By: CFA Institute Contributor
March 07, 2017
Say whatever you want about the world, but there’s never been a better time to be an end investor.
Many things investment professionals fear — fee compression, automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain — benefit clients through higher account balances and lower fees.
Asset owners are the largest of those clients. Though they are frequently lumped together as ‘institutional investors’, they can be as different from each other as any two individuals. The only characteristic they reliably share is size, which means their goals shape the market.
Institutional investors are characterised as ‘big fish’ and ‘smart money’, but what else are they and what motivations drive them? Here are the ‘big fish’: