Investment Management

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We bring Nobel Prize-winning research from leading financial economists to our clients in the form of distinctive empirical strategies from institutional managers that are unavailable to investors without a professional investment advisor.  Clients benefit from strategies that have higher expected returns, specific dimensions of risk, more focused implementation and lower management and trading costs.  We offer these services to clients with total investment accounts beginning at $1 million.

Investors, whether they are experienced institutional investors or inexperienced individual investors, are vulnerable to committing behavioral errors – errors in understanding and errors in making decisions.

Institutional investors create systems to help reduce the frequency and costs of their behavioral errors. They identify and understand the key issues that have the greatest effects on the choices they make and the outcomes they seek.  They invest great amounts of time and energy to ensure that they aren’t the ones “who don’t know that they don’t know.”

Individual investors generally do not have the luxury of full-time dedication to the intellectual pursuit that is required of career professionals.  As a result, the costs of their errors are staggering.



One profound example is the dramatic difference between the compound annual return of the average equity mutual fund for the 20 years ended 2004, and that of the average equity fund shareholder during that same time.  The average fund’s compound annual return was 10.7%, while the compound annual return of the average equity fund shareholder was 3.7%.¹  The difference was due largely to the behavior of the shareholders trading in and out of their funds either chasing performance or preparing for market downturns that either didn't materialize or didn't last.

For most of us, we need our assets to successfully fund our current and future income needs.  This is especially true when planning for retirement because replacing earned income is the central issue.  Before we even begin to think about investing for our clients, we strive to completely understand their requirements for the timing and amounts of income they need.  Only then do we begin to think about the best mix of core investment strategies that will fund their retirement income needs at the lowest probability of failure while minimizing their investing costs.
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The bedrock of our investing approach is to help our clients meet their planned cash needs, achieve consistent asset growth, avoid unrewarded risks and minimize their tax and investing costs.
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Regardless of each client’s specific cash flow requirements, there is almost always a need for our clients to achieve consistent asset growth; if not to increase their base of assets to more successfully meet their future needs, then to preserve the purchasing power of the assets they have.

Once we understand the optimal mix of investment strategies for cash flow and capital growth, we bring academic research to our clients in the form of distinctive empirical strategies that have higher expected returns, specific dimensions of risk, more focused implementation and lower trading costs.  We do this by working with some of the country’s most respected financial economists and institutional investment managers who are unavailable to investors without a professional investment adviser.

Most of the return from an investment occurs over a short period of time.  Predicting that short period of time is a fool's errand.  If you miss it, you have to struggle even harder to make up the lost opportunity to generate that portion of your expected return.As a result, we are disciplined long-term investors and we offer our investment management services to clients with a similar temperament.
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¹  According to Lipper Analytical Services, the average equity mutual fund with dividends reinvested returned 10.7% for the 20 years ended 2004.  According to DALBAR, the average equity mutual fund investor earned 3.7% for the same period.