Managing Your Money

Investing based on facts, not emotions

While your feelings about money play a prominent role in determining the strategy that is right for you, we do not think anyone’s emotions–including our own–should have a role in making everyday decisions about your investments. That is why we do not act on stock tips, guess where the Dow will be in six months or try to predict the direction of interest rates. Your money is too valuable to be managed on the basis of hunches or “sure fire” bets.

If we are working with you as an Investment Advisor Representative, in many cases we won’t be the ones picking the individual stocks, bonds, mutual funds, REIT’s, alternatives or ETF’s that make up your portfolio of holdings like some brokers, financial advisors or other commission based salespeople might do. Rather, once we fully understand your financial needs, both for today and in the years ahead, your risk tolerance and the other overall objectives with your money, we may recommend one or more investment strategies that will then be managed day to day by institutional-caliber money management firms (or strategist), and we have lots of firms to choose from.

As an example, through just one of the state of the art technology platforms we have available to us, we have unbiased access to nearly 7000 financial products, including several asset management firms and strategist – many of which are pioneers in the industry. Wonder how we sort through all that data and select what we believe is the most appropriate money management firm or strategy for you. Ask us. We would be happy to show you how we do it.

Remember, we owe allegiance only to you, our client, and that independence allows us to choose what we regard as the highest quality investment managers available for your portfolio. If for some reason, and at some point, one of the investment managers we selected is not doing the job we expected them to do, we may recommend moving your funds to a new investment manager. It’s our job to manage the managers.

It never ceases to amaze us when we review a prospective clients current portfolio how much risk, or volatility, they may have been subjecting themselves to within their current portfolio as measured by standard deviation, a standard risk measurement tool in our industry. Over the years, we have found that unexpected risk, or volatility, is the number one reason investors abandon or become so frustrated with their current strategies and fail to achieve their goals. That is why so much of what we do focuses on reducing risk in your portfolio.

This does not mean we think everyone should own only low-risk investments: far from it. We also have strategies for middle-of-the-road and more adventurous investors, it’s just we believe every strategy should strive to follow the same theme; doing all it can to help you achieve the results you want at the lowest possible level of risk. This makes it easier for you to stay with the program long enough to have the best chance of experiencing success.