Interviste originali in inglese dei 15 Financial Advisor USA che da 10 anni consecutivamente sono nei Top 100 e la Classifica per asset

1. Barron's presents the best of the best advisors 2014
Qui ci sono idee di investimento dei 15 che sono nella Classifica
Top 100 da 10 anni consecutivamente. Guadagnare un posto
nella lista Top 100 di Barron è simile a unirsi alla formazione di
partenza di una squadra sportiva professionista. Ma farci parte
per 10 anni consecutivi?
Meeting of the minds: Four all-stars compare notes at a recent Barron's conference.From left: Raj Sharma, Brian
Pfeifler, Jeff Erdmann, Martin L. Halbfinger. Photo: LILA Photo

2. INTERVISTA ORIGINALE IN INGLESE
Barron's presents the best of the best advisors: Here are investment ideas
from 15 who made our Top 100 list for 10 straight years.
STEVE GARMHAUSEN
• The 15 advisors highlighted in these pages have streaks of excellence to rival those of Derek Jeter.
Their businesses are strong and sustainable, their backgrounds spotless, and their track record of
serving clients superb. Hailing from nine states, many of our advisors are affiliated with marquee
Wall Street firms, but a significant number are from independent shops. Most have spent their
entire careers at a single firm, even if it has been gobbled up by one or more acquirers over time.
That stability has helped them build their businesses, fine-tune their services, and know their
clients extremely well. Jeff Erdmann, for example, started with Merrill Lynch in 1984 as a college
intern. “We're now in the third generation with some of our families,” he says.
• Clients of our 15 all-stars are typically very wealthy, and they demand more than run-of-the-mill
investment ideas. So when we asked the advisors to give us their top recommendations for the
current environment, they responded with some rarefied advice.
• The ideas range from illiquid fixed-income investments to overseas “dividend aristocrat” stocks to
private-equity funds that invest in both equity and fixed income in emerging markets. On the
following pages in this special report, we lay out the single best idea of each advisor.
• Despite recent volatility in the market, the advisors are mostly upbeat about its long-term promise.
“The market is an attractive place to be,” says Morgan Stanley's Alan Whitman, “and it will continue
to be for a while.” If the five-year-old bull market manages to double its age, it, too, would be an all-
star.

3. Ron Carson
Carson Wealth Management
• The housing crisis may be long gone from the
front pages, but investment opportunities in its
wake are still going strong, says Carson.
• In January 2013, he and his team launched a
fund to buy and rehab properties for rent in
cities nationwide, including Minneapolis,
Baltimore, and Dallas. That fund has done so well
that they are putting together another one.
• “New-home sales are up, but a lot of people are
renting, and we're the beneficiaries,” he says,
citing yields (rent revenue divided by the cost of
the property) of 14%. Buying and rehabbing
property currently costs 40% to 50% less than
the cost of building, says Carson, whose team is
partnering with a real estate firm for the
endeavor.
• “Even if all we ever do is collect rent, it's a very
good investment in this low-interest-rate
environment,” he says.
Firm: Carson Wealth
Management
Location: Omaha, Neb.
Team Assets: $4.3 billion
Current Rank: 29
Career Path: Carson started his
advisory career from a dorm
room in 1983, and has been
independent his entire career.
Advice: “True wealth is all you
have that money can't buy and
that death can't take away.”

4. Louis J. Chiavacci
Merrill Lynch Private Banking
& Investment Group
• With cash earning little or nothing these days,
Chiavacci is pointing investors toward short-
duration, high-yield muni bonds. “At today's top
marginal tax rates, the spread of high-yield
munis versus their taxable counterparts makes
them absolutely dirt cheap and attractive,” he
says.
• Chiavacci likes short-term, high-yield munis
(rated BB-plus or below) within well-diversified
mutual funds. Well-managed funds with
relatively low interest-rate risk were recently
yielding roughly 3.5% tax-free, he notes. That's a
tax-equivalent yield of 5.8% for investors in the
39.6% federal tax bracket.
• Chiavacci declined to recommend specific funds
for this article, but Nuveen's Short Duration High
Yield Muni Bond fund appears to fit the bill. It
sports a trailing 12-month yield of 3.43% and an
average duration of a little under four years.
Firm: Merrill Lynch PBIG
Location: Coral Gables, Fla.
Team Assets: $2.7 billion
Current Rank: 69
Career Path: Chiavacci got his
start with Goldman Sachs in 1986
in New York, and joined Merrill
Lynch 11 years later.
Advice: “Investors need a keen
sense of their risk tolerance and a
grasp of what losing money feels
like.”

5. Mark T. Curtis
Graystone Consulting
• As Curtis sees it, now is the time to invest in
Europe.
• The advisor sees opportunity in buying bank
assets as European financial institutions
continue to deleverage following the debt
crisis. And he believes that the region's
stocks could rally broadly as the result of
new stimulus measures. “We think there's
really good value there,” says Curtis.
• As Europe slowly recovers, governments
and regulators have pressed banks to
strengthen their balance sheets—and
they've responded by putting billions of
dollars worth of lower-quality loans up for
sale. Curtis is buying those loans through
investment funds with capital-call
structures. Such funds require a
commitment of capital that their managers
can summon from investors as
opportunities arise.
Firm: Graystone Consulting
(Morgan Stanley)
Location: Palo Alto, Calif.
Team Assets: $27 billion
Current Rank: 3
Career Path: Curtis started at EF
Hutton 33 years ago;three mergers
later, he's with Morgan Stanley's
Graystone Consulting unit.
Advice: “In adding value in portfolio
construction, taxes matter. Look for
tax- managed strategies.”

6. Jeff Erdmann
Merrill Lynch Private Banking
& Investment Group
• Big companies' healthy appetite for acquisitions
is good news for small-cap and microcap
companies—and for nimble investors, says
Erdmann.
• “Large-cap companies have done a great job
building cash flow and fixing their balance
sheets,” he says. “And they're often spending
their cash on acquiring smaller companies.”
• The buyout opportunities are plentiful in both
the US and Europe, says Erdmann.He and his
team play the acquisition theme using two
mutual funds and a hedge fund, which he
declined to name for compliance reasons. The
funds take equity positions in small-cap and
microcap buyout targets in the hopes of big gains
when they're bought at a premium.
• The fact that small-cap stocks are having a weak
year—the Russell 2000 small-company index is
down about 5% since January—only increases
the opportunities, says Erdmann.
Firm: Merrill Lynch PBIG
Location: Greenwich, Conn.
Team Assets: $6 billion
Current Rank: 8
Career Path: Erdmann started with
Merrill as a college intern in 1984 and
has been there ever since.
Advice: “Conversations about legacy
and next-generation planning should
start before and during wealth
creation—not after.”

7. Martin L.
Halbfinger
UBS Financial Services
• Halbfinger's best piece of investment advice
is simple: Take a step back and have a fresh
look at your portfolio.“When you get to this
kind of juncture in the market,” he says, “it's
important to make sure your portfolio is still
aligned with your goals and objectives.”
• That may sound elementary, but five years
into the bull market, many investors have
been swept up in the excitement and have
allowed their portfolios to become too risky,
he says.That's exactly what happened
during the tech and real estate booms of
the past 15 years.
• Not that Halbfinger is expecting an
imminent end to the bull market. “We're
still very constructive on US markets and
getting our long-awaited economic
expansion,” he says.
Firm: UBS Financial Services
Location: New York
Team Assets: $3.7 billion
Current Rank: 43
Career Path: Born and bred in the
Bronx, Halbfinger has been with UBS
and its predecessors for 33 years.
Advice: “Include the next generation in
[investment] conversations so they're
aware of strategies, goals, and risk
tolerance.”

8. Marvin H. McIntyre
Morgan Stanley Wealth
Management
• McIntyre sees plenty of investment fuel in
what he characterizes as the “energy
revolution in North America.”
• Over the past seven years, US natural-gas
production has surged 35%, and oil
production is up nearly 70%. McIntyre and
his colleagues like to play that with master
limited partnerships. MLPs typically offer a
combination of strong yield, growing
distributions, and tax-advantaged income.
• If you can't hack the tax-reporting
headaches that MLPs can involve, McIntyre
recommends exchange-traded funds. The
more prominent ETFs in oil and gas include
the Energy Select Sector SPDR and
Vanguard Energy ETF.
• McIntyre says the energy game is just
getting started. “If I had to guess an inning,”
he says, “I would say the second or third,
with the possibility of extra innings.”
Firm: Morgan Stanley Wealth Mgmt
Location: Washington, DC
Team Assets: $3.6 billion
Current Rank: 16
Career Path: McIntyre started with
Mason & Co. in 1968 and has
remained with the business through
multiple iterations.
Advice: “We love rising dividends:
They signal a strong company, and
they provide a cushion in rising
interest-rate environments.”

9. Joseph W.
Montgomery
Wells Fargo Advisors
• Montgomery's advice: Stop diversifying like
it's 2006.
• Old-school diversification, with stocks,
bonds, and cash, served to pare portfolio
risk for many years. But it failed in the 2008
crash, as most assets swooned in
tandem. Today's investors should diversify
more widely, according to
Montgomery. Specifically, investors should
have a good chunk of “nontraditional”
investments.
• Those include commodities, real estate
investment trusts, emerging-market debt,
and so-called liquid alternatives—mutual
funds and exchange-traded funds that
mimic hedge funds but provide the escape
hatch of daily liquidity.
• Montgomery also likes low-volatility equity
funds, which aim to smooth out market
swings, even at the cost of potentially
underperforming during bull markets.
Firm: Wells Fargo Advisors
Location: Williamsburg, Va.
Team Assets: $15.8 billion
Current Rank: 40
Career Path: The former pro football
player has worked at Wells Fargo and
its predecessors for 40 years.
Advice: “Now more than ever, it's not
what you make but what you keep
that's important.”

10. John D. Olson
Merrill Lynch Wealth
Management
• The market's recent weakness presents a
perfect opportunity to stock up on high-
dividend securities with a history of
increasing their payouts, says Olson.
• “When they come down with the market,
their yield goes up and they become more
attractive,” says Olson, who says these
investments are yielding between 3.5% and
6.5%.
• Olson's shopping list includes master limited
partnerships in energy, selected real-estate
investment trusts, and stocks in areas like
health care and telecommunications. He has
been using price declines to accumulate
positions, he says.
• To raise some of the cash for purchases,
Olson has been trimming excess bond
holdings and rotating clients out of utility
stocks. Both asset types are sensitive to
rising interest rates.
Firm: Merrill Lynch Wealth
Management
Location: New York
Team Assets: $2.3 billion
Current Rank: 72
Career Path: A onetime accountant,
Olson joined Merrill in 1980 and has
been with the firm ever since.
Advice: “ In times of euphoria and
stress, it's important to keep emotion
out of your investing decisions.”

11. Brian Pfeifler
Morgan Stanley Private
Wealth Management
• Five years into the market recovery, mispriced
asset classes have become far harder to find—
but Pfeifler sees a glaring exception in certain
illiquid fixed-income investments. “There is still a
dramatic discrepancy between the potential for
return on illiquid versus liquid investments,” he
says.
• Illiquid fixed-income investments can include
loans to distressed borrowers or to small
companies. But many of the best opportunities
are in Europe, such as assets offloaded by banks
seeking to bolster their balance sheets, says
Pfeifler.
• Private funds that target these assets can
generate returns between 8% and 15%, he
says. Taking the same level of risk in liquid, US-
based investments might return just 5% or 6%,
he says.
• Yes, the investments can be tricky to exit. But,
Pfeifler says, “There are times when illiquidity is
an attractive thing to have in your portfolio.”
Firm: Morgan Stanley PWM
Location: New York
Team Assets: $8.7 billion
Current Rank: 2
Career Path: A 25-year Morgan Stanley
veteran, Pfeifler worked as an analyst
and bond trader before becoming an
advisor.
Advice: “I hate risk, but in a portfolio,
there's a very large difference
between risk and volatility.”

12. John W. Rafal
Essex Financial Services
• Domestic blue-chip stocks with growing
dividends have gotten plenty of attention
over the past few years, but it's their
overseas counterparts that boast
compelling values right now, says Rafal.
Specifically, Rafal is positive on
“international dividend aristocrats,” largely
from Europe and Japan. Although he
expects the US market as a whole to
outperform other developed markets, many
quality, dividend-paying companies abroad
are significantly underpriced.
Such companies' valuations have fallen as
overseas investors, concerned about
stagnation in foreign economies, have
moved money to the US
• Rafal points to two exchange-traded funds:
PowerShares International Dividend
Achievers, which recently had an SEC
yield—which allows for fairer bond-fund
comparisons—of 3.04%, and iShares
International Select Dividend, yielding
4.24%.
Firm: Essex Financial Services
Location: Essex, Conn.
Team Assets: $3.8 billion
Current Rank: 12
Career Path: Rafal spent 14 years with
Raymond James before forming Essex
in 2003 to provide independent
advice.
Advice: “I want to become so close to
a client that if something bad happens,
they call me first.”

13. Raj Sharma
Merrill Lynch Private Banking
& Investment Group
• Sharma takes a long-term view on emerging
markets—and he loves what he sees. “The
potential over the next decade and beyond
is extremely compelling,” he says. “I think
there is an enormous amount of money to
be made in the emerging markets.”
• The economic output of emerging-market
countries, now about $30 trillion, should
double in 10 to 12 years, he says.Countries
like Mexico, India, and China are “creating
deep stock and bond markets for investors,
and that will lead to a lot of opportunities
opening up.”
• The best way to play emerging
markets?Through private-equity funds, says
Sharma. Such funds can scour the world for
the best private and public opportunities,
free from day-to-day performance
pressure. “Patience,” he says, “is the key.”
Firm: Merrill Lynch PBIG
Location: Boston
Team Assets: $10.4 billion
Current Rank: 18
Career Path: Sharma tried out
advertising and filmmaking before
becoming an advisor. He has been
with Merrill for 27 years.
Advice: “Don't look at your money as
one whole: Separating it into buckets
for different objectives reduces
anxiety.”

14. Robert M. Stulberg
Merrill Lynch Wealth
Management
• Stulberg doesn't see any screaming values
in either stocks or bonds, but he does like
selected preferred stocks, which have
characteristics of both.
• He'sa fan of fixed-to-floating-rate preferred
shares. These provide a set dividend yield
for a certain period, then convert to a
floating rate tied to market interest
rates. That provides a measure of protection
against interest-rate increases.
• Stulberg likes to see a relatively high
coupon. For example, he might buy an older
preferred stock, with an 8% coupon, that is
callable in two or three years. In such cases,
Stulberg also requires the bond's yield to
the call date to be above those of
comparable bonds. Issuers typically call
shares when cheaper financing is
available.But even if interest rates shoot up
and the preferred shares aren't called,
Stulberg says he wouldn't be unhappy with
an 8% yield.
Firm: Merrill Lynch Wealth
Management
Location: Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
Team Assets: $2.2 billion
Current Rank: 88
Career Path: Stulberg started in real
estate, then 31 years ago followed his
father to Merrill Lynch.
Advice: “I tell our clients that the only
things they can't buy are health and
time.”
(Stulberg declined to be
photographed.)

15. Gregory Vaughan
Morgan Stanley Private
Wealth Management
• Europe's economies may be troubled, but
investors shouldn't write off the big
companies based there, says Vaughan.
• The reason: Many European large-cap firms
transcend the region's economies.“There's
tons of skepticism around owning European
companies,” says Vaughan, “when often,
they're really global companies that just
happen to be based in Europe.”
• Europe's big companies, including its
“powerhouse exporters,” are attractively
priced versus their US counterparts,
Vaughan says. At a given time, actively
managed separate accounts, exchange-
traded funds, or individual securities may
perform best. Investors, he says, should
consider combining all three approaches. In
all, Vaughan and company recommend
European equities for 5% to 10% of their
typical client's total portfolio.
Firm: Morgan Stanley PWM
Location: Menlo Park, Calif.
Team Assets: $14.6 billion
Current Rank: 1
Career Path: Vaughan has been an
advisor for 35 years, and joined
Morgan Stanley Private Wealth
Management in 1981.
Advice: “ Complexity often does not
lead to great results, whether that's in
investing or in life.”

16. Alan Whitman
Morgan Stanley Wealth
Management
• When it comes to giving investors what they
want, it's hard to beat high-quality,
dividend-paying stocks, says Whitman.
• “People want return down the road, but
they also want cash flow now,” he says.“I
think that's going to cause a lot of these
stocks to perform substantially better over
time.”
• Historically, dividends have accounted for
half of the total return of the Standard &
Poor's 500. That dropped to about 25% in
the 1990s as investors fell in love with
growing tech companies. Now, he says,
“there's been a dramatic shift in the way
people perceive investing and what they
expect. They want to share in the success of
the company right now, and the income
stream gives them that ability.”
• Whitman recommends pharmaceutical
companies, consumer nondurables, and
established tech companies.
Firm: Morgan Stanley Wealth Mgmt
Location: Pasadena, Calif.
Team Assets: $2.3 billion
Current Rank: 84
Career Path: Whitman started with
Dean Witter—now part of Morgan
Stanley—in 1971, “when dinosaurs
roamed,” he says.
Advice: Pay special attention to “great
companies that have the ability to
evolve and change with the world.”

17. Drew Zager
Morgan Stanley Private
Wealth Management
• Zager, an expert in investment-grade bonds,
says municipal bonds are a great value right
now.
• “Intermediate-to-long munis are cheap,” he
says. Historically, longer-term munis yield
around 90% of Treasuries with
corresponding terms. But today, 20-year
munis yield about 3.75%, more than the
2.8% yield for 20-year Treasuries.
• The tax-equivalent yield can be eye-
popping: Investors earning a 3% nominal
yield—and paying close to 50% in federal
and state taxes—enjoy the equivalent of
7%. What's more, muni prices should be
bolstered by a shrinking supply of new
issues, he says. From 2005 to 2010, issuance
averaged about $400 billion. This year, Zager
expects just $290 billion of muni issuance,
compared with demand of $500 billion.
• But, he says, avoid short-term munis. The
Fed is likely to raise rates in the second
quarter, which could deal them a blow.
Firm: Morgan Stanley PWM
Location: Los Angeles
Team Assets: $8.7 billion
Current Rank: 30
Career Path: Zager joined Morgan
Stanley's Private Wealth Management
Group in 1986 and has been there ever
since.
Advice: “People for the most part
don't focus as much on after-tax
[performance] as they should.”