Advisors who want to learn both the basics and the buzz around exchange traded funds can get it all next week at the Inside ETFs conference in Hollywood, Florida.
Presented by ETF.com, the Jan. 25-28 Inside ETFs conference, "Building the Next-Generation ETF Portfolio," already has more than 1,800 participants signed up to attend the eighth annual event that numbered about 1,500 participants in 2014 and 1,280 in 2013.
Feature keynote speakers at this year's event include:
- Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive and chief investment officer of DoubleLine Capital
- Ric Edelman, chairman and CEO of Edelman Financial Services
- Political pundits Karl Rove and James Carville
- Terry Bradshaw, former Super Bowl winning National Football League quarterback and current co-host of Fox NFL Sunday.
Last year's conference ETF.com President Matt Hougan attributes the conference's striking growth to the equally dramatic growth in the ETF market.
"We've seen a lot of growth," Hougan said in a phone interview a week before the conference. "Over the past few years, the number and type of ETF users has expended dramatically. Registered investment advisors are traditional users, but now broker-dealers and wirehouses are also using ETFs."
This year's conference offers 17 continuing education credits for the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designation and 16 CE credits for the Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA) designation. The agenda starts with "ETFs 101" sessions on fundamentals and risks, then continues with topics such as Research Affiliates CEO Robert Arnott's thoughts on cap-weighted indexes, volatility and alternative income over the course of the conference.
This year's conference will see more keynote speakers than ever, including the Winklevoss Twins of Facebook fame who are still trying to launch a bitcoin ETF, and Center for a New American Security senior fellow Robert Kaplan, a "captivating" geopolitical analyst who rated at last year's conference as the No. 1 speaker, Hougan said.
