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.

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.