What Makes Us Different

We believe in tactical asset management that takes into account the changing market, your income needs, and your goals. We do not believe in a “set it and forget it” strategy for investment management.

Investing only works if you get to keep the profits, Investing 101 tell us to “Buy low and Sell high”, NOT buy and hold forever. Too often we hear, “Just hang in there, it'll come back.” That's great, IF one can wait long enough for the assets to recover! The markets and economy go through constant up AND down cycles. If one needs their capital and the markets happen to be in a down cycle, it could be a painful time to withdraw assets. More importantly, it would be difficult to sit by and watch all of your hard-earned gains evaporate just because the market is falling.

Our process does not rely on favorable conditions in any particular market, sector or asset class.

"Advance and Preserve" is the portfolio strategy that we implement. It can be thought of as very much the opposite of "Buy & Hold," however, more specifically; we like to think of it as "A defensive model with an offensive strategy" - both a buy strategy and more importantly, a sell strategy. You may have heard of "stop loss orders" in the past – this is where you pick a price at which you plan to sell out of a security if it goes too low. Well, our goal is to take things further than just having a bailout plan for our portfolios.

What does this mean? Perhaps it is easier to explain what it does not mean. It means that we don't "ride out the storm." It means that we don't implement a "set it and forget it" approach to your life savings that you have worked so hard to save up. Finally, it means that we don't leave your portfolios to be managed by chance, in hope things will come back when we want them to (hopefully sooner than later).

We use a compilation of software suites that range from tools for asset allocation, fundamental analysis, and investment filtering systems, legal insider buying analysis, all the way through stochastic modeling overlays (technical analysis). While the cost of these tools can be significant, we firmly believe that we can't afford not to spend the money.

We've built numerous asset allocation models that range from models for those who are still in their "Accumulation Phase" of retirement planning to portfolios for those who are in their "Distribution Phase" of retirement income planning. Each of these models is tracked on a daily basis to help avoid any unexpected changes. The quantity of holdings in each portfolio is related to the investment objective of the portfolio at hand.

Once we've screened the qualitative and fundamental side of our model portfolios, we then feed this information to our technical analysis software that allows us to closely track, on a daily basis, every investment our clients own.

On the simplest of all levels, we track the movement of each investment that we own and look for potential opportunities to buy when it looks as if a bottom is beginning to form in a particular security. This is called “Buy Side” analysis. Similarly, and most importantly, we track the movement of each investment to look for opportunities to take profits off the table or cut losses against a security that we feel has a high probability of taking a downward plunge. This is known as “Sell Side” analysis, or having an “Exit Strategy,” and in our opinion, it's one of the largest components that most other financial planning firms don't address. We believe it may be one of the most important elements to successful investing. Our goal is to not only make a profit, but keep the profit too!

With all that said, our strategy is not clairvoyant. We do not have a crystal ball. We will rarely buy at the exact bottom and sell at the exact top. Doing so is next-to-impossible. However, what we ideally want to accomplish is to buy early on the way up, participating in as much of the potential gains as possible - and then selling early on the way down, missing as much of the potential downside as possible. So, the goal is maximum upside-capture with minimum downside-capture.

What about fees? We charge a fixed annual percentage to each portfolio we manage, which is billed directly from the account on a quarterly basis.

Investing involves risk including the potential loss of principal. No investment strategy, such as asset allocation, can guarantee a profit or protect against loss in periods of declining values. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Please note that individual situations can vary. Therefore, the information presented here should only be relied upon when coordinated with individual professional advice.

Technical Analysis is based on the study of historical price movements and past trend patterns. There is no assurance that these movements or trends can or will be duplicated in the near future. It logically follows that historical precedent does not guarantee future results. Conclusions expressed in the TA section are personal opinions; and may not be construed as recommendations to buy or sell anything.