Ryan Issakainen of First Trust - Buffered ETFs, Artificial Intelligence and Much More

Oct 8, 2024

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Today, Rusty and Robyn are joined by Ryan Issakainen, Senior Vice President, Exchange-Traded Fund Strategist at First Trust Advisors. Since joining First Trust in January of 2000, Mr. Issakainen has worked in various capacities with Unit Investment Trusts, Closed-Ended Funds, Structured Products, and Exchange-Traded Funds. As an ETF Strategist at First Trust, Ryan provides in-depth analysis and commentary related to ETF investing, including a monthly ETF webcast for financial advisors, and a quarterly ETF newsletter. In addition to his research responsibilities, Ryan speaks at various ETF industry events and conferences throughout the country. Mr. Issakainen has appeared on a number of radio and television outlets including CNBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg Radio, and WBBM Newsradio 780. In addition, he has given interviews to numerous print outlets including Investor’s Business Daily, Bloomberg, Reuters, InvestmentNews, Investment Advisor Magazine, TheStreet.com, Index Universe, MarketWatch, The Wall Street Journal, LA Times, US News and World Report, and Fortune Magazine. Ryan holds a B.A. and an M.A. from Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. He resides in upstate New York with his wife Lauren and children Abigail, Joshua, and Caleb.

Key Takeaways

What drew Ryan to this industry in the first place and why has he stuck with First Trust for such a long time?
What drives First Trust’s investment philosophy and how does it differ from its peers?
When interest rates are falling, what tends to work in the stock market?
When might the stock market broaden out a bit and what are some of the potential catalysts for this shift?
What are some of the potential second order effects of the buildout of AI?
How does Ryan define investment themes in general and what does he think that themes like re-shoring and de-globalization mean for the market overall?
What is Ryan’s overall outlook for the growth of ETFs and ETF models?
How would Ryan define Buffered ETFs and why is there such high demand for them?
More and more firms are entering the Buffered ETF landscape. What might this mean for the ecosystem?
What is next in the Buffered investment space? Will First Trust potentially bring buffers to other investment vehicles?
How does First Trust partner with RIAs and Financial Advisors in a way that might be different from other ETF fund companies?
How does First Trust mesh their great macro research with the products they launch?
What is Ryan’s favorite investment idea at the moment?

Quotes

“When we look historically, what tends to work better during those rates down/rate cutting environments…we’ve seen high dividend paying stocks, as well as low volatility stocks, have been the best performing factors. High quality stocks tend to do well also, but they also tend to work when rates are moving higher. ” ~ Ryan Isaakainen

“[For] themes like de-globalization [and] re-shoring, those things are obviously connected - if you are going to have less of a global supply chain, you’ve got to bring it home. This is a trend that is just beginning to play out, that we expect will have legs for at least a decade. We look at the evidence that it’s happening…there’s this building boom in factories that’s across the US - it’s just an enormous amount of magnitude…and there’s a lot of reasons for that and there’s a lot of reasons why we think it will continue. One of the obvious reasons, looking in the rearview mirror…is that…there are vulnerabilities [in supply chains] that were exposed by Covid.” ~ Ryan Isaakainen

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Disclosure(s) - Orion Portfolio Solutions, LLC, an Orion Company, is a registered investment advisor.

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