Data-driven portfolio construction
We start by listening to you, through discussions with your advisors, then we take a look at your Dashboard to build a personalized portfolio. As your life changes, the strategy adjusts and adapts so it aligns with your changing needs.
Smart weighting
Smart Weighting is our strategy for giving your portfolio more even exposure across size, economic sector, industry and individual securities. In a hypothetical back-test* from 1990 to end of June 2019, Smart Weighting would have produced better returns with a lower risk profile (measured by standard deviation) than a traditional market-capitalization weighted index like the S&P 500.
Efficient tax management
If appropriate, we’ll put together a tax analysis before we make adjustments to your portfolio. This way you’ll see the potential impact of any adjustments, plus other options, to help you make a decision you’re comfortable with. We deploy strategies such as tax location (placing higher yielding securities in tax-sheltered accounts) and proactive, year-round tax loss harvesting. We do these on an ongoing basis, to increase tax efficiency. We also like to avoid inefficient investments, like mutual funds.
Disciplined rebalancing
Once your target strategy is set, sticking to that target is key. Using our proprietary software, we monitor your account on a daily basis to uncover rebalancing opportunities as they arise. We then make adjustments if appropriate, buying when things are lower than their target & selling when they're higher than target, to help you stay on track. This combination of people and technology allows us to rebalance as-needed, rather than on a rigid, calendar-driven schedule.
Individual stocks & ETF portfolio
We prefer individual stocks and ETFs for two main reasons. First, they are key to our Smart Weighting™ strategy. Additionally, we can manage them in a tax efficient way and rebalance in a more precise manner. We avoid mutual funds because they come with tax inefficiencies and, in many cases, there are high fees tied to actively managed funds.