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Investment advisors serving the New York City Region with a simple objective: to make your money work harder.
We offer an alternative to the high-cost, high-complexity solutions that are currently heavily marketed in the industry.
We invest portfolios of successful professionals and families, using deep expertise, carefully curated tools, and investment acumen.
We help clients: accumulate capital, and invest it prudently and cost consciously, so they can focus on living their life the way they see fit.
Clients rely on us to address such issues as:
- How much should I be saving for retirement?
- When can I plan to retire?
- Is my portfolio structured to minimize my taxes?
- Is my portfolio properly positioned for today’s markets?
- How should I react to the current market conditions?
- Are my 401k investments consistent with the rest of my portfolio?
- Is my portfolio strategy consistent with my estate plan?
- How can I transfer my wealth effectively?
- What should my gifting approach be? Will my portfolio support it?
- When should I exercise my stock options?
Philosophy
Investment Philosophy (How we invest)
We strive to manage investments conservatively using the value oriented approach of buying high quality investments which are available at attractive (inexpensive) prices.
We use both active and passive approaches to portfolio management depending on market conditions. When markets offer opportunities, or as we uncover compelling ideas, active portfolio management is useful.At other times our default position is to use passive investments.
We believe that market conditions are important especially at the time when clients commit or withdraw capital. Therefore we do pay attention to market trends based on the relative yield spreads between major asset classes and our expectations about their future performance. But normally we do not attempt to time the market.
With markets becoming increasingly global, we seek opportunities regardless of where they are located.
We use fundamental as well as quantitative approaches to guide us when we buy and sell securities.
Strategy
Investment Strategy
We create a customized investor portfolio using three main steps:
• Setting the asset allocation for the five main asset classes—cash, bonds, equities, commodities, real estate.
• Selecting appropriate strategies for each asset class in the portfolio.
• Choosing attractive securities in each asset class.
We set our asset allocation based on our assessment of the relative returns between the main asset classes and our expectations of their future returns and volatility.
We use a multi-strategy approach because few strategies work well under all conditions. We are, however, biased towards value oriented strategies – those that focus on finding good companies at attractive (low) prices.
When selecting securities for portfolios, we draw a clear distinction between asset classes, investment products, investment strategies, and types of accounts. Many investors (and occasionally professionals) confuse these terms which may result in a poorly diversified portfolio.
Risk Management
We believe that most investors are unable to assess, much less quantify, their “risk-profile”. Therefore we focus on understanding an investor’s financial horizon and goals and then determine a minimum return that their portfolio must generate to meet those goals. We then construct a conservative portfolio which is consistent with the desired minimum return. We take this approach because we believe that mitigating risk is more prudent than reaching for the highest return possible.
We assess and manage risks from a variety of perspectives that go far beyond the traditional “risk-return” approach to investments. We do not equate risk to volatility (risk is the possibility of permanent loss of capital while volatility is a measure of uncertainty). In addition to the “risk-return” approach we also look at other risks
like:
• Capital risk: limit exposure of any specific individual security to 5% of the portfolio; pick securities with
above average balance sheet quality.
• Liquidity risk: the risk that your investment may not be able to be sold quickly for cash. For example, real-
estate cannot be liquidated quickly.
• Goal-achievement risk: the risk that goals may not be met because the investment strategy is either too
conservative or too aggressive.
• Withdrawal timing and withdrawal rate risk: (sequence of returns risk): the risk that withdrawals will be inappropriately timed relative to market cycles.
• Draw-down risk: the risk that an ad hoc event might require additional withdrawal of capital.
• Behavioral risk: client emotions, especially in times of stress, may over-ride prudent investing approaches.
Studies have shown that investor return (return that an investor actually earns) is significantly less than
investment return (return earned by the investment strategies used in the portfolio). Much of this discrepancy
may be due to behavioral risk.
• Administrative risk: Insure account related paper work is accurate so that there are no conflicts with wills /
estates etc. Also assist clients to insure that all assets and liabilities are properly inventoried, titled and
documented.
•Earnings Potential risk (or your human capital risk): Different professions have different earning patterns. Some careers (Professional athletes for example) have short but very high earning paths; Others like Service professions (Doctors, lawyers etc) have longer earning paths with more steady income.