You are the center of our wealth management philosophy. We want to get to know you, your family relationships, your dreams, and goals, and not just on a surface-level conversation. It isn’t until we have had several deep conversations with you that we may understand who you are and what you are trying to accomplish. We then take a deep look at your risk tolerance (i.e., your ability to “sleep at night”). We want to intimately know your willingness and ability to take on (or not take on) risk. Once we get to know you and your situation, we set out to create a portfolio that will get you closer to achieving your dreams.
Wealth Management Principles
We believe in several timeless principles that guide our thinking.
- Faith in the future– We regard optimism as the only realism. There will always be something to fear, but we think that progress continues to increase. We want to maintain a positive outlook on life, even when things appear dark or grim.
- Patience– The decision not to do something wrong. The more often you change your portfolio–actually, there’s evidence that the more often you even look at your portfolio–the lower the return will be. We want to be patient and let investment themes and strategies play out.
- Discipline– The decision to keep doing the right things. Discipline says, “I don’t care what’s working now; I care about what’s always worked, and I’m going to persist in doing the things that have, most reliably, always worked.”
Wealth Management Portfolio Practices
We believe in the following portfolio practices.
- Asset Allocation– the long-term mix of stocks, bonds, and cash is the primary determinant of the variation of returns a client can expect. We focus on creating an appropriate blend that has a dual focus- maximizing returns and minimizing risk.
- Diversification– the spreading of risk and reward across various factors and asset classes. Understand that you’ll never own enough of any one thing to make a killing in it. However, you’ll never own enough of any one thing to be able to get killed by it.
- Rebalancing– returning the portfolio to its target diversification. This will virtually cause the sale of high-priced/low-value “hot” asset classes and the redeployment of those funds into low-priced/high-value out-of-favor asset classes–the precise opposite of what most investors do.
Intelligent Investing combines three pillars of financial thought into the wealth management decisions: traditional finance, behavioral finance, and values-based finance.
Learn how we integrate these principles and practices into our Wealth Management Process.
