Mutual Fund, ETF Communicators Spring Into Action After S&P Warns

Standard & Poor’s Monday announcement of a negative credit outlook for the United States based on the budget deficit produced another drill for those responsible for timely and relevant investment thought leadership at mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) firms.

Investment strategists' appearances on financial television shows notwithstanding, rapid public response and interpretation has not been part of asset managers' culture. And, it doesn't come naturally to the way that many of you like to work—few of you have training or experience in or the disposition for breaking news. So, bravo to you for reshuffling priorities to hustle from the investment strategists or economists to Compliance to layout to the Web team to...

The following listing is incomplete, of course, because it doesn’t acknowledge the efforts of all firms who readied commentaries. The tweets sent by companies followed by the Rock The Boat Marketing Investment Managers Twitter list provide a ready window into the firms that produced insights and used Twitter as a channel to announce the availability of the insights. Shown below are tweets from @PIMCO, @BlackRockUSInvs, @USAA, @sentinelinvest, @OppFunds, @VirtusUpdates, Federatednews, @iSharesETFs and @Fidelity.

The tweets are in chronological order, meaning that the top tweeters were quickest to say something. @iSharesETFs early and consistently re-tweeted content on others’ sites, a practice that many accounts are not allowed to follow. Repeat tweets related to the subject aren’t shown, and note that if your tweet didn't explicitly refer to the S&P or deficit rating we (and the rest of your followers) wouldn't know it was relevant.