Diversified Solutions and Managed Accounts

Diversified Solutions

For investors seeking diversified exposure to the capital markets, we provide risk-based asset allocation models built using fund managers in various assets classes and styles with exposure to virtually every asset class necessary to build a high quality investment portfolio. We focus on managers and allocations that result in portfolios with lower volatility. This allows our investors the ability to own an institutional quality diversified portfolio that can include allocations to domestic equities, international assets, alternative assets, and a wide variety of fixed income exposures.

We create portfolios using allocation models to provide the appropriate risk/return profile for different investors. These models can be tailored for each client within each asset class.  The allocation models are reviewed quarterly and modified based on market conditions and relative performance. We generally try to stratify client risk profiles as aggressive, moderate, conservative or absolute return and allocate assets accordingly.

Combined Solutions

For investors who seek to achieve a combination of strategies, we provide a Core & Satellite solution. Core & Satellite is an investment strategy that uses the traditional equity and fixed income based “balanced” account with a division of the equity allocation into a “Core” and “Satellite” allocation.

Core
The “Core” consists of a conservative allocation to fund managers in fixed income and alternative styles. Because the holdings are “core” and the assumption that this structure is essential to meet the objectives of the portfolio these holdings are rarely traded and allows the portfolio to be more tax efficient.

Satellite
The “Satellite” consists of individual stock positions that are selected to achieve returns in excess of risk to increase the returns of the portfolio.  The portion of the equity allocation that is used for the Satellite is determined based on the objectives of the portfolio and are generally 20 - 40% of the portfolio.

The Core & Satellite approach is ideal for conservative portfolios that are attempting to use a balanced strategy that includes non-correlated assets and are attempting to maximize return on risk.

Managed Accounts

For investors seeking alpha or looking for an aggressive approach to growing their portfolios we provide concentrated separate managed accounts. These accounts are most suitable for investors with a long-term investment horizon and the ability to withstand increased volatility on a quarter-to-quarter basis. Our strategy focuses the portfolio on growing companies that are undervalued based on their current assets and cash flows. We look for companies in secular growth markets that are misunderstood or out of favor. 

Our separate managed accounts are long-only equity accounts which concentrate on the firm’s best equity ideas. Managed accounts provide the ability to customize portfolios for each client and to more effectively manage the tax consequences of each account, if necessary. For clients with the appropriate risk tolerance we suggest managed accounts for investors with a minimum of $250,000 to invest.

Our managed account portfolios utilize our proprietary independent research. Our research is fundamentally driven and is “all cap”, that is, we are not limited or restricted from buying reasonably priced companies based on their market capitalization. We have a contrarian style that attempts to capitalize on short-term price declines in stocks with fundamentally sound long-term business opportunities. These short-term declines typically result from market fluctuations caused by short-term business issues, “out of favor’ periods in the markets they operate, or misunderstood prospects for the business.

Our managed accounts are also concentrated and generally hold only approximately 20 - 25 positions. This allows us to focus on what we believe are the best opportunities in the market. As a result, our managed account investors must be able to withstand more variability in the accounts given that they will generally not correlate to the market indices at any one point in time.