ETFdb Logo
ETFdb Logo
  • ETF Database
  • Channels
    • Active ETF
    • Alternatives
    • Beyond Basic Beta
    • China Insights
    • Climate Insights
    • Commodities
    • Core Strategies
    • Crypto
    • Disruptive Technology
    • Dividend
    • Dual Impact
    • Emerging Markets
    • Energy Infrastructure
    • ESG
    • ETF Building Blocks
    • ETF Education
    • ETF Strategist
    • Fixed Income
    • Free Cash Flow
    • Future ETFs
    • Global Diversification
    • Gold & Silver Investing
    • Innovative ETFs
    • Institutional Income Strategies
    • Leveraged & Inverse
    • Managed Futures
    • Market Insights
    • Megatrends
    • Modern Alpha
    • Multi-Asset
    • Night Effect
    • Portfolio Strategies
    • Retirement Income
    • Richard Bernstein Advisors
    • Tax Efficient Income
    • Thematic Investing
    • Volatility Resource
  • Tools
    • ETF Screener
    • ETF Country Exposure Tool
    • ETF Sector Tracker Tool
    • ETF Database Categories
    • Head-To-Head ETF Comparison Tool
    • ETF Stock Exposure Tool
    • ETF Issuer Fund Flows
    • Indexes
    • Mutual Fund To ETF Converter
    • ETF Data for Journalists
    • ETF Nerds
  • Research
    • First Bitcoin ETF
    • ETF Education
    • Equity Investing
    • Dividend ETFs
    • Leveraged ETFs
    • Inverse ETFs
    • Index Education
    • Index Insights
    • Top ETF Sectors
    • Top ETF Issuers
    • Top ETF Industries
  • Webcasts
  • Themes
    • AI ETFs
    • Blockchain ETFs
    • See all Thematic Investing ETF themes
    • ESG Investing
    • Marijuana ETFs
  • Multimedia
    • ETF 360 Video Series
    • ETF Trends on Videos
    • ETF Trends on Podcasts
    • ETF Prime Podcast
  • Company
    • About Us
    • Swag Store
  • PRO
    • Pro Content
    • Pro Tools
    • Advanced
    • FAQ
    • Pricing
    • Free Sign Up
    • Login
  1. Inside Exchange with John Swolfs
News
Share

Inside Exchange with John Swolfs

Evan HarpFeb 22, 2022
2022-02-22

Every week, Evan Harp sits down with one of the founders of Exchange to learn more about them, their perspective on life, and what they hope Exchange can bring to the industry. This week, he sits down with John Swolfs.

John Swolfs serves as the chief content officer and a co-founder of Advisor Circle. He previously worked as the CEO of Inside ETFs and as a business development associate at BlackRock.

John Swolf Headshot Image

Content continues below advertisement

Evan Harp: What is something surprising about you?

John Swolfs: I am obsessed with TikTok. I absolutely love the platform, I find it engaging. I cannot watch enough videos when it comes to food and cooking on there. I mean, absolutely obsessed to the point, Evan, where I literally have to put boundaries in place. So no TikTok before bed because I’ll stay up all night. I only try to watch it on the 30 minute train ride home from London Bridge back to my neighborhood. But I have to do a mental focus of saying, “Hey, let’s not pick up the phone and look at TikTok right now.” I’m just obsessed with it.

But another thing people might not know is that when I was in high school, for three summers I actually worked on a traveling carnival, got to really meet some interesting folks, and had some interesting experiences, to say the least. But those are some things that folks may not know about.

Harp: What inspires you creatively, spiritually, or emotionally?

Swolfs: For me, inspiration comes in a lot of different forms. There’s music, nature, people, I’m inspired by nature quite a bit. Just how beautiful it is. I can sit by the ocean all day, every day. I’m sure a lot of people can say that, but there’s just something that’s so refreshing and inspiring about sitting in front of the ocean, or being in the water, and just realizing how big and how powerful it is and how small we really are in the whole scope of things.

Not to mention, I absolutely love to body surf and ride waves. Just being out there in the ocean gives you that sense of purpose, and you’re usually with other folks. It’s just a great way to be out there and fill up your cup.

As far as other things, I’m a sap, a total sap. So things like concerts or TV shows, commercials, things like that, they can affect me emotionally. But then, creatively, a lot of that comes from listening to great music. Walking across the bridge on a bright sunny day listening to music, on the commute into the office, that gets me going, and that’ll really get the creative juices flowing. I want to sit down at the computer and write or tackle some of the stuff that takes more creative energy. For me, it really does come from people, nature, and music is mostly where I draw all my inspiration from — whether that’s creative, spiritually, or whatever.

Harp: What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Swolfs: I’ve actually attempted another profession. When I left college, I wanted to be a professional major league baseball umpire. I went down to school in Florida for five weeks, went through the training course and everything that you have to go through. There’s about 180 folks that go down each year and try to get into major league baseball’s program. I, unfortunately, was not selected to be one of the 15 the year that I went down there. So that dream was somewhat short-lived. But I’m a baseball nut. I went and worked in the Mets front office for two years to try and stay involved in baseball. The thing I learned quickly was, John prefers to watch baseball from the stands and enjoy the game rather than either being a part of it or working for an organization. So that was something that I did try.

If I was gonna do something that I’d never done before, I don’t know if you guys will ever remember this commercial for BASF: “They don’t make the products you buy. They make them better.” So I think I’d want to be an engineer. I’m just terrible at math, and that sort of stuff. I was always inspired by that commercial because it always had such great things like, “We don’t make the snowboard, we make it faster and lighter. We don’t make the cassette tape, we make it record longer.” It’s a cassette tape, so that tells you how long ago it was. But yeah, probably an engineer or something like that. As I said, I’m not the best at math, so probably not in the cards.

Harp: Why did you want to launch Exchange?

Swolfs: I think we all probably have a bunch of different reasons around why we want to launch Exchange. For me, I’ve been a part of the ETF industry since 2007. I’ve seen this community grow. I’ve seen it do amazing things, from democratizing access to every asset class to lowering the bar of entry for investors. So I want to be part of a team creating an ETF experience that was worthy of representing this dynamic, this engaging community. I think that we did that with Exchange. We’ve built a different ETF experience, I think, that better represents what the current ETF landscape is. Additionally, we want to bring the focus back on advisors, we want to make sure that we’re building content for them, that we’re addressing their needs. Because if you do that and advisors are better prepared, ultimately, their clients are better invested, which is a good thing, which means they’re more likely to reach their financial outcomes. For me, it really was just getting behind this amazing community and helping support it with a new platform that really does represent where the ETF industry is going for the next decade.

Harp: What are you most looking forward to about Exchange?

Swolfs: I’m sure everyone’s going to say the people. Of course, I definitely want to get down there and see some friendly faces. But for me it’s really education, education, education.

When you think about it, in the past two years since we’ve been able to get together, we now have a track record of active being in the marketplace. We have ETFs being run by AI and machine learning. We have different niche products, you’ve seen growth versus value, when you start to look at market conditions now, as the Fed is hiking, we’ve seen more volatility come into the market. Like I said, growth versus value, there’s just so much going on that I think it’s really amazing that we get to be the event and the platform to help advisors get educated on these topics and to stay current, to stay relevant, to make up for two years of time in four days. I think that is fantastic. That’s ultimately what I’m looking forward to.

But of course, seeing folks that you haven’t seen for two plus years now, getting to shake hands, have a nice conversation, catch up with folks on what they’ve been up to over these past years. It’s just exciting. It’s thrilling. I absolutely want to see the folks down there, but for me it really is around us having the first bite of the apple to really deliver some great educational content for our advisors and helping them and their clients, like I said before, be better invested and better prepared for the markets ahead.

To learn more about Exchange, visit www.exchangeetf.com.

For more news, information, and strategy, visit ETF Trends.

» Popular Pages

  • Tickers
  • Articles

Feb 01

Eye DNA Synthesis Advances in an Active Biotech ETF

Feb 01

AllianzIM Launches 2 Buffered ETFs

Feb 01

Earnings From Advanced Micro Devices Should Lift SNPG

Feb 01

Bullish Vibes on Tesla, According to Market Analysts

Feb 01

Dave Mazza Named CSO of Roundhill Investments

Feb 01

How Confident Are You In Recommending a Sustainable Withdrawal Rate?

Feb 01

Morgan Stanley Launched 6 Calvert ESG Funds

Feb 01

Play Apple Earnings in a Low-Fee Active ETF

Feb 01

ASYMmetric Launches Smart Alpha, Smart Income Funds

Feb 01

GDIV May Navigate Coming Volatility Through the Decade

QQQ

Invesco QQQ Trust

SPY

SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust

VOO

Vanguard S&P 500 ETF

VGT

Vanguard Information...

SMH

VanEck Semiconductor ETF

XLK

Technology Select Sector SPDR...

VTI

Vanguard Total Stock Market...

SOXX

iShares Semiconductor ETF

BLOK

Amplify Transformational Data...

META

Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF


Content continues below advertisement

Loading Articles...
Help & Info
  • Contact Us
Tools
  • ETF Screener
  • ETF Analyzer
  • Mutual Fund to ETF Converter
  • Head-To-Head ETF Comparison
  • ETF Country Exposure Tool
  • ETF Stock Exposure Tool
  • ETF Performance Visualizer
  • ETF Database Model Portfolios
  • ETF Database Realtime Ratings
  • ETF Database Pro
More Tools
  • ETF Launch Center
  • Financial Advisor & RIA Center
  • ETF Database RSS Feed
Explore ETFs
  • ETF News
  • ETF Picks of the Month
  • ETF Category Reports
  • Premium Articles
  • Alphabetical Listing of ETFs
  • Best ETFs
  • Browse ETFs by ETF Database Category
  • Browse ETFs by Index
  • Browse ETFs by Issuer
  • Compare ETFs
Legal
  • Terms of Use and Privacy Policy
  • © 2023 VettaFi LLC. All rights reserved.
Follow ETF Database
Follow ETF Database

Advertisement

Is Your Portfolio Positioned With Enough Global Exposure?

ETF Education Channel

How to Allocate Commodities in Portfolios

Tom LydonApr 26, 2022
2022-04-26

A long-running debate in asset allocation circles is how much of a portfolio an investor should...

Core Strategies Channel

Why ETFs Experience Limit Up/Down Protections

Karrie GordonMay 13, 2022
2022-05-13

In a digital age where information moves in milliseconds and millions of participants can transact...

}
X