Portfolio Design

Defined Investment Goals

A sound investment plan starts with defining objectives and goals. All investors need a plan, an implementation strategy, and discipline to stay committed.

We strive to tailor each portfolio to your time horizon, risk tolerance, income needs, risk capacity, liquidity position, tax needs, and investing experience. Because many investment objectives are long-term, we’ll help you develop an investment plan that will endure changing market environments.

Strategic Portfolio Design

We strive to help investors design simple, safe, diversified, and enduring portfolios that foster long-term wealth growth while safeguarding against the erosion of purchasing power. There is no one-size-fits-all portfolio. Every person is unique, and their portfolio should reflect their personal goals, risk preferences, and objectives. 

Designing and building diversified portfolios requires a thorough analysis of the past. Understanding the past enables investors to construct portfolios that are well-prepared for the future.

Asset Allocation

The hallmark of implementing an investment plan is an appropriate asset allocation strategy that aligns with the plan's goals. Asset allocation involves determining the proportion of funds to allocate among various asset classes, including stocks, bonds, cash, and gold.

Research has shown that asset allocation is the primary driver of returns for investors holding broadly diversified portfolios. An effective asset allocation strategy aims to diversify investments across multiple asset classes, thereby reducing risk and achieving the goals and objectives outlined in the investment plan. 

Traditionally, many portfolios have consisted only of U.S. stocks, bonds, and cash. We take a more dynamic approach to diversifying portfolios across global asset classes that exhibit low correlation with one another.

Investment Selection

Active portfolio management involves managers making investment choices to outperform a benchmark or index. In contrast, passive portfolio management consists of investing in strategies that closely track a selected benchmark index, aiming to achieve market-level returns in the chosen market.

We believe both strategies have merit in building long-term, diversified portfolios and see no reason to limit our investment choices to one or the other.

We utilize both passively managed index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and actively managed funds. In particular, we seek actively managed funds that have performed well during down markets and that have value-tilted strategies.

Cost and Tax-Efficient

History has proven that investors have no control over market returns. However, investors do have some control over expenses and taxes.

We reduce expenses in two ways. First, we offer our investment management services at a lower cost than the average advisory firm. Second, we create portfolios using low-cost index and actively managed funds.

We utilize tax-efficient strategies in both portfolio design and management. We aim to identify the optimal investments to hold in various types of accounts and then tailor each portfolio by utilizing rebalancing, cash management, and tax-loss harvesting strategies.