Our Philosophy
Our process begins with an acute awareness that investment risk can never be entirely eliminated and that the fundamental driver of long-term portfolio performance is protection of principal.
For this reason, the investment team strives to be diligent in properly understanding each client’s individual financial objectives, investment horizon, return expectations, income requirements, previous investment experience, and degree of financial sophistication. As a consequence, we will establish an appropriate Risk Protocol for each portfolio. Our goal is to achieve an optimized risk-adjusted return that keeps you within your “comfort zone.”
Our investment approach is disciplined, rigorous and strategic. Using both technical and fundamental analytical tools, we constantly monitor the larger macro environment and scale down to a fine, granular level. We look to recognize patterns and identify useful trends-global and geographical patterns, historical trends, demographic patterns, cyclical trends, industry and sector trends, pricing movement trends. Our goal is twofold. Strategically, we want to identify long-term investable themes. Tactically we want to position client portfolios on the right side of these trends to profit from them or to adopt a defensive posture with respect to them. We try to be opportunistic: to take advantage of short-term market volatility and pricing inefficiencies in order to realize longer-term appreciation.
The overall strategic design of a client portfolio will be driven by its singular or balanced mix of objectives on a spectrum that runs from most conservative to most growth oriented, but in all cases we strive to be defensively positioned.
To mitigate risk we will use strategic asset allocation, including the disciplined inclusion of alternative investments, such as commodities which typically have a low degree of correlation to other portfolio holdings. Where appropriate, we will also include the cautious and prudent sale or purchase of option contracts to better define and contain risk, reduce portfolio volatility, enhance returns, produce additional income or hedge an existing position. We will also employ market-neutral strategies that do not depend on a clear uptrend or downtrend, but can provide income and defensive positioning in a range-bound market. In all cases, the objective is to constrain overall portfolio volatility without limiting absolute return.
Each day brings new information on the economy, the markets and our portfolio securities and presents new considerations for investment. The portfolio team is constantly evaluating and re-evaluating the portfolios in an effort to optimally balance risk and reward. We make every reasonable effort to properly respond to the challenge that unrelenting change imposes upon the financial markets in order to create and sustain a meaningful margin of safety in your investment accounts.