Investment Management
WELLth’s investment philosophy seeks to combine the most cutting-edge, academic research on investing and markets with our own proprietary and award-winning methodologies. Our approach is empirically driven, with investment decisions based on statistics and data, and not on “gut feel” or emotions.
The four pillars of our investment process are the following:
1. Forward-Looking Returns
Should I invest in stocks, bonds, commodities? Much of the industry finds their answer to this question by simply looking at what has performed well in the past. We don’t believe that today will be a carbon copy of the past, and our view is supported by academic research. We create our own return forecasts for each asset class using metrics such as valuations, loan default trends, and economic growth rates. Armed with our forecasts, we are in a much better position to create winning portfolios versus simply buying what performed well in the past.
2. Risk Optimized Portfolios
When we talk about investing, there will always be a trade-off between return and risk. If you desire to make more money, you will need to invest in riskier types of investments. An optimized portfolio, or what is often called an efficient portfolio, is one which gives you the maximum expected return for a given amount of risk. This mathematical process makes sure that to achieve your desired return objective that no more risk is undertaken than necessary.
You can learn more about our forward looking returns and optimized portfolios in the video below.
3. Tactical Downside Protection
Before WELLth was founded, we created unique strategies for institutional investors. These strategies, which were usually not made available to the general public, were designed to help protect against declining markets and recessions. We are proud to share these cutting-edge strategies with our clients to help protect their hard-earned money. Therefore, we make modest allocation adjustments on the rare occasion our quantitative and econometric systems warn of market turmoil.
4. Factor-Driven Stock Selection
“Factor investing” leverages the power of statistics and big data to identify winning stocks. We create programs to look for stocks exhibiting specific characteristics associated with outperformance or risk reduction and then create portfolios with those stocks that make it through the screen. The success of factor investing has been the subject of multiple decades of academic research but only recently became mainstream as the availability of data and computing power became sufficient for the needs of the investor community.
Below, you can see a chart of the hypothetical performance of various factor portfolios from 1998-2020 versus the S&P 500 Index. If you want to learn more about factors, check out this article on our blog.
Flat Fee Pricing of $750 Per Account Per Year
Our pricing is simple. For each account we manage or retirement account consulted on, the price is a flat $750 per year. It doesn’t matter if your account is $50,000 or $5,000,000, the price is the same and we will manage investments with or without a financial planning arrangement.
How Can You Charge So Little? No Percentage of Account Size?
We are probably one of few, if not the only financial advisory firms which charges a flat fee for investment management. Additionally, our pricing is rock-bottom for professional portfolio management — $750 per managed account, frequently beating corporate behemoths such as Morgan Stanley, UBS, Betterment, and even Vanguard.
The reason we are able to do this is because of our technology. We have built our investment management infrastructure with efficiency in mind and pass our time and money savings to our clients. With our technology and highly data-driven methods of analyzing markets and portfolios, we are able to make thousands of trades within seconds, gather important portfolio performance statistics within minutes, and create robust investment allocations within hours.
Over time, lower fees can save you significant amounts of money which leaves you with more dollars to grow for your own benefit. See below for a hypothetical example of how a $500,000 account grows over time with a typical 1.25% annual fee versus our flat $750 annual fee.
Finally, if you couldn’t already tell, we believe in “getting more than what you pay for.” Your investments will be managed by a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Chartered Market Technician (CMT) who currently manages hundreds of accounts totaling close to 200 million dollars. If you also choose to have WELLth create your financial plan, your assets will be invested in a matter to achieve your financial goals set forth in that plan.
Ready to take your investing and performance to the next level with a professional investment manager? Click here to schedule a complimentary call with our Chief Investment Officer to hear about our investment process and our current market outlook.