VettaFi: “Walk Away From Exchange With Actionable Ideas from the 2025 Exchange conference” — Marguerita Cheng will be teaching “Ethics for Financial Advisors”

VettaFi, March 10, 2025 — In two weeks, the Exchange conference will be underway and I could not be more excited. We have more than 120 industry partners and more than 1,660 registered attendees. Advisors, there’s room for you to still register — use code JACKPOT100.

Networking is a key reason people attend conferences, and there will be lots of time and a cool platform to help attendees do so at Exchange. However, we know many advisors are coming to hear from industry experts and want us to show them the receipts.

One of those experts is Marguerita Cheng who will be teaching “Ethics for Financial Advisors.”

Practice Management Experts on Hand: There will be many practice management sessions to attend. For example, on Sunday, we have Blue Ocean Global Wealth CEO Marguerita Cheng providing two hours of ethics training. On Monday, Shaping Wealth’s Neil Bage and Brian Portnoy will lead a two-hour workshop on how to build a human-centric wealth culture.

Both of these sessions will provide advisors with CE credits. On Tuesday, Anne Lester will be on hand to talk about how advisors can prepare for the great wealth transfer through communication. That’s just a sample of the practice management sessions that will take place over three days. I’m confident advisor attendees will walk away with actionable ideas to make their businesses run better. Separately, many asset managers will be there sharing expertise about the markets.

Asset Management Leaders on Stage: For example, on Monday, State Street Global Advisors’ Anna Paglia and Bridgewater Associates’ Karen Karniol-Tambour will offer their takes on the macroeconomy and how to navigate the volatility. Later that day, Cohen & Steers’ Brian Cordes and TCW’s Eli Horton will talk about active management and what styles might make the most sense in an ETF wrapper.

On Tuesday, the portfolio strategy insights will continue. The morning will kick off with leaders behind three index ETFs talking about a smarter way to gain factor exposure. American Century’s Rene Casis, Franklin Templeton’s Todd Mathias, and Victory Capital’s Michael Mack will be on stage. Later that day, BondBloxx’s Tony Kelly and F/m Investments’ Alex Morris will be together talking about the bond market and where to find the best reward for the risk. There will also be a session on cryptocurrency, international equities, and value investments.

ETF Takeaways From Analysts: Much as TMX VettaFi would like to have these and other asset management experts share the names and tickers of their ETFs, they tend to not do so on stage. They do not want to give the perception of offering investment advice. We get that. So we’ve developed a plan to ensure attendees walk away from the conference with ideas to hopefully make their portfolios better.

My colleague Cinthia Murphy and I will be together at Exchange on Monday morning at 9:15 a.m. Our session, “What the Data Shows: Advisor Sentiment,” will share the results of 10 recent polls we have done with our community. The topics will include advisor views on the equity, fixed income, and cryptocurrency markets. Cinthia and I will augment this by providing examples of ETFs that fit the advisor responses and what makes the funds unique.

However, we realize that nearly two days and many sessions later, advisors might still be looking for ETF insights. So Cinthia and I will be back Tuesday at 3:40 p.m. This time we’re bringing reinforcements.

Bloomberg News’ Katie Greifeld and Bloomberg Intelligence’s Eric Balchunas will join us. Together, the four of us will recap some of the conference’s best sessions and offer examples of ETFs that fit the topics discussed. This will be a must-attend session in my (biased) opinion.