Our Approach
First and foremost, we believe that financial wealth is meant to serve a purpose – to provide you with financial independence and allow you to live the lifestyle you desire without having to worry daily about how your assets are being managed or what the stock market may be doing. We strongly believe that each of our clients should have their assets invested in a manner that gives them the greatest likelihood of achieving their goals with the minimum amount of risk necessary to accomplish this. For that reason, we think it is critically important that we help each client not only establish goals but engage in a true financial planning process. This allows us to focus on monitoring your portfolio in relation to achieving those goals.
We believe that every client we work with has a unique situation and circumstances and therefore needs a customized approach to how their assets are invested. For this reason, we do not have any two clients or families that are invested exactly the same.
Investment Philosophy and Strategies
You won’t often hear us talking about the hottest stock, sector or money manager. Instead we believe success over the long run requires mitigating the risk of catastrophic loss as a first priority, even in aggressive strategies. In our view, managing a portfolio is a marathon, not a sprint – and our goal is to manage your assets in a way that helps you stay the course during the tough times and helps you maintain your chosen lifestyle, accomplish your goals and secure your legacy over the long run.
In our equity portfolios, we lean toward value oriented strategies as well as methodologies for mitigating losses in difficult equity environments. But no one strategy can be completely effective under all economic conditions, so we deploy multiple strategies to help achieve your objectives and mitigate risk. We also believe that over time, managing portfolio costs and mitigating income taxes can provide enhanced returns over the long-term. While cost and taxes are not what drive our investment decisions, they are a major factor in how we construct and manage your portfolio.
We also realize that based on the unique needs of each client, the strategies and resources we use to deploy their capital can vary widely. For this reason, we use a variety of strategies, managers and funds in putting your capital to work. On the equity side this often includes using tax efficient and low cost ETFs as well as more focused separate account managers. On the fixed income side, we also use ETFs and mutual funds as well as individual securities when appropriate.
For almost two decades, we have had a strong belief in the use of alternative investments that often generate returns that have low correlation to the equity markets and also less downside risk. These strategies may include private equity, hedge funds and fund of funds as well as private lending and other strategies. While these may not be suitable for every client, when appropriate, they can provide additional diversification from traditional stocks and bonds as well as reduce overall portfolio risk.
We believe that your investment portfolio is a means to an end – which is being able to live the lifestyle you desire free from the daily worries of how your portfolio may be performing. Regardless of your situation or where you are in life, we believe that we can work with you to develop a customized plan and a portfolio that will give you the best possibility of achieving your goals and securing your personal legacy.