Investing

Our goal is to work with our clients towards achieving a successful retirement so they can continue to live their current lifestyle. To accomplish this objective, we build portfolios that include certain characteristics, which we feel are important:  

  • Diversification: It’s important to own assets that typically don’t all go up or down simultaneously. This can help reduce volatility within a portfolio.
  • Rebalancing: Studies1 have shown that rebalancing portfolios can add to annual returns. When certain assets go up, it’s important to sell a portion to buy investments that may have lost value. Rebalancing promotes the time-honored concept of buying low and selling high.
  • Value: Research2 has demonstrated that portfolios that tilt towards value perform better over time. Value stocks are defined as companies that have higher dividends and/ or lower price/earnings ratios than their peers.
  • Low-fee funds: We are authorized to utilize mutual funds from Dimensional Funds for our clients. Dimensional is a mutual fund company whose investment philosophy is guided by the research of multiple Nobel Prize winners, so its passively managed funds tend to favor such factors as value, size, and profitability.
  • Buckets: Client portfolios are typically divided into four buckets, with less volatile investments constituting the buckets that will fund the early years of retirement. This strategy aims to reduce clients' worries about their finances throughout retirement.

We take the long view, paying little attention to daily headlines and ‘breaking news.’ We prefer to work with clients with a lengthy time horizon, and their portfolios tend to reflect those needs.   

 

1 "Putting a value on your value: Quantifying Vanguard Advisor's Alpha®"; Vanguard Research, August 2022
2 "Value versus Growth: The International Evidence"; Eugene F. Fama and Kenneth R. French, The Journal of Finance, Vol. LIII, No. 6, December 1998