Investment Management
What Makes Total Wealth Planning Different?
Other firms also claim MPT as their investment approach. But creating a diversified portfolio of asset classes alone may not comfortably protect portfolio values in bear markets. Do you remember 2008? Nearly all investments in equities, real estate, and commodities declined in value – at the same time! We serve as a personal advocate and legal fiduciary for our clients, so we go further than most investment managers to reduce volatility, ensuring that thorough diversification is achieved by investing in low cost, institutional shares of mutual funds, exchange traded funds (ETFs), and even customized structured products.
“As Chief Investment Officer, my goal has been to create a successful investment experience for our clients. As a result, we’ve been able to retain 95% of our clients.”
Since its founding in 1989, in addition to protecting against the downside risk, Total Wealth Planning has focused on creating wealth through opportunistic profit taking, tax loss harvesting and rebalancing amongst asset classes. We also successfully use our proprietary process of evaluating market and business cycles, asset class valuation, and investor behavior.
Specifically, implementing a “Tactical Asset Allocation” strategy manages today’s extremely volatile investment environment. We proactively overweight and underweight the portfolio’s asset class holdings, based on Total Wealth Planning’s in-house economic forecasting analysis. This is an ongoing prudent market tuning process, not a risky market timing process. We achieve more predictable investment performance in a way that reduces disconcerting volatile performance.
Win by not losing. Total Wealth Planning’s approach for managing our clients’ investment portfolios is to “win by not losing”.
Total Wealth Planning’s investment process is based upon Nobel Prize winning academic research and the analysis of two renowned economists, Harry Markowitz and William Sharpe. Their research has produced what is known as Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) and is the foundation for the portfolio management that Total Wealth Planning has delivered to clients for over 35 years. Rather than chasing last year’s best performing investments, or speculating on the future performance of a limited number of securities, MPT focuses on managing the risk of the portfolio by diversifying across multiple asset classes. With the uncertainty and volatility of the global investment environment, MPT has made traditional portfolio management obsolete.
MPT research proves that by investing in 15-20 different asset class, all of which have a relatively low correlation to each other, a high level of predictability can be achieved, which allows for greater wealth creation over time. The same research proved that other factors such as market timing and security selection play only a minor role in portfolio growth and risk management. In fact, over 90% of total investment return is determined by how much each portion of an investment portfolio is allocated to various asset class components (worldwide in equity and fixed income markets).
Through a rigorous analysis of a client’s risk tolerance, Total Wealth Planning’s intent is to create a successful and rewarding investment experience. Properly implemented, a diversified portfolio will deliver relatively predictable results, limiting the downside potential, while providing opportunities for growth over the long term. By managing the downside risk, each client should expect to “win by not losing”, shortening the recovery time required to restore value from a temporary decline, and thereby providing additional growth and wealth creation much sooner. The next step is to fill each of the asset classes, with “best in class” investments, thoroughly researched by Total Wealth Planning’s Investment Committee.
Sheltering Your Portfolio
Total Wealth Planning’s investment advisory service ensures your portfolio is sheltered from self-serving high costs and safe from fraud. As a fee-only investment advisor, we never offer financial advice supporting high cost, self-serving commissions. That approach most often results in recommending underperforming investment products and services.
Instead, we recommend globally-arrayed, institutional mutual funds and ETFs – requiring no costly commissions – at extremely low internal costs. This translates to better investment performance for your portfolio. Furthermore, we always house your investment accounts with a reputable third-party, institutional custodian. That ensures your investment holdings are independently secure and protected against fraudulent possibilities.
Moreover, so you know and monitor your investment results, Total Wealth Planning regularly provides personalized, easy-to-understand and accurate investment performance reports. - Is your portfolio safe from a stock market crash?
- Are you properly diversified to reduce risk?
- Are you paying too much in commissions and fees?
- Does your portfolio match your tolerance for risk?
- Have you selected the best 401k investment options?
- Do you know what realistic risk and return performance to expect on your investments?
- Is your portfolio protected against taxes and inflation?
Total Wealth Planning can help you with the answers!
