Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of September 1, 2020

Article Excerpt

The financial industry differs from other businesses. It mainly deals in intangibles, represented by paper or electronic documents. Other businesses deal in tangibles—goods or services. However, the financial industry and other industries do share one key feature: human nature plays a role in virtually everything they do. That’s especially true in marketing. There are differences, of course. The financial industry has a staid image that it wants to maintain. It also has to follow regulatory constraints. So it rarely breaks new ground in marketing. Instead, it borrows marketing ideas that have been in use for some time and have proven their worth for other industries. Here are a couple of examples—one from casino gambling, the other from convenience baking goods. This came to mind when I got thinking about the shake-up now underway in the ETF industry. So far this year, the industry has shut down 188 ETFs, nearly 10% of all ETFs on the market. This was mostly due to a..