Episode summary
Wealth Management Invest: Real Assets, Active ETFs and Real Estate with Dan Noonan
Summary
Dan Noonan argued that real assets are regaining attention in wealth portfolios because they can improve diversification, help mitigate inflation, and provide income at a time when many investors are reassessing heavy U.S. equity exposure. He said the recent environment of strong large-cap growth returns and higher-rate volatility left real estate and other real assets out of favor, but that has started to reverse as clients look for more balanced portfolio construction.
He also said Cohen & Steers is built around specialist exposure to listed real estate, infrastructure, natural resource equities, commodities, and preferred securities, and that the firm is expanding access through mutual funds, SMAs, private real estate, non-traded REITs, and five actively managed ETFs. Noonan emphasized that listed and private real estate should be viewed as complements: public markets offer liquidity, transparency, and access to sectors like data centers and cell towers, while private real estate can offer smoother reported volatility, heavier income, and tax advantages.
A major theme was education. Noonan said advisers often over-focus on office and miss the broader real estate opportunity set, especially necessity retail and other next-generation categories. He also argued that active ETFs matter in inefficient sectors like real estate and infrastructure, where Cohen & Steers says it has historically added value versus benchmarks.
Key takeaways
- Noonan said advisers are rethinking real assets as inflation hedges and diversification tools after several years of U.S. equity dominance.
- He said listed real estate and private real estate are complements, with public markets offering liquidity and private markets offering smoother volatility and more income.
- Noonan said Cohen & Steers now offers five actively managed ETFs and is seeing rising demand for active exposure in inefficient sectors.
- He said real estate is far broader than office, pointing to industrial, retail, residential, data centers, cell towers, health care facilities and self-storage.
- Noonan said necessity-driven retail is a differentiated opportunity because supply is constrained and rents can be stable and durable.
Notable quotes
“real assets and real estate and diversified, you know, approaches like that, you know, had some headwinds from from a return standpoint”
“listed and private real estate as complements to each other not uh it's not an eitheror type uh type scenario”
“the buildings don't know who owns them”
“real estate's the third largest investable asset class, you know, here in the US”
“we have a very differentiated sector thesis around necessitydriven retail shopping centers”
How the episode opens
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Hello and welcome to the Wealth Management Invest podcast. I am your host David Bodimemer, editorial director with Wealth Management. Uh excited to bring on my guest for this episode, Dan Nunan, who's the executive vice president with Cohen and Steers.
Dan, welcome to the podcast.
Uh thanks, David. Very happy to uh to be here. So have some questions that I want to pick your brain a little bit with.
But before we get into that, I wanted to just give you an opportunity to tell folks a little bit about yourself and Cohen and Steers. I I think we're coming up like almost I think two years since you joined the firm there, but if you want to just talk a bit about your background, your experience in the space and and what you've been doing since you've gotten to the firm.
Yeah, absolutely, David. Yeah, almost uh two years now here at Cohen and Steers. uh I head up our global distribution effort for the firm across uh both our wealth and institutional channels in addition to our our our global marketing effort.
I joined the firm uh after spending time at uh New and Pimco and uh a long time at State Street Global Advisors. So I've been in the wealth channel and the wealth uh side of the market for most of my career and uh recently took on some new responsibilities on the on the global distribution side here at Cohen and Steers.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- real assets
- active etfs
- listed vs private real estate
- real estate infrastructure
- income and diversification
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Cohen & Steers
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Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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