Topic: How To Invest

Q: What is your view on BlackRock (BLK) for new buying? If not is there another U.S. financial sector stock you’d prefer?

Article Excerpt

A: BlackRock Inc., $921.04, symbol BLK on New York (Shares outstanding: 152.2 million; Market cap: $140.8 billion; www.blackrock.com), is one of the world’s largest publicly traded investment management firms. The company manages $9.5 trillion of assets on behalf of institutions and individuals through a variety of equity, fixed-income, cash-management, alternative-investment and advisory products. BlackRock’s global ETF (exchange-traded fund) and stock-index investing business accounts for 63% of its overall assets under management (AUM). The company believes its ETF business has decades of growth ahead of it. It got into the ETF business by acquiring the iShares business of Barclays PLC (symbol BCS on New York) in 2009 for $13.5 billion. Of BlackRock’s $3.03 trillion in ETF assets at the end of June 2021, equity investments accounted for 75%; fixed income, 23%. Multi-asset and alternatives made up the rest. Although BlackRock has been investing in China for more than 15 years, the asset manager is set to launch its own mutual fund products in the country…