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An Interview With ETF.com Founder And CEO Jim Wiandt

This article is more than 10 years old.
Jim Wiandt is an indexing aficionado. He and his extended staff of researchers and journalists at ETF.com are on top of every wiggle in the industry. Over the years, Jim has created a small media empire and the go-to resource for all things index, index fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) related.

Jim founded ETF.com (formally IndexUniverse.com) in 2001 with a vision of creating the central hub for information and analysis on the index industry. During that same year, he acquired the Journal of Indexes from Dow Jones and transformed it into a fully independent publication with broad support from practitioners and the academic community. Jim also made an early move into ETF research in 2003 by purchasing the Exchange-Traded Funds Report (ETFR).

ETF.com has also expanded into investment conferences where it runs, among other events, the world's largest ETF conference, Inside ETFs. This year’s event was attended by 1,600 financial advisers and industry professionals. ETF.com also runs the largest ETF conference in Europe and a number of other global events.

In 2010, the company undertook building a robust ETF database complete with analytics – some of which is sold to large institutional investors, but most of which is now available for free to advisers and investors at ETF.com.

Jim is the co-author of Exchange Traded Funds, a book published by John Wiley & Sons in 2001. Prior to getting hooked on indexing, he also served as an assistant editor for Compton's Encyclopedia and worked as a contract journalist in West Africa after serving in the Peace Corps in Niger. Jim is a 1991 graduate of Tufts University.

Rick: Thanks for the interview, Jim. Back in the late 1990s, you saw an opportunity to cover the fledging index fund and ETF industry and decided to do something about it. Tell us about those early years. Did you expect to be where you are today?

Jim: I certainly never could have envisioned things being where they are today. It has been a long, fun ride doing something I truly love and believe in with people I respect.  When I started, honestly, I was interested in investing the way I’m interested in sports – I’d look at the stock pages like I’d look at baseball scores, and the more I had the opportunity to write about indexing (initially) and then build a business around it, the more I believed.

Rick: You often said that the people in the indexing business were different than others who work in the investment industry, and that attracted you to this space. In what way did you see them, or us, as being different?

Jim: People in the index business had a sense of purpose - a conviction that most investors were being fleeced by Wall Street and much of the mutual fund industry and that we ought to do something about that. I still have many dear friends from the early years when the industry was small, and I had the privilege of being good friends with true icons in the investing world. It’s been a thoroughly enjoyable career doing something I truly love with people I respect.

Rick: You’ve interviewed hundreds of people in the industry over the years. What are your most memorable interviews?

Jim: Wow – so many. I don’t do as many as I used to…but I’ve had a lot of extraordinarily enjoyable interviews, in print and on stage, with some real legends in the investing world: Nate Most, John Bogle, Robert Shiller, Jeremy Siegel, Burton Malkiel, Gus Sauter, Lee Kranefuss, Gus Fleites, Mike Sapir, Jonathan Steinberg, Kathleen Moriarty,  and many others. It has really been a bit of a joyride for me. For these folks, I really just needed to show up and let them do all the work!

Rick: How many times have you interviewed John Bogle?

Jim: Many times. And beyond the public interviews, I view Jack as a true friend, not just of me, but of the investing public! Mr. Bogle is a treasure to humanity in my view. And, it’s been a delight to know him and have gotten the chance to work with him all these years.

Rick: Several years ago, you joined forces with Steven Schoenfeld to work on his brilliant book, Active Index Investing, published by Wiley in 2004. Steven is one of the brightest minds in the industry. I still consider his book to be the best written on index investing. Can you tell me about the experience?

Jim: Let me tell you that book (or as I sometimes think of it, “index investing door stop”) was produced with a lot of blood, sweat and tears - mostly Steven’s. He is incredibly meticulous in his work and always right on target in his analysis.

I’ve had a long and happy relationship with Steven. He brought me the URL IndexUniverse.com and years of friendship, both of which I’ll always be thankful for. Steven was our first real step toward doing deep analysis at the company, which we’ve obviously extended to a great degree over the years.

Rick: You’ve been publishing on three URLs since I’ve known you. It all started with IndexFunds.com, which was a great name that unfortunately was sold to an investment adviser by its previous owner. IndexUniverse.com was the first site that your company owned and built a small media empire. This year you switched to ETF.com and are building a bigger empire. Please tell me about these URL transitions.

Jim: It has been a fun progression over the years. IndexFunds.com was a great website full of true index aficionados and DFA disciples. It was there that I really got to know and understand the index industry, including all of the industry itself as well as leading investors. I was initially hired as site editor and, sticking by the Woody Allen axiom that 90% of success is just sticking around, have built a team of great people who are passionate about what they do and are extraordinarily intelligent, competent and driven – always a good combination.

IndexUniverse was a URL that Steven Schoenfeld brought with him when he joined us. We adopted that as our online presence, and built a really nice, sort of wonky brand there.

Over the years, we had become more and more ETF focused, so ETF.com made great sense for us. We’re tremendously excited for its future. We think we are in a position to continue to be a real game changer in the ETF industry.

Rick: Are you planning to extend your publishing arm and conference services toward individuals in the future?

Jim: That would seem like a natural progression, particularly with the broadened retail possibilities of the ETF.com brand. However, at this time we remain overwhelmingly focused on, and write to as well as speak to, primarily a sophisticated financial adviser and institutional investor audience. But, I’m sure you’ll see more from us as we, and the ETF industry, continue to grow.

Rick: You’re venturing deeper into ETF analytical research than ever before. Why is your analysis unique? How does it differ from your competitors?

Jim: Up until now no one has really looked at ETFs as different creatures from other investment vehicles, and they are. They’ve been generally lumped in with traditional mutual funds. Market and underlying liquidity issues that are critical to sound ETF investing are not dealt with in other research, or dealt with in only a perfunctory manner, or wedged in with equities, with no portfolio-level analytics.

In addition, really no one in the adviser space has EVER really looked at what I’d characterize as “beta-analysis,” which really gets to the root of our DNA as a company. Most fund research frames things in terms of performance, in terms of alpha. We don’t believe that rating the market in terms of how it performs is the best way to look at it. We look at the market in terms of exposures and risks – the same way sophisticated, large institutional investors do…and fortunately, the world is moving into our world view.  So we feel very excited about our data and analytics offering…and the BEST THING OF ALL?

Rick: Let me guess; it’s FREE.

Jim: Yes! As an adviser or retail investor, our core ETF research and data – which we’ve spent millions of dollars building - is FREE. Why? Because we want everyone anywhere who uses any ETF data or researches ETFs in any way to think and go to ETF.com.

Rick: I’ve been watching your audience grow as the industry evolves. Is there a limit to this industry?

Jim: It has been quite a ride as the index, and then ETF, business has grown from a nice niche business full of very dedicated and passionate people into a global juggernaut that is often driving markets. And to use our apt analogy as a California company, we’ve really just been along to ride the wave. We’re also excited and delighted to see that the break in front of us still rolls out endlessly to the horizon.

Rick: You’ve come a long way, baby! Keep up the great work. Thanks, Jim.

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