Strategies for Exchange Traded Funds in Global Investing (NYSSA Webcast)

• Strategies for using ETFs to diversify exposure to asset classes and manage risk 
• Investing in passive, actively managed and leveraged ETFs
• Tracking error of ETFs versus market indices
• Liquidity, market making and trading of ETFs
• Management fees and operating expenses for ETFs

Speakers

Christopher J. Wolfe is the Chief Investment Officer for Portfolio Solutions, Private Banking and Investment Group & Institutional at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. In this role, he works closely with research analysts and portfolio managers to provide investment leadership and guidance on asset allocation and portfolio construction to the firm’s Private Wealth Advisors, Financial Advisors and their clients. Chris has more than two decades of industry investment experience. Before assuming his current role, most recently he was the Head of Investment Strategy for Rockefeller Financial. Chris also served as a partner and portfolio manager at Dover Management LLC, where he was responsible for managing a large-cap U.S. equity mutual fund and a U.S. equity hedge fund. Prior to joining Dover, Chris was Head of Global Equities at JP Morgan’s Private Bank from 1997 to 2004. From 1991 to 1997 he was a portfolio manager at Lincoln Capital in Providence, Rhode Island. Chris received his M.B.A. from Columbia University and his B.S. from the University of Rhode Island. Chris is a Certified Financial Planner licensee and a CFA charter holder.

Eric Balchunas is a Senior ETF Analyst and Funds Product Specialist at Bloomberg. In this role, he manages ETF data and research on the Bloomberg terminal. He also appears in a weekly on-air segment for Bloomberg TV and Radio called "Exchange-Traded Friday" in which he discusses different ETFs and the way investors can utilize them. In addition, he is responsible for training clients and conducting seminars on how to use Bloomberg to find and analyze ETFs. He also puts out the Bloomberg ETF Newsletter and is a regular speaker at Bloomberg events. Eric has written hundreds of articles on ETFs for Bloomberg.com as well as Bloomberg Markets magazine. Prior to joining the ETF team, Eric was a Public Relations Associate with Bloomberg. Before joining Bloomberg in 2000, Eric worked as a reporter for Institutional Investor Magazine. Eric holds a bachelor's degree in Journalism and Environmental Economics from Rutgers University.

Reginald (Reggie) M. Browne is a Senior Managing Director of the ETF group at Cantor Fitzgerald.  He is widely recognized as one of the most influential executives in the ETF sector, overseeing the world’s largest institutional trading group, with operations in the Americas, Europe and Middle East. He has been at the forefront of the exchange traded funds market nearly since its inception, having played an instrumental role providing the liquidity for SPY, the first listed ETF. Mr. Browne also was instrumental providing liquidity to grow the ETF markets in Chile, Peru, and Mexico. Mr. Browne’s views are routinely cited in major business publications, and he has been invited to speak at leading industry conferences. Underscoring his global influence, Forbes magazine dubbed him “The Godfather of ETFs.” Mr. Browne is a senior managing director at Cantor Fitzgerald, an innovative capital markets investment bank he joined last fall along with his longtime partners, Darren Taube and Eric Lichtenstein. Mr. Browne and his partners oversee a 29-person team that has served as lead market maker for more than one-third of ETFs listed on the New York Stock Exchange, facilitating more than $1 trillion in customer order flow annually for global pension funds, asset managers, wealth managers and broker dealers. The group, most of which has worked together for seven years, has been repeatedly ranked by industry trade publications as the leading ETF specialist team in the U.S. Prior to joining Cantor Fitzgerald, Mr. Browne was managing director, co-global head of the ETF Group at Knight Capital Group. Earlier he was a senior vice president and co-head of the ETF Group at Newedge USA, a division of Societe Generale and Credit Agricole CIB. He also worked at Susquehanna International and O’Connor and Associates, a predecessor firm of UBS. Mr. Browne earned his Bachelor’s of Business Administration from La Salle University, where he currently serves as a trustee. He also is a trustee of First Baptist of Lincoln Gardens. He holds FINRA Series 7, 24, 55, and 63 certifications. 

Jeremy Schwartz, Director of Research, is responsible for the WisdomTree Equity Index construction process and oversees research across the WisdomTree equity family. Prior to joining WisdomTree, Jeremy was Professor Jeremy Siegel’s Head Research Assistant and helped with the research and writing of Stocks for the Long Run and The Future for Investors. He is also the co-author of the Financial Analysts Journal paper “What Happened to the Original Stocks in the S&P 500?” and the Wall Street Journal article “The Great American Bond Bubble.” Jeremy is a graduate of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the CFA Society of Philadelphia.

Bruno del Ama is the co-founder and CEO of Global X Funds, a New York-based provider of exchange traded funds that facilitates access to investment opportunities across the global markets. Global X, which launched in 2008, specializes in income, international and commodity asset classes, and manages approximately $4 billion across 43 ETFs. Global X has been ranked by BlackRock as one of the fastest growing ETF providers. Previously, Mr. del Ama served as Head of Operations in the structured products business at Radian Asset Assurance. Prior to that he was a Senior Consultant at Oliver Wyman advising leading financial services firms. Mr. del Ama earned his MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and is a CFA charter holder.
 

Gregory Shinnick is the Chief Executive Officer of Blue Ocean.  Blue Ocean operates an electronic trading platform during market hours in Asia for ETFs that are listed on exchanges in the United States and based on international and emerging markets’ indices, particularly in Asia.  He has been active in the Asian markets since 2006. Prior to starting work for Blue Ocean, Mr. Shinnick founded in 2009 and served as Managing Director of GTO Group LLC (now Kelson Capital LLC), a licensed U.S. regulated broker based in New York.  From 2003 to mid-2007, he was a Managing Director at Creditex, where he started new product desks worldwide with a particular emphasis on electronic trading systems for credit derivatives.  In early 2006, he was instrumental in launching an electronic interdealer for Credit Default Swaps.  While working as Head of Brokerage for Creditex in London, Mr. Shinnick was instrumental in starting the first fully electronic marketplace for credit derivatives in 2004 and the first electronic marketplace for ADR swaps (ADRSwapbook) in 2003. He was a sales/trader for international equities at Societe Generale in New York from 1997-2003, and for Smith Barney from 1993-1997. Mr. Shinnick graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and has an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh.  After graduating from Annapolis, he spent five years on Naval ships, including 10 months in the Persian Gulf during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.  He holds FINRA Series 7, 24, 28, 63 & 79 certifications.