors with innovation, access and value through its established range of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) across FX-hedged equities, dividends and factors, China, ESG across equities and fixed income, high-yield, and now thematics. Xtrackers recently launched its first three US-listed Thematic ETFs focused on innovative growth trends of the future: UPGR (US Green Infrastructure), (CHPS) Semiconductors, and (PSWD) Cybersecurity.