10 Key Takeaways From the Morningstar Investment Conference

The 2025 Morningstar Investment Conference at Chicago’s Navy Pier offered it all: a beautiful venue, excellent food, a diverse range of exhibitors with fun giveaways, and, most importantly, a wealth of sessions offering investing insights.

The agenda was packed with presentations from Morningstar experts, successful financial advisors, industry icons, and captivating nonfinancial speakers. The pacing was casual and easy, and the technology was seamless, with direct-to-headphone audio ensuring a distraction-free listening experience. Topics ranged from practical discussions on investing and artificial intelligence to outsourcing and branding. Speakers gave deep dives into financial planning, investment strategy, public and private markets, and the latest investor surveys and trends. The conference also offered opportunities for small-group discussions, hands-on technology demonstrations, and live podcasts. All of this was packed into just two days without feeling overwhelming—a truly remarkable feat.

I attended numerous sessions, and each one provided valuable food for thought, actionable recommendations, and insightful commentary. Rather than summarizing individual sessions, I’d like to share the most interesting tidbits and key takeaways I found.

Asset Manager Insights

• Givers gain. Vanguard, one of the most successful and admired fund companies, is celebrating its 50th anniversary. In the “Lasting Legacies” keynote session with Morningstar’s Ben Johnson, the firm’s new CEO, Salim Ramji, highlighted Vanguard’s long-standing practice of lowering fund fees. He explained that as the firm increases efficiency, it shares the benefits among profits, reinvestment, and its clients. This practice demonstrates both benevolence and a clear path to ongoing growth.

Practice Management

• Outsource for optimization. In the “Grow Your Own Way” panel, financial advisors Sarah Weese, Charlotte Geletka, and Braden Draggoo said that, to maximize their time, advisors should delegate whatever they can. This allows them to focus on their core strengths and spend more time with clients. In a keynote, advisor Carolyn McClanahan and Morningstar’s Christine Benz said that outsourcing also enables advisors to refine their role—keeping the duties they enjoy and offloading those they don’t.
• Hire the best, fire early. Both of these sessions emphasized that a great team is essential for a successful practice and a balanced life. When building their team, advisors should hire the highest caliber of people. If they make a mistake, act quickly. As emphasized by multiple speakers, one “bad seed” can spoil the entire cultural environment.
• Plan for advisor decline. Just as advisors help clients plan for potential mental decline, they must do the same for themselves, McClanahan and Benz said. Without a solid continuity or transition plan, a decline in an advisor’s mental capacity can have severe consequences for them, their family, and their clients.

Financial Planning

• Embrace living for today. Several speakers stressed the importance of helping clients find happiness in their current lives, especially since a long life is not guaranteed. True, life satisfaction comes not from accumulating a high net worth but from financial stability, a fulfilling career, good health, and strong relationships. Geletka and Draggoo, heads of their respective firms, believe it’s an advisor’s duty to help clients truly live. They regularly host client events that go beyond traditional cocktail hours, such as annual family portrait photography sessions, curated private holiday shopping experiences, and speaking events with bestselling authors.
• AI is a growing source of financial information. While financial advisors remain the top source for information, investors are increasingly turning to AI for financial advice. Advisors must be proactive in ensuring that clients do not act on incorrect or inapplicable information from these sources, said Morningstar’s Joe Agostinelli and Thomas Aviles during “Morningstar’s Voice of the Investor Survey.”

Investment Strategy

• Peace of mind over performance. According to “Voice of the Investor Survey,” while inflation and the economy are investors’ primary concerns, they define portfolio success not by performance but by a sense of financial peace of mind. Not having to worry about money is more important than achieving the highest returns.
• Broader asset class investing is on the rise. Investments in interval funds and private markets have surged over the past year. In fact, over 25% of investors now own private equities, often through employee stock ownership. However, many advisors are still hesitant to recommend these investments due to their complexity and high fees, a reluctance that doesn’t align with clients’ wants and needs. Morningstar CEO Kunal Kapoor said that Morningstar is responding by offering a growing portfolio of data to help advisors advise their clients in this area. (His talk was livestreamed on LinkedIn and is available here.)
• Active funds still face a challenge from passive funds. When analyzing the success of active funds versus passive funds after considering fees, only 42% of active funds performed as well as or better than their passive counterparts, according to the “Voice of the Investor Survey.”
• Consider overweighting international investments. Morningstar analysts believe that international stocks are poised to outperform US stocks over the next decade, said Dominic Pappalardo and Philip Straehl in “Is the International Outlook Brighter than the US?” While US stocks are expected to continue growing in value, Morningstar’s research suggests that developed international and emerging-markets stocks are currently undervalued and could deliver stronger performance.