We develop tailored financial strategies that integrate our clients' needs with their investments.

Successful investors are goal-focused and planning-driven, while unsuccessful investors are market-focused and performance-driven. The only benchmark that ultimately matters is the one that tells you whether you are on track to reach your goals. A plan that maps out year by year where you are going and accounts for periodic market turbulence is the key to staying even keeled no matter what the future holds. The most important thing about a plan is to have one.

Each goal should be matched with the investment solution that has the best chance of achievement. Some goals allow for taking risk while other goals should be immunized from uncertainty. The result is a customized portfolio that you had a part in designing and that you can trust is in your best interest.

It is not an accident that markets have delivered great returns in the past. If there is sufficient freedom for human innovation, ingenuity and productivity, ownership of companies will reward those who provide capital commensurate with the risk they take. Otherwise, capital would cease to flow to markets.

Our plans assume there will be numerous significant market declines over the client’s lifetime. The reason to expect good returns over time is because there will be temporary declines along the way. We can’t have one without the other - the two go hand in hand and are inseparable. All that is asked to have a successful investment experience is to ride out the periodic, and significant declines.

The prices of stocks, bonds and other investments trading on the public markets reflect all available information and are constantly readjusting, nearly instantaneously, based on the inputs from millions of participants. To stock pick based on an idea about the company is to suggest having information that the market does not already know or the ability to process information better than the sum-total of all investors, and there is no evidence that anyone can successfully do this consistently over time. Likewise, we don’t try to time the market or forecast the economy. The best time to buy is when you have the money and the best time to sell is when you need the money.

The greatest asset on the planet is human innovation. And the most reliable way to capture it is the ownership of as many companies around the world as possible. Our portfolios are globally diversified holding over 10,000 publicly traded companies in over 40 countries.

The scientific research in investing has shown that there are several factors of higher expected return, including:

• Size: Small companies have a higher expected return, and therefore more risk, than large companies. 

• Value: Low-priced companies, or “value” stocks, have a higher expected return and risk than high-priced companies, or “growth” stocks. 

• Profitability: High-profit companies have a higher expected return and risk than low-profit companies. 

• Term: Long-term bonds have higher expected return and risk than short-term bonds.

• Credit: Low-rated bonds have higher expected return and risk than high-rated bonds.

This means that two portfolios having no investments in common but having identical exposures to these factors will have the same expected return. So, all that matters in evaluating an investment, such as a stock, is where it stands along these factors, not the specific name, story, news or hunch about the company. It also means that there is a wide range of expected returns and risk that we can target using these factors.

In summary, we focus on what we can control:

• Behavior and Temperament

• Planning

• Goals

• Level of risk

• Asset allocation

• Factors of return

• Fee Minimization

• Tax Efficiency

And we don’t focus on the things we cannot control:

• Performance

• Economy

• News