About Us: Investment Strategy

Time Horizon

Determining the time horizon of the portfolio is one of the most important decisions we have to make as investment advisors.  The time horizon will determine the asset classes that will be considered and the mix among the asset classes that will be used to develop the investment strategy.  For short-term portfolios, safety of principle is the most important consideration, but as the time horizon increases return becomes an increasingly important consideration.

Total Return Investing

For our portfolios we use an investment strategy known as “total return investing”, which seeks to achieve the overall rate of return, including both income and appreciation, necessary to attain the goals of our client - consistent with their time horizon and risk tolerance. It requires that our investment and management decisions respecting individual assets must be evaluated not in isolation but in the context of the portfolio as a whole and as a part of an overall investment strategy having risk and return objectives reasonably suited to the portfolio.

Balancing Inflation and Volatility

Because long term investors need to balance the eroding effects of inflation as well as the devastation of volatility, investment strategies can fail because they are too conservative as well as too aggressive.  Our strategy is based not on speculation but on the science of capital markets. Working with firms that have access to some of the academic community's most innovative and respected financial economists enhances our attempt to deliver the performance of capital markets and increase returns through state-of-the-art portfolio design and cost management.

Cost-Sensitive

Reducing cost is as important as maintaining the structure of our portfolios. According to John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard Funds, “Costs matter. Indeed for the long term investor, cost is the difference between success and failure.”  Therefore, we incorporate strategies that control the visible expense costs, as well as the invisible transaction costs.

Tax-Sensitive

For our taxable portfolios we offer tax-managed strategies that target market segments like value stocks and small cap stocks, which have higher expected returns but are otherwise costly or unsuitable for taxable investors. The tax-managed strategies we use deliver the same consistent exposure to their asset classes, but with a special emphasis on maximizing after-tax returns.