Bob Doll, Crossmark

Bob Doll has spent 40 years managing US large cap equities — as Chief Equity Strategist at Nuveen, CIO of US Equity at BlackRock, and now as CEO and CIO of Crossmark Global Investments. Crossmark has been operating since 1987, is owned by AG Financial (the financial arm of the Assemblies of God Church), and in July 2025 launched two actively managed ETFs that filled a genuine gap in the market: CLCG (Large Cap Growth) and CLCV (Large Cap Value) — the first faith-based, actively managed large cap growth and value ETFs available at the time of launch.

In this episode, Bob walks through the distinction between values-based investing and ESG — a conflation he addresses directly because it's what most advisors bring to the conversation. He explains the Avoid, Embrace, Engage framework Crossmark uses to build every values-based portfolio, and makes the case (backed by his own data) that there is no statistical evidence values-based portfolios give up return relative to non-values-based portfolios. Bob walks through the 75/25 construction split between the quantitative multi-factor secular screen and the values-based overlay, why return on equity and price to free cash flow are doing the heavy lifting in the current environment, and why both funds are meaningfully overweight financials — including a substantive case for why the banks in particular are set up well right now.

Bob also shares his read on the value-versus-growth cycle after value's strong run this year, what he's watching most closely as he thinks about his famous annual ten predictions for 2027, and why a meaningful portion of Crossmark's client base doesn't identify as people of faith but still chooses to invest with the firm.