Our Investment Philosophy
Our Time-Tested Investment Philosophy
Your financial situation is unique. Accordingly, your plan is customized to align your money with your life. All our investment strategies are based on three fundamental observations:
- Capital markets are fairly efficient. Outperforming them is a daunting task and entails increasing risk and cost. Caution is essential.
- Risk matters. Risk control can avoid painful surprises and ensure that an investment program is maintained through difficult periods.
- Costs & taxes matter. Costs have always mattered and tax-efficiency is increasingly important in today's tax environment.
Your customized portfolio will be built on decades of rigorous academic research and the latest thinking applied to your particular situation. Our investment management services include customized portfolios, ongoing portfolio management, and periodic performance reviews to ensure alignment with your goals and objectives.
Below are some of the key concepts underpinning our investment approach:
Exposure to numerous asset classes reduces the risk that any one investment or any one market could substantially impact your portfolio. Volumes of empirical studies confirm that stock picking and market timing are not worth the increased risk and cost you incur by engaging in such activities. Accordingly, our portfolios are diversified across more than 12,000 securities, representing companies and governments operating in 47 countries worldwide.
The Risk/Reward Tradeoff
In general, stocks are more volatile than bonds. However, not all stocks are equally risky. Small-company stocks ("small-caps") are riskier than large-company stocks, and low-priced "value" stocks are riskier than high-priced "growth" stocks. Risk and reward go hand-in-hand. Exposure to small-cap and value stocks can increase long-term expected returns. These risk dimensions are strong and consistent not only in the US, but also around the globe.
Bonds have two primary risk factors:
Credit Risk: Lower credit quality bonds are riskier than higher credit quality bonds.
Time Risk: Longer-term bonds are riskier than shorter-term bonds.
The retail financial services industry has done a masterful job of hiding the true costs of investing. But, costs matter and they are one of the few things we can control no matter what the markets are doing. Because taxes can be a huge drag on performance, we are vigilant about minimizing them. Our team of CPAs, attorneys, and CFPs are expert at minimizing the damaging effects of excessive costs and taxes on your wealth.
These observations are not controversial, yet too often they are overlooked - even though they are fundamental to preserving and growing your hard-earned money. Accordingly, we continually monitor each of these issues to ensure that your wealth is always aligned with your life.
Learn More
To learn more, just click below:
Our Investment Philosophy: This brochure offers a detailed explanation of our investing methodology.
The Emotions of Investing: This brochure offers a broad view of our wealth management philosophy.
What is Evidence Based Investing?