A 99-year-old financial advisor and holocaust survivor will be the oldest person to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange in honor of her 100th birthday Aug. 2. As a teen, Irene Bergman wanted to follow her private banker father to the Berlin stock exchange, but the Nazis chased them out of Europe in 1942. Now she is a financial advisor at Stralem & Co., overseeing institutional and individual clients, which she advises from her midtown apartment decorated with paintings from Dutch masters and pre-war European furniture.
Playing the Drink Market
For advisors who like to combine work and play, London has a new bar where drink prices rise and fall like stocks. According to MarketWatch, the newly opened Reserve Bar Stock Exchange in London’s financial district features real-time exchange screens, displaying the rapidly fluctuating prices. For customers, the best part is when the market “crashes,” sending prices plunging 35-40 percent. For those stateside, New York has its own version called Exchange, where guests can participate in a fully automated real time drink market.
Mr. Wonderful's New ETF
Canadian entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” investing star Kevin O’Leary (aka “Mr. Wonderful”) has launched a smart beta ETF that provides access to large and mid-cap U.S. securities. The fund, O’Shares FTSE U.S. Quality Dividend ETF (OUSA), selects stocks based on quality, low volatility and dividend yield. O’Shares Investments is a division of O’Leary Funds Management and was created through a partnership between O’Leary and Connor O’Brien, CEO and president. The ETF is the first in a series of smart beta ETFs O’Leary will introduce in the U.S.
Investors Still Look Abroad
Despite the problems in Greece and China, investors directed a total of $22.4 billion toward international equity funds in June, while they yanked about $8 billion from U.S. equity funds, according to Morningstar’s most recent fund flows report. International equity received the highest inflows during the month. Meanwhile, active U.S. equity funds have had the worst outflows in the last 12 months ending June, with a total of $156 billion in redemptions. Why? One reason could be that investors feel there is more potential for growth in Europe than in the U.S., Morningstar said.
