Our Investment Philosophy

Advice you can trust

Our investment philosophy is based on decades of historical data, numerous academic reports, and years of personal experience.

Before advising any client to invest their hard-earned money, we adhere to the guiding principle that there’s no portfolio without a plan. In other words, it’s essential to know what the money’s for before we start to recommend how best to invest it.

We believe that until we truly understand you, your financial position and experience, and your goals, dreams, and aspirations, we have no right to tell you what to do with your money.

The next thing to point out is how we view our role as your financial planning firm.

Our comprehensive investment philosophy explains why we invest our clients’ money in the way we do. We favour academically sound, low-cost, equity-based investment strategies, as these offer the greatest probability of financial success. In fact, we believe in this so strongly that we follow the same approach when investing our own money.

We believe that only 20% of the value of a financial adviser is in the strategy itself. The remaining 80% of our value is in something known as “behavioural investment coaching”.

Our coaching approach involves helping to steady our clients through moments of great ecstasy or panic during times of market volatility. Near great turning points in the market, this advice is priceless.

In our view, how an investor acts when faced with the relentless volatility of investment markets is one of the biggest determinants of long-term financial success. So our key role is to help guide our clients to ensure they make financial choices that are designed to optimise their long-term financial outcomes.

Our behavioural coaching approach is likely to have a far greater impact on your long-term returns than so-called active portfolio management.

The most important role we have, though, is to be a trusted, impartial adviser on a long-term basis. As a third party, we can be rigorous and level-headed in our approach to planning, and clear about investment goals. It’s these qualities that allow us to deliver lasting success and happiness for our valued clients.

What we stand for

It’s our view that all successful investing involves two things: a plan, and patience.

In our opinion, failed investing is market-focused and current-outlook driven, so we make it our mission to take the opposite approach. Our journey with clients always begins with finding out what the money is ultimately for, way before any products or portfolios are recommended.

Putting a plan in place is a proactive step that allows you to sit back and reap the rewards of your patience and faith. On the other hand, taking a reactive approach, and constantly tinkering with your strategy to try to gain an advantage, is a fool’s errand.

Get in touch today to learn more about how we approach investing.

How we choose investments

We prefer academic and scientific research in constructing an investment strategy for our clients.

We keep up to date with the latest studies and evidence to support our investment strategies or to inform suitable adjustments.

Costs eat returns, so we strive to adopt lower-cost strategies where suitable. Above all, though, we seek fair value and aren’t involved in a race to the bottom with eternal discounting.

Diversification is important because we cannot possibly predict where future returns will come from.

Our understanding is that market prices are fair and broadly reflect all the available data at any given point.

Simplicity is preferable to complexity.

Historically global equities have provided clients with the greatest probability of above-inflation returns over the longer term.

We outsource research to suitably qualified and experienced professionals but seek to verify and check findings ourselves. In other words, we delegate, not abdicate.

Investing is likely to provide better client outcomes compared to saving.

Clients will always have sufficient capital reserves to withstand market volatility in their invested assets.

Low-risk assets are low-return assets and therefore exposed to the highest risk of failing to achieve client objectives or lowering purchasing power to inflation.

Reducing taxation will help improve returns.

Liquidity is important, but flexibility is crucial. The future is uncertain, and we must be able to adapt and change strategies to our clients’ ever-changing circumstances.

Human nature is a failed investor. Behavioural coaching, trusted advice, and a consistent approach to both boom and bust will always be an important service.

We use external research to review investments and back-test theories and assumptions.

Contact us

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