Our investment process is built upon transparency and understanding. It is vital that our clients understand what it is they are invested in and why. Clients make better decisions when they have access to better information. With better decisions clients have confidence in their ability to stay on track in achieving their family’s financial goals.
The key to our client’s success over the long term will be measured by our ability to immunize the portfolio from the massive ups and downs, ensuring that our clients are getting paid to take on risk as opposed to paying for taking risk, with a pervasive focus on capital preservation.
As Portfolio Managers our investment process is centered around the investor. The most important thing we do for our clients and their families is to protect their wealth. The financial industry refers to risk management in terms of volatility. What clients are truly concerned about is loss of wealth.
All too often investors are presented with a plan showing a nice clean linear projection of investment performance (blue line in chart below), unfortunately what they get is much more fractal in nature. Resulting in a significant shortfall (red line, difference between what was promised and received).
Knowing that the market does not always go up (non-linear), we look to our data driven investment process to manage risk, to protect our client’s wealth. The reason for this is most firms still look at risk management as rebalancing a 60/40 portfolio of stocks to bonds, looking to the bonds to offset the losses when equities go down.
The financial industry looks at risk management as an academic study looking out results over the long term, 30 - 40 years. Unfortunately, our clients don’t necessarily have that kind of time, especially if relying on their portfolios for retirement income.
Our portfolios are individually tailored. Through our macro risk managed approach our portfolios are geared towards conservatism and predictable growth. The level of risk we take in our portfolios is predicated by the economic environment. To understand risk, we help clients understand that the risk we build into the portfolio or don’t take is predicated on understanding the economic environment based on Growth, Inflation and Government Policy. The back bone of our process, to achieving investment performance is predicated on allocating funds to the right asset classes (Cash, Currency, Bonds, Global Stocks, Commodities). Every decision examines both reward and risk of each asset class within the portfolio structure based on the economic environment to help control risk.
We use a global approach, investing in a diversified portfolio of fixed income, global equities, commodities, currency, real estate with tactical adjustments. We take a disciplined approach to investing, asset class, regional, sector and security specific exposure are all monitored closely. We take pride in understanding our client’s investment needs and individual circumstances.
The sole purpose of our investment process is to provide our clients with peace of mind. It is our commitment to transparency, clarity and communication that makes us a success with clients.