[ { "anchorText": "ETFs vs Direct Indexing: Building Tomorrow's Portfolios", "contributors": [ { "kgmid": "", "name": "Paul Kenney", "sameAs": "https://thepaulkenney.com", "wikidataQid": "" } ], "coverageType": "", "datePublished": "2025-09-09", "description": "A Benzinga feature on how advisors are weighing ETFs against direct indexing when constructing next-generation client portfolios, drawing on Kenney's perspective from Syntax Advisors, with direct quotes and interview commentary.", "outlet": "Benzinga", "outletKgmid": "", "outletWikidataQid": "", "title": "ETFs vs Direct Indexing: How Advisors Are Building the Next Generation of Portfolios", "url": "https://www.benzinga.com/etfs/specialty-etfs/25/09/47581160/etfs-vs-direct-indexing-how-advisors-are-building-the-next-generation-of-portfolios" }, { "anchorText": "Rush University Medical Center and NEPC Use PFaroe", "contributors": [], "coverageType": "", "datePublished": "2017-03-22", "description": "Coverage of NEPC's use of the PFaroe risk-analytics platform with Rush University Medical Center to improve collaboration and effectiveness in asset-liability management; Kenney was quoted.", "outlet": "RiskFirst / Moody's Analytics", "outletKgmid": "", "outletWikidataQid": "", "title": "Rush University Medical Center and NEPC Use PFaroe", "url": "https://pfaroe.moodysanalytics.com/rush-university-medical-center-and-nepc-use-pfaroe-to-improve-collaboration-and-effectiveness-of-asset-liability-management-strategies/" }, { "anchorText": "Syntax Advisors Hires Paul R. Kenney, Jr. as Managing Director", "contributors": [], "coverageType": "", "datePublished": "2021-05-05", "description": "Announcement of Kenney's appointment as Managing Director of Product Development and Client Solutions at Syntax Advisors, following his tenure at NEPC, with a direct quote from Kenney.", "outlet": "Business Wire", "outletKgmid": "", "outletWikidataQid": "", "title": "Syntax Advisors Hires Paul R. Kenney, Jr. as Managing Director", "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210505005792/en/Syntax-Advisors-Hires-Paul-R.-Kenney-Jr.-as-Managing-Director-of-Product-Development-and-Client-Solutions" }, { "anchorText": "Is Your Portfolio Leaning Too Hard On A Few Stocks?", "contributors": [ { "name": "Paul Kenney" } ], "coverageType": "", "datePublished": "2026-03-25", "description": "This is a Q&A with Kenney explaining how the Syntax Stratified LargeCap Index differs from traditional cap-weighted benchmarks like the S&P 500. He describes how the index holds the same stocks as the S&P 500 but reweights them by equally balancing exposure across sectors, sub-sectors, and industries, aiming to reduce the concentration risk that builds up in a handful of mega-cap tech names. Kenney points out that the S&P 500's top 10 holdings made up nearly 39% of the index at the end of 2024, with names like Apple, Microsoft, and NVIDIA individually rivaling the weight of entire sectors like Energy or Consumer. He walks through the index's rebalancing approach, which mirrors the S&P 500's quarterly schedule for cost and comparability reasons, and addresses the main criticism of the strategy: that it can lag during narrow, momentum-driven bull markets. He suggests the index works well either as a core holding or as a complement to the S&P 500 to soften its tech concentration. Comparing stratification to equal-weighting and factor investing, Kenney argues it offers a more transparent and intuitive way to balance business risk without taking an implicit bullish or bearish stance on any one sector.", "outlet": "Stratified", "outletKgmid": "", "outletWikidataQid": "", "title": "Is Your Portfolio Leaning Too Hard On A Few Stocks?", "url": "https://stratifiedfunds.com/posts/is-your-portfolio-leaning-too-hard-on-a-few-stocks" }, { "anchorText": "Client story: Syntax", "contributors": [], "datePublished": "2024", "description": "This is a Preqin customer case study describing how Syntax integrated Preqin's private-company data to extend its proprietary classification technology, the Functional Information System (FIS®), from public markets into private markets. Syntax needed a reliable data source covering sponsor-backed private equity and venture capital-owned companies to fuel its classification engine, since data quality and availability for private firms lags far behind public company data. The company chose Preqin's Data Feeds API to process information on over 100,000 U.S. private companies, with Kenney, quoted in his role as SVP, Client Solutions, noting that the API was the most efficient way to integrate and manage that volume of data at scale. Syntax's team describes how the API eliminated manual data-gathering work, enabling an automated pipeline that refreshes company data daily. The case study reports that Syntax's beta test produced private-company profiles approaching the quality of its existing public-market coverage, and notes the company's plans to expand into global private-company data going forward.", "outlet": "Preqin", "title": "Client story: Syntax", "url": "https://www.preqin.com/customer-testimonials/syntax" }, { "anchorText": "Data, Custom Indexing Reshape Public Equity Portfolios", "contributors": [], "coverageType": "", "datePublished": "2025-08-01", "description": "This article examines how growing access to trading data is letting institutional investors and advisors move beyond traditional benchmarks and build portfolios tailored to specific sector exposures and risk factors. It features commentary from several industry voices, including NEPC's Nedelina Petkova, who notes clients increasingly use custom indexes to tilt toward favored themes like AI or clean energy, or to screen out sectors like tobacco or fossil fuels. Kenney, identified as SVP of Client Solutions at Syntax Data, argues that passive strategies will keep migrating toward direct indexing because it can diversify a portfolio while trimming the number of holdings an investor has to track — noting that a portfolio spanning U.S. large-cap, small-cap, and international indices might otherwise hold anywhere from 1,500 to over 3,000 individual securities. He adds that investment managers will increasingly need technical fluency as AI-driven tools become more central to the business. The piece also cites Michael Ashley Schulman of Running Point Capital Advisors, who frames custom indexing as a way to avoid overconcentration in individual stocks that come bundled into standard ETFs, and Ben McMillan of IDX Advisors, who argues direct indexing has shifted from a nice-to-have to a near-essential tool for investors since the COVID-19 pandemic.", "outlet": "Chief Invesment Officer", "outletKgmid": "", "outletWikidataQid": "", "title": "Data, Custom Indexing Reshape Public Equity Portfolios", "url": "https://www.ai-cio.com/news/data-custom-indexing-reshape-public-equity-portfolios/" }, { "anchorText": "'Two biggest real estate trends in one graph' — Data center spending set to overtake office space for the first time", "contributors": [], "datePublished": "2025-09-14", "description": "This article covers the crossover in U.S. commercial real estate spending, with data center construction closing in on and set to surpass traditional office spending for the first time, a trend Creative Planning CEO Peter Mallouk highlighted as capturing \"the two biggest real estate trends in one graph.\" The piece traces how office spending has steadily declined since 2021 while data center investment has more than quadrupled, driven by AI's surging energy and computing needs, with data centers already consuming roughly 5% of U.S. power and projected to exceed 10% by 2030. Kenney's research is cited to make the broader investment case: his analysis found that AI-related hardware and software made up roughly 8% of the S&P 500 by 2024, a share likely higher in 2025 given Nvidia's outsized weight in the index. The article notes that the \"Magnificent Seven\" tech giants are collectively on pace to spend over $400 billion on AI this year, a near-term drag on margins that could pay off if AI delivers on projections estimating it could add trillions of dollars to global GDP by 2030.", "outlet": "Investors Observer", "title": "'Two biggest real estate trends in one graph' — Data center spending set to overtake office space for the first time", "url": "https://investorsobserver.com/news/two-biggest-real-estate-trends-in-one-graph-data-center-spending-set-to-overtake-office-space-for-the-first-time/" }, { "anchorText": "Investors Know They Own Too Much Tech. This Analysis Shows That It’s Worse Than They Think.", "contributors": [], "datePublished": "2021-11-16", "description": "This article covers Syntax Advisors' then-unreleased research paper finding that S&P 500 index investors have nearly 15 percentage points more technology exposure than standard sector measures suggest, roughly 42% versus the commonly cited 27.6% under GICS. The piece explains that Syntax's classification approach profiles companies by their underlying product lines rather than a single primary sector, revealing tech exposure hidden inside companies like Amazon that traditional systems assign elsewhere. It quotes Syntax product strategist Simon Whitten, who argues current tech concentration in the S&P 500 now rivals how deeply financials permeated markets before the 2008 financial crisis, warning that a shift in sentiment away from tech \"will take 42 percent of the market with it.\" Kenney, described as Syntax's head of product development and client solutions and previously a nearly 20-year veteran of NEPC who managed Ford Motor Company's pension plan, is quoted arguing that traditional sector-based classification is outdated for capturing modern portfolio risk. The article situates the research within a broader institutional trend toward more precise, factor- and product-line-based tools for understanding portfolio concentration, particularly as pension funds and other large investors increasingly rely on cap-weighted index funds without fully grasping their underlying tech exposure.", "outlet": "Institutional Investor", "title": "Investors Know They Own Too Much Tech. This Analysis Shows That It’s Worse Than They Think.", "url": "https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2bswrhqnqgdyo77ziicxs/portfolio/investors-know-they-own-too-much-tech-this-analysis-shows-that-its-worse-than-they-think" }, { "anchorText": "Artificial intelligence can make a major contribution by interpreting data, but it will not generate alpha on its own; human analysts remain better with ‘intangible’ information.", "contributors": [], "datePublished": "2025-10-01", "description": "This article examines how institutional investors are integrating AI into their workflows, concluding the technology currently works best paired with human judgment rather than as a standalone tool. Kenney, identified as SVP at Syntax Data, is quoted on how advances in software and processing power now allow more sophisticated combinations of investment factors for portfolio construction and signal extraction, and argues AI's key value lies in helping separate meaningful data from noise. The piece cites a 2024 Journal of Financial Economics paper finding AI tools outperformed humans in about 54.5% of stock predictions, while humans retained an edge in understanding the institutional context behind firms and industries, reinforcing the case for a combined human-AI approach. It also features Stas Melnikov of SAS, who cautions that AI alone can't manufacture alpha from public information, since any pattern discoverable by a language model would already be known to other market participants and thus arbitraged away. The article frames AI as an increasingly embedded but still complementary tool in institutional investing rather than a replacement for human expertise.", "outlet": "Chief Investment Officer", "title": "How Useful Is AI in Institutional Investing Right Now?" } ]