(Silicon Valley)

Venture capital has always been a hard-to-access asset class for advisors and their clients. The funds tend to have high minimums and long lock-up periods with extremely low liquidity. That said, returns are historically strong, and VC can often be an un-correlated asset class whose returns are differentiated in scope and timing from publicly-traded markets. Because of the lack of liquidity and easy access it has been an asset class that has largely been overlooked by advisors and high net worth individuals. However, there are some ways to access venture capital through liquid funds which are likely worth a look.

FINSUM: Not only can returns because excellent and uncorrelated, but VC is likely to become a more important asset class in the next few years. Why? Because more and more large companies are staying private for longer, which means investors need to ways to access the asset class in order to participate in the total return of the market.

(Washington)

Biden is going after the mother of all tax hikes, though it is deftly spread across a number of different areas so it takes significant effort to add it all up. That is partly by design, but partly by necessity, since the wealthy tend to face taxes across a number of different parts of their financial lives—income, capital gains, corporate taxes, inheritance. The reality though is that if you combine all of Biden’s proposals, wealthy individuals living in states with high income taxes (like New York) could face tax bills of over 80% when accounting for all the areas above. This would include a new top personal income tax rate, new higher corporate tax rates, the elimination of “step-up basis” in inheritance taxes (and potentially a higher inheritance tax rate), and state taxes of over 14% in New York.

FINSUM: This only precedents for this level of taxation in US history were during World War I and World War II, when tax rates got into the 90% percent range. Even then, though, there were easy loopholes and deductions to allow individuals to avoid that top rate.

Infrastructure investment has changed vastly in the last few years. Not only is the sector at...see the full story here

There may be a lot of noise around valuations and inflation, but ask yourself a question: do you think the tech sector is going to grow into a bigger part of the economy over the next few years? The vast majority of investors would say yes, and if you are in that camp, then it may make sense to commit a considerable part of your portfolio to the space. Inflation may rise, but the reality is that the fundamentals of the tech sector have been very healthy and have grown nicely. Don’t let short-term noise and anxiety distract from that.

With this in mind, check out O’Shares Global Internet Giants ETF (OGIG). The fund is at the forefront of helping advisors invest opportunistically in companies that are leading the economy’s digital transformation. Which means—you guessed it—these are high growth businesses.¹ The fund’s constituent companies include those in the digital advertising, social media, e-commerce, and cloud services sectors. The average trailing twelve-month revenue growth² for an OGIG³ constituent was 40%, versus 11% for the Technology Select Sector Index, and 22% for the Nasdaq 100⁴.

Over the last twelve months, OGIG outperformed traditional tech indexes by over 40%⁵ (in what was already a fantastic year), which speaks to its rules-based approach’s ability to select high growth, high appreciation stocks. The fund is also a way to invest in global growth, not just the US. If you want to invest in the Internet Giants of the future, look at OGIG.

1. High growth businesses tend to be companies which have grown revenues, cash flows, and earnings faster than the market. Growth companies create value by continuing to expand reinvest their earnings for further expansion.Data as of 3/31/2021

2. Revenue growth is used as a measure of the increase or decrease of a company's sales. High Growth companies and revenue growth refer to the underlying characteristics of the fund's portfolio and does not represent or predict the performance of any fund.

3. Indexes are unmanaged and it is not possible to invest in an index.

4. Source: Bloomberg Finance L.P. Data as of 3/31/2021. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

5. Bloomberg Finance L.P. Data as of 3/31/2021. Returns for periods more than 1 year are annualized. OGIG Inception Date: 6/5/2018. Investors cannot directly invest in an index. Performance data quoted represents past performance and is no guarantee of future results. Current performance may be lower or higher than the performance data quoted. Investment return and principal value will fluctuate so that an investor’s shares, when redeemed, may be worth more or less than original cost.

6. OGIG Index: O’Shares Global Internet Giants Index.

7. Nasdaq 100: Modified capitalization weighted index of the 100 largest and most active non-financial domestic and international issues listed on the NASDAQ.

8. Technology Select Sector Total Return Index: The Technology Select Sector Index is a modified cap-weighted index. The index is intended to track the movements of companies that are components of the S&P 500 and are involved in the development or production of technology products. The index which serves as a benchmark for The Technology Select Sector SPDR FundXLK, was established with a value of 250 on June 30, 1998.

Performance data quoted represents past performance and is no guarantee of future results. Current performance may be lower or higher than the performance data quoted. Investment return and principal value will fluctuate so that an investor’s shares, when redeemed, may be worth more or less than original cost. For performance current to the most recent month-end, please visit www.oshares.com/ogig/#performance. Returns beyond 1 year are annualized. The total expense ratio is 0.48%. Click here for the fund's standardized returns.

Shares of the Funds are not individually redeemable and the owners of Shares may purchase or redeem Shares from each Fund in Creation Units only. The purchase and sale price of individual Shares trading on an Exchange may be below, at or above the most recently calculated NAV for such Shares.

Market Price returns are generally based on market value at 4:00PM Eastern time (when NAV is normally determined), and do not represent the returns you would receive if you traded shares at other times. Fund returns assume that dividends and capital gains distributions have been reinvested in the Fund at NAV.

- This is sponsored content by O’Shares ETFs -

(Washington)

Janet Yellen shocked the markets recently in an interview where she praised the potential of higher inflation…see the full story on our partner Magnifi’s site