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FTSE Russell Convenes gives you insider access to the ideas shaping the future of investing. Join leading voices from finance and academia as they unpack the forces transforming markets, regulation, and investor behaviour—brought to you by a global index leader at the heart of the investment ecosystem.
34 Episodes
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Marina Mets (FTSE Russell) and BlackRock's Joyce Choi talk about the recent market volatility and how the recent market dynamics in the US along with the falling US dollar make international fixed income more attractive to invest in. Joyce discusses the best way to dip your toes into international bonds and which iShares ETF invests that way.
Guest: Joyce Choi, Head of Institutional Product Strategy, Fixed Income, ETFs, BlackRock
Host: Marina Mets, Head of Americas, Fixed Income & Convertibles, FTSE Russell
Chapters
(00:00:00) - Introduction(00:00:50) - How fixed income markets fit into the big picture(00:03:11) - Looking beyond US borders(00:04:55) - International fixed income and its different segments(00:06:22) - Considerations for investors(00:08:43) - International markets: A diversifier or complimentary?
Meet StepStone Group, a private markets solutions provider with $723 billion in total capital responsibility (as of June 30, 2025). In June 2025, FTSE Russell announced a partnership with StepStone to leverage their extensive private markets database in the creation of new indices—designed to help investors better understand these strategies and potentially broaden access to the asset class. We sat down with Tom Keck, StepStone’s Co-founder and Partner, to explore the hidden value these next-generation private markets benchmarks are poised to unlock.
Dana Moody (FTSE Russell) and Vanguard's Carole Okigbo discuss recent Vanguard milestones and review some current ETF industry trends, including the resilience of the ETF structure in the face of more recent market volatility. Lastly, they look at portfolio construction considerations and some common ETF misconceptions.
Portfolio construction is a key tool for investors. By applying a framework and a systematic approach, investors may understand their exposures better. Listen to learn more about both practical and theoretical ideas about building robust and resilience strategies.
Host: David Sol, Global Head of Policy and Governance FTSE Russell
Guests: Dr. Joseph Simonian, Head of Equity Portfolio Design and Analytics, CalPERS and Sebastian Lancetti, Head of Index Research & Design, Americas, FTSE Russell
Chapters
(00:00:00) - Introduction(00:01:00) - Portfolio construction: Is it an art or a science?(00:02:39) - Examples of portfolio construction techniques(00:05:05) - What academics are writing about today(00:07:40) - Approaching portfolio construction(00:12:20) - Practical vs theoretical approaches(00:14:13) - Concentration
Anthony Rochte (FTSE Russell) talks with GSAM's Brendan McCarthy and ProShares' Mo Haghbin about the evolution of the ETF industry. They discuss how the types of ETFs are evolving and how the question in portfolio construction is no longer about active vs passive, it's how you combine the two optimally.
Media reports, social media posts, press releases, CEO conference calls and many other channels deliver unstructured data to the market. MarketPsych uses AI and its large language models to analyse emotions and sentiment and turn these into signals and forecasts. Listen to learn more about this exciting and powerful growing field.
Chapters
(00:00:00) - Introduction(00:00:50) - What is media analytics?(00:01:49) - Converting unstructured data into structured content(00:04:15) - Explaining named entity recognition(00:05:15) - Launch of the StarMine MarketPsych Media Sentiment Model(00:06:44) - Sentiment vs stock market performance(00:08:20) - Signals around tariffs(00:10:08) - LLMs and entity recognition(00:10:39) - CEO optimism and analysing emotions(00:12:03) - The future of technology
Today, investors have endless options to choose from when tailoring their portfolios, particularly when targeting specific investment factors. But how can you create the perfect factor playlist for your portfolio? In this episode, Andrew Ang, Head of Factors, Sustainable Solutions at BlackRock discusses how factor investing has evolved to create more democratised access for investors, and which factors he thinks will perform better in the long run. Andrew also explains why we are again in an era of macro risk.
In his interview Martin talks about what he feels to be the real drivers of major social and cultural change, and the shift he is seeing in public opinion towards business within our society today. He shares his views on how the private sector could better address societal challenges and capitalism ‘shaken up’ to get money flowing in the right directions. As part of his interview, Martin explains how Just Capital measures the progress of companies, provides incentives for businesses to partake in corporate social responsibility efforts and what companies need to do next to drive significant change.
In our second episode of FTSE Russell Convenes, Indrani De, CFA, PRM, Head of Global Investment Research, FTSE Russell discusses several longer-term issues for financial markets. What will happen to the dollar? Is the US on the cusp of another technological boom, or even one in healthcare? How will the US’s current raised debt ceiling problem play out? Indrani answers these questions as well as providing insights on China and commodities, the impact of labor on inflation and investing in emerging markets.
In our first episode of Series three of FTSE Russell Convenes, Elizabeth Burton joins Jamie MacDonald to talk about the challenges and opportunities in the current market environment
During the interview she dives into the US and inflation outlook, drawing upon lessons learnt from the past, factors likely to impact a rate hike and the one piece of information she feels is ‘going to have a lot to do with where we see the Fed’. Elizabeth also provides her opinions on why she feels it’s an over simplistic view to regard commercial real estate as a bad actor, the ‘reopening of China, the commodities investment story and whether asset allocators are thinking seriously about digital assets.
Watch the interview on https://www.ftserussell.com/ftse-russell-convenes
In this episode, Stephanie Maier, FTSE Russell and Laura Starks, University of Texas, discuss investor democracy and the evolving landscape of proxy voting where shareholder voting becomes more open and inclusive, enabling broader participation and representation. Laura explains the impact of decentralised voting and investor choice programs, revealing key findings from her latest research on how these shifts influence decisions on ESG and climate proposals, and corporate governance.
Guest: Laura Starks, George Kozmetsky Centennial Distinguished University Chair and Professor of Finance at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin
Host: Stephanie Maier, Head of Sustainability, FTSE Russell
Chapters
(00:00:00) - Introduction(00:01:04) - Proxy voting: Key findings(00:03:04) - Shareholder resolutions: How voting behaviour changed
Welcome to the second episode of our new three-part FTSE Russell Convenes ‘geopolitical’ series with Tina Fordham, independent global political strategist and founder of Fordham Global Foresight. In this episode Tina discusses this ‘very different victory’ for President Trump, and its potential impact on global markets. She shares her views and expectations on topics from the change in political power, investor optimism, and the new administration, through to global political stability.
Welcome to the second episode of our new three-part FTSE Russell Convenes ‘geopolitical’ series with Tina Fordham, independent global political strategist and founder of Fordham Global Foresight. In this episode Tina discusses this ‘very different victory’ for President Trump, and its potential impact on global markets. She shares her views and expectations on topics from the change in political power, investor optimism, and the new administration, through to global political stability.
The spotlight is on the upcoming U.S. elections…
We are pleased to introduce the first episode of our new three-part FTSE Russell Convenes ‘geopolitical’ series, with Tina Fordham, Founder of Fordham Global Foresight. An accomplished independent global political strategist and advisor to senior leaders about the intersection between geopolitics, markets and the business environment, Tina shares her views on the polls, the ‘race’ from investor perspectives, and the acceleration in, and impact of, drivers of geopolitical risk.
Concluding this season of FTSE Russell Convenes, in the 40th anniversary year of the FTSE Russell US Indexes, we shine the spotlight on the evolution of FTSE Russell’s indices and how client input is key to their success.
With fifty years of indexing experiencing between them, Bryce Clarke, regional director, Index Investments Group and Catherine Yoshimoto, director of equity product management at FTSE Russell are ideally placed to discuss indexing from the product and client side.
Here they explain the necessity to collaborate with clients to really understand their desired investment outcomes, and how this intel feeds into FTSE Russell’s product development, customisation and delivery.
Johannes Lee, Investor within the asset management team at Builders Vision—the family office and impact platform created by the grandson of Walmart founders—discusses the organisation’s mission, investment strategy and recent work in stewardship and engagement.
He provides detail on Builders Vision’s investment focus in key thematic areas including sustainable food and agriculture, healthy oceans, renewable energy and thriving communities, with a focus on how the portfolio plays out both actively and passively.
In episode 8 of FTSE Russell Convenes, Walter Kress, Chief Investment Officer of Ernst & Young, LLP discusses the ‘large playground’ of fixed income and how individual components of the fixed income market are significantly different to two years ago.
He explains how the inflation environment is playing through to pension plans, the additional fixed income opportunity set beyond a core vanilla holding and the very different role of fixed income in portfolios today.
How is robo advisory and machine learning impacting the financial services market? In episode 7, Alberto Rossi, Professor of Finance, at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business explains how the right balance of human and algorithmic engagement empowers investors to become more effective. He shares the importance of being cautious when using AI, the need to really understand signals and the advice he would give to a CIO of an asset management firm building a strategy around AI.
Fiona Bassett, CEO of FTSE Russell shares her unique perspective on indexing. Fiona discusses why she feels we are early in the evolution of indexing, what she sees as key challenges within the index industry today and the opportunities that are on the horizon.
How far is crypto exposure evolving beyond Bitcoin? In this episode of FTSE Russell Convenes, Inkoo Kang, Vice President, ETFs at Grayscale joins Kristen Mierzwa, Head of Digital Assets at FTSE Russell to discuss how pension plans and institutions are more easily gaining access to crypto products, and what Inkoo’s product development role involves, from the early stages of the ideation process all the way to in-market support. Inkoo also discusses the emergence of exposures in US ETF markets, his views on the story beyond Bitcoin, and why he sees Ethereum as a tech stack built for the modern world.
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