Asset Management is our primary focus. To implement our "Participation with Protection" strategy, we have hand-selected an entire team of professionals, including institutional asset allocation strategists, distinguished academics and several well-known and not-so-well-known traders in equities, bonds and futures.
Once client investment parameters are established, we select one or more managers to meet our client’s personalized parameters. Each portfolio may include both domestic and international securities and likely will provide diversification among asset classes including fixed-income, value, growth, small-cap, large-cap, emerging growth, blue chip, world natural resources, non-equity-correlated futures and money-markets.
Each manager actively oversees a portfolio of different no-load funds or individual securities specifically matched to provide the optimal combination of return and volatility relative to the client’s stated objective. In order to take advantage of a diverse variety of investment approaches, our partners include:
Traditional Strategists
Traditional investment managers select the best securities they can find, with a focus on a specific market style (U.S., international, value, growth, large-cap, small-cap, bonds, etc.). With traditional managers, money is always invested in that specific asset class, with no regard to market-timing or toward shifting within asset classes.
Tactical Allocators
In addition to using traditional money managers, unique to our practice, we recommend that you include "forward looking" or "tactical strategists" for about 25% of your portfolio. These managers use various techniques in an attempt to provide "participation" when the markets are cooperative and "protection" when they are not so friendly. While there can be no certainty that these strategies will be successful, their approach is to attempt to minimize volatility while allowing investments to prosper during more favorable periods. For clients who are particularly risk-averse, their investment in this tactical area, which includes market-timers, fixed income assets and convertible securities, might be as much as 50% of their portfolio.
Managed Futures
Even if you diversify amongst all the traditional asset classes, you may not obtain enough non-correlation. You need to diversify beyond stocks, bonds and real estate. Our answer to this dilemma is the use of managed futures public programs that feature professional money managers who specialize in trading worldwide hard asset and financial markets including agricultural goods, energy products, precious metals, foreign currencies, stock indices and interest rates. These medium to long-term public programs seek to achieve capital appreciation over time and to provide diversification for traditional investment portfolios. While futures trading can be speculative, volatile and involves a degree of risk, there may be benefits in investing a portion (generally 10 to 25%) of a portfolio in this potentially rewarding area.
