MarketGrader Welcomes FinTech and Software Entrepreneurs Rob Foregger and Jim MacIntyre as Strategic Partners
New partnership will help accelerate MarketGrader’s mission to become the leading provider of next-generation smart beta investment solutions
CORAL GABLES, Fla., April 19, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — MarketGrader, a leader in smart beta investment solutions, is pleased to announce a new strategic partnership with Rob Foregger, Jim MacIntyre, and their tech accelerator, Product Lab.
Foregger is a FinTech pioneer, co-founding enterprise digital advice company NextCapital, digital wealth management firm Personal Capital, and online bank everbank.com. Foregger was also formerly the President of Fidelity Investments’ retail banking business. MacIntyre is a software and e-commerce entrepreneur, co-founding Visual Sciences and multiple other software companies. MacIntyre was formerly also the Chief of E-commerce Technology of GSI Commerce. As part of the partnership, Foregger and MacIntyre will join the Board of Directors, act in a strategic advisory capacity, and take a minority stake in MarketGrader, providing it the support of Product Lab.
“We have a laser-focused mission to help investors achieve superior risk-adjusted returns by identifying and owning the highest quality companies in the world,” said Carlos Diez, Founder and CEO of MarketGrader. “Rob and Jim’s exceptional skill sets will help accelerate the scaling and commercialization of our unique intellectual property and platform across MarketGrader’s three core business lines: equity ratings, index licensing, and our emerging direct indexing service.”
Every day, MarketGrader rates over 41,000 companies across 8 regions and 92 countries through a growth-at-a-reasonable price (“GARP”) lens that screens across 24 fundamental factors in four categories — growth, value, profitability and cash flow. Based on its scoring methodology, MarketGrader builds and licenses smart beta index solutions for leading asset managers and fund sponsors. Notable MarketGrader clients include Dow Jones, SS&C ALPS, VanEck, and BMO. Individual investors and investment professionals can also access MarketGrader’s subscription-based stock rating services at www.marketgrader.com.
MarketGrader’s flagship Barron’s 400 Index, created in partnership with Barron’s and Dow Jones Indexes, which uses MarketGrader’s “GARP + Quality” stock screening methodology, has delivered superior returns over the benchmark since it was first introduced over a decade and a half ago. The market cap-weighted version of the Barron’s 400 Index has outperformed the S&P 500 Index by 1.4% per year since 20071.
“Index investing, unequivocally, is one of the greatest financial innovations of the past 40 years, providing a triple win for investors: low cost, tax efficient and superior performance — with actively managed funds underperforming their respective benchmarks in each of the past 13 years,” Foregger commented. “But index funds, as a good as they are, can be even better — more specifically, there are opportunities to create alpha over time through systematic stock selection that identifies consistent creators of economic value across all global equity markets. Smart Beta is where the puck is going, and this is the tireless pursuit of Carlos and MarketGrader.”
“MarketGrader’s disciplined focus on company fundamentals is particularly relevant in the current macroeconomic environment. Normalization of interest rates is forcing investors to focus on the quality of businesses and their profitability, and to look beyond ‘growth-at-any-price,’ which drove capital allocation decisions and investment flows in the last market cycle. The bottom line is, the companies you own matter; the companies that make up your index matter,” added Diez.
“Carlos has built an incredible core platform — analyzing and scoring the world’s stock universe every night,” said MacIntyre. “We look forward to working with Carlos and the MarketGrader Team to further scale and productize MarketGrader’s intellectual property, including expanding institutional and individual investor access to the MarketGrader platform, developing self-service index construction tools, and building direct indexing portfolio management capabilities.”
For more information about MarketGrader, visit https://www.marketgrader.com/.
ABOUT MARKETGRADER
MarketGrader.com Corp. (“MarketGrader”) founded in 1999, is a Miami-based provider of global equity research and index-based solutions. The company’s mission is to become the leading provider of next generation Smart Beta investment solutions, helping investors achieve superior risk-adjusted returns by identifying and owning the highest quality companies in the world. MarketGrader’s proprietary “GARP + Quality” methodology is used to screen over 41,000 publicly traded companies across 8 regions, and 92 countries, representing over $108 trillion in market capitalization. Over 50 Smart Beta indexes have been created using MarketGrader’s methodology. MarketGrader delivers smart beta solutions in three ways; 1) licensing its indexes to investment management firms; 2) offering smart beta portfolio solutions to wealth managers; and 3) providing access to their proprietary GARP + Quality ratings to retail and institutional clients. Institutional clients include Dow Jones, SS&C ALPS, VanEck and BMO. In 2007, MarketGrader created the Barron’s 400 Index in partnership with Barron’s, America’s premier financial magazine. Follow MarketGrader on Twitter @MarketGrader and connect on LinkedIn. For more information, please visit www.marketgrader.com.
ABOUT PRODUCT LAB
Product Lab, LLC (“Product Lab”) is a Reston, Virginia-based boutique technology, eCommerce, and FinTech company accelerator—generating and backing business ideas that will make the world a better place. We support the rapid development and growth of organically generated and independently developed portfolio companies. Product Lab provides legal formation and operations, capital formation and financial operations, service and software design and development, human capital development, and operational infrastructure for its portfolio companies.
Media Contact
Paul Damon for MarketGrader
+1 802.999.5526
[email protected]
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1 Performance for the Baron’s 400 Index (market cap-weighted version) vs. the S&P 500 Index is based on total returns between September 1, 2007 and March 31, 2023. Sources: Bloomberg, MarketGrader.
