Our investment approach starts when we meet with you and learn about your goals, your concerns, and what you value most in life. 

"What do you want your money and assets to accomplish?"  While not always and easy question to answer, defining and clarifying the objective together is the foundation for building a strategy to take you from HERE to THERE.

We believe in keeping our investment philosophy disciplined, consistent, and as simple as possible to help us deal effectively with the natural complexity of markets. 

Core tenants of our investing philosophy:

See the world differently and independently: The investing world is a wonderful example of human urge to increase complexity, excitement, and noise.  We believe it is critical to filter out soundbites, noise, and constantly changing "expert opinions" by periodically backing away from the activity, conducting in-depth study of the major trends, and doing independent research. 

Look for value: Our definition of value investing is seeking growth and income at prices which we believe are discounted from their future fair market value. While we employ a disciplined approach, we are unconstrained in our investment universe.  As value investors we are unafraid of taking a non-consensus perspective and understand the important of being patient with our investments.    

Focus on compounding returns: Market risk isn't our enemy over the long term, it is what allows us to earn a meaningful return on our assets.  We want to participate in these returns over time by designing portfolios built for all seasons of the markets, reducing unnecessary trading, and being mindful of overall costs.

Process oriented goals:  Good performance follows good process.  We believe that having a good strategy coupled with solid execution of the plan allows us to be confident that long term returns will come over time. Our process includes specific weekly, monthly, and quarterly steps to generate consistent feedback and protect portfolios from unwanted risk.

Strategic Asset Allocation: We start with a flexible top-down strategic asset allocation that represents our macro view of global financial conditions.  This allocation could have a bias toward a specific economic environment or away from specific perceived risks.

Core Holdings: We then build the bulk of our portfolios according to the major investment themes stemming from our Strategic Asset Allocation.  Where feasible, we use a core of low cost, index products to enhance overall returns while providing diversification.

Ancillary Positions: Some investment themes require additional specific holdings.  These are usually a minority of the overall portfolio and could be individual securities, shorter term tactical holdings, or deep value positions we expect to hold for some time.

Customization: We construct individually appropriate portfolios for each client according to their specific investment objectives, time horizon, return expectations, liquidity parameters, tax constraints, and risk tolerances.