The RPAG Scoop | October 2024

Happy Spooktober RPAG family! Hopefully you are ready for a frightfully fun episode of the RPAG Scoop. In this month's spooktacular episode, we are bringing you what's new at RPAG, in ERISA, and are going to the newsroom with PIMCO to discuss their revolutionary value strategies.

What's New with Melody Ravanipour (1:00)
Our resident fairy, Melody Ravanipour, shared some magical updates from RPAG including our highlight reel that can bring you back in time to our National Conference! Since the National Conference has now concluded for 2024, we are beginning to roll out the Main Stage session recordings, so if there was a particular presentation you wish you could watch again, we have you covered. 

Melody highlighted the great educational resources at your disposal such as RPAG University and our YouTube Channel that are accessible any time of day for your viewing needs. If you are subscribed to our channel, and have clicked the bell in the corner, you will be notified when we post out new videos. The back-to-school webinar series is almost over which means they will soon all be posted to the channel as well as our Video Learning Center and our webinars page of our website. To maximize your membership with RPAG and get the latest updates and information related to events, resources, and industry news, sign up for our email newsletter that can be found on our Insights page.

Supremely Spooky Chevron Reveal (7:48)
The ERISA expert at Retirement Learning Center, Jenny Kiffmeyer, is bringing you a frightfully interesting updated from the Chevron Deference Doctrine. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) have reversed the 40-year Chevron Deference Doctrine, but what does this mean for retirement plans? We have to go back in Civics class to first see how laws are made. Since laws written by Congress tend to be vague, the Courts will go to the executive agencies to help interpret them. The problem with this is that since these agency leaders are appointed by the President, they tend to be more biased toward whichever administration holds the white house. Chevron gave agencies wide latitude to influence how laws are interpreted, but with the reversal, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts must draw their own conclusions for legal interpretation of a statute. What this means is that it is going to be significantly more difficult for agencies to change policy by interpreting statutes that they administer. The Chevron reversal will also impact at least two final DOL regulations. This change does not invalidate or eliminate any existing regulations but may make it easier to bring legal challenges to longstanding regulations. It is important to stay up to date with new regulations from agencies and monitor litigations for any of these regulations or court cases that could come into play in how plans could be administered in the future.

PIMCO's Approach to Value Investing (18:32)
In PIMCO's newsroom, Equity Strategist Prashant Pandey sat down with Robert Arnott, Founder and Chairman of Research Affiliates and Portfolio Manager on the PIMCO RAE Strategies, to discuss value investing. Robert tells us that the markets in the short run are driven by narratives. They tell us what the collective psyche of investors think will happen in the market. Value investing seeks to take advantage of the mispricing of a market that is driven (in the short run) by emotions. RAE differs from other strategies because it uses quality and momentum filters to weed out value traps and doesn't anchor on capitalization waiting. It weighs companies on their fundamental economic footprint in the macro economy. As far as Robert is aware, RAE is the only value strategy in the world that anchors on a fundamental size of a business for its weight and not their market value. 

We hope we didn't scare you away! Come back next month for another thrilling episode of the RPAG Scoop, dropping November 4. 

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