Our investment Philosophy is based on four principles:
Risk analysis combined with our Timeline Investing approach is the most effective way to allocate investments across the various sectors;
Don't risk wealth by chasing high yield assets but instead use the Draw Down approach to enable retired clients to efficiently draw an income stream to match their living needs;
Invest into quality Australian and global companies that have exceptional earnings growth, as the growth in their share price will nearly always follow their earnings growth over the medium term;
Use quality managed funds where the Manager has demonstrated a long track record of having an after-fee return well in excess of ETFs, index funds, and market averages; and
Use alternative assets such as infrastructure, private equity, market neutral, and physical gold for risk management and real diversification.
Asset allocation refers to the process of determining the allocation of investments between the various asset classes of shares, property, fixed interest and cash. We strongly advocate structuring your asset allocation around the risk/return that you require to meet your strategic objectives.
There are a number of factors that will need to be considered. These factors include your risk profile, your investment experience, the return you require, and the timeframe of your investment.
Analysing an investor’s attitude towards risk has been one way that traditional Financial Advisers have allocated investments between the various asset classes of shares, property, fixed interest and cash.
The analysis of an investor's risk profile enables us to consider the available strategies, and determine the right balance between the allocation of investments which are usually treated as defensive, and those considered more risky.
While risk profiling is an excellent starting point to understand your investment mindset our experience shows that our Timeline Investing and Draw Down Approaches are more suitable techniques to provide you the best opportunity of achieving your investment objectives.
Consequently, the ultimate success, and determining factor of whether you will achieve your return objectives, is best achieved by isolating assets to draw income for the short term (years 1 and 2), medium term (years 3 to 7) and the long term (years 7 plus).
Any investment drawdowns that you make over the short-term period should be placed into cash and fixed interest investments, such as Government bonds and highly-rated corporate bonds. These types of investments have a low volatility and are ideal for drawing your future monthly income, rather than withdrawing funds from growth-style investments, where you might be crystallising short-term losses.
One of our objectives when designing a client’s portfolio is to seek and utilise funds that add value for the management fees they charge.
The style of investment managers that we seek are those who are not just investing across the broad index of shares or other investments, but managers who seek to achieve a higher return than what the market produces. This component of higher return is known as Alpha, whereas Beta refers to what the market returns.
We now have in Australia a whole range of exchange traded funds (ETFs) and index funds, where investors can simply invest in the largest 200 Australian companies through an ASX200 ETF or index fund. This approach works well when economic conditions are strong, and markets are rising in what is known as a bull market.
In less-than-perfect economic conditions, not all of the 200 companies will perform, or in fact, survive. Many companies in the top 200 Australian companies, are either mature, in structural decline, or simply a mediocre business.
Consequently, we target managers who are not just looking at replicating an index, but who are utilising their experience and skills to invest in companies that have solid earnings growth and who aren’t in the mature, structural decline or mediocre categories.
There is a considerable amount of press and unproductive public thinking in regard to fees that managers charge for managing investments, and fees for paying for financial advice. The attitude that ‘you pay for what you get’ is never more prevalent as it is in the investment advice industry.
When we research investments we naturally take into consideration the manager fees. There are some instances where we feel that the fees are too high to provide value for our clients. Over the next decade we feel that it will be more important to seek quality investment management rather than paying for cheap off-the-shelf type products, that add no real value, or make no decisions.
Interestingly, when comparing the administration and investment fees from using a platform, our clients' fees of 0.35% to 0.75% (depending on the amount invested) compares well with the balanced option of industry superannuation funds such as Hostplus, who have administration and investment fees of 0.70%.
There is not much of a difference, but often industry superannuation funds that tout low fees as being the key to investing your wealth often are not as low as made out.
In our view selecting a fund based on low fees is a race to the bottom, and it is the risk/reward that is the key to investment success.
