Billionaire fund manager Ron Baron praises battered financial stocks whose new CEO he likens to Jamie Dimon

While much of the market has aligned itself with artificial intelligence and big tech companies in 2025, billionaire fund manager Ron Baron said on CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week that investors should look for the best opportunities in multiple market caps and sectors. This is starting to happen as many investors are abandoning tech stocks and looking for value across the market, including the financial sector. Baron cited two financial sector companies owned by his firm, Baron Capital, MSCI and FactSetwhich he says is getting little attention from individual investors and where he says CEOs are one of the reasons to have confidence in the future.

Baron joined “ETF Edge” to discuss his company’s new exchange-traded funds, its first ETFs in decades of running mutual funds and other investments that have generated an estimated $57 billion in profits for Baron Capital investors over four decades. He predicted an additional $250 billion in profit over the next decade and focused much of the conversation on finding stocks that the rest of the market is ignoring.

“There are so many companies these days that are interesting and everyone is focused on technology,” he said.

MSCI is best known for its stock indexes, which are used by asset managers, pension funds and ETF providers around the world. Trillions of dollars are invested based on MSCI’s benchmarks, including developed markets, emerging markets and ESG indices. The company also provides analytics and risk management tools that are deeply rooted in institutional investing.

MSCI went public at $18 per share in 2007 after being spun off from Morgan Stanley. The stock initially rose, then fell sharply during the financial crisis, but Baron said he continued to buy during that period.

But MSCI was left out of the latest bull market, with its shares down nearly 8% over the past year to trade at $563 on Thursday.

Baron, founder and CEO of Baron Capital, said he has owned MSCI since it first went public and invested alongside founder and chairman Henry Fernandez, whose personal story intrigued him. Fernandez fled Nicaragua during a coup, came to the US penniless and built MSCI inside Morgan Stanley.

In all the years since the IPO, “we’ve kept buying,” Baron said. “He also bought shares personally,” Baron said of Fernandez. “I’m trying to keep up with him.

FactSet was an even bigger loser, down nearly 40% this year after disappointing earnings and a weak profit outlook. However, Baron believes the decline reflects short-term issues rather than a business collapse, and pointed to the company’s new CEO as the reason for his bullish view. “What I think is really interesting … there’s been a change in management,” he said.

FactSet, which provides financial data, analytics and research tools used by investment professionals, named Sanoke Viswanathan its CEO in September. Baron said he originally invested when he was looking for a Bloomberg-like option that was private and he couldn’t invest in it. Now, Baron says the new CEO is another reason to invest, comparing Viswanathan to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon.

As with Fernandez, Baron pointed to Viswanathan’s personal story. He grew up poor on a farm in India, attended top engineering schools, worked at McKinsey, advised US officials during the financial crisis at the age of 33, and later became one of the senior managers on Jamie Dimon’s team at JPMorgan. According to Baron, Viswanathan was among the top candidates being considered to succeed Dimon, and when he found out he would not be succeeding as CEO at JPMorgan, he decided to accept the top job at FactSet.

Baron sees the decision as a major win for FactSet. “If you have a company that’s a really great company with great opportunities like Bloomberg, but young and up and coming, and you have a guy like this, a killer like this … think about putting Jamie Dimon at the helm of that company for 51 or 52 years. That’s what happened,” Baron said.

“You find companies like this, you find people like this who run these businesses, and you say ‘I have to invest in this person,'” Baron added.