Investment Philosophy

Why should you know about our Investment Philosophy?

Because, a consistent investment philosophy creates a framework for mutual understanding about the investment advisory service to be provided, and the thought process behind our investment decisions.

To begin, we consider ourselves to be financial security advisors, not investment brokers.  Our job is to help clients efficiently manage their specific financial situations, and to stop them from making illiterate & unnecessary mistakes. We focus on balancing the client’s emotional concerns, with their need to satisfy targeted financial objectives.

For all our clients, we take an inventory of their investable assets, review their cash or liquidity needs, and discuss their short and long-term goals.  We develop an investment strategy to meet these goals, keeping in mind the client’s specific time horizon and risk tolerance level.  Finally, we monitor all portfolios on a regular basis to ensure that the asset allocation and individual positions continue to be appropriate for the client’s ongoing situation. 

We execute investment transactions on a non-discretionary basis.  The client must approve of a transaction before it is initiated.  That means that our clients retain full control over their portfolios and all investment decisions. 

Mutual funds are our preferred vehicle for implementing this philosophy, with some exchange-traded funds (ETF’s) included when appropriate.  The mutual fund must have been in existence for at least three years.  We also prefer to work with those mutual fund companies with longer history of consistency in management personnel.

A properly diversified portfolio is not subject to the same financial risk as owning an individual stock. Mutual funds offer professional management and maximum diversification.  A balanced mutual fund portfolio spreads risk among many stocks, industries and asset classes, which should lower the overall risk of a portfolio. 

The portfolio risk is further reduced by properly blending the mix of equity, fixed income securities, and short-term cash positions.  Fixed income instruments can provide predictability of income and allow us to structure a portfolio to meet specific cash flow needs.  We accomplish this by building a laddered fixed income portfolio with bonds maturing on a quarterly/annual basis.   For our larger portfolios, we may use individual bonds and certificates of deposit in place of, or in addition to bond mutual funds. 

We believe a steady, low risk approach to investing is the best way to reach your goals.  Because we seek to build portfolios with lower volatility, our clients are less likely to deviate from the investment strategy when the markets inevitably have a downturn. 

We hope that by reducing the risk in the portfolio and granting the clients final say on investment decisions, our clients will be able to sleep more peacefully at night feeling confident that their financial security is in good hands.