Investment management is crucial to the success of your financial plan.
At Artisan Financial Planning we will take the time necessary to understand your goals and objectives. Are you saving for retirement, a down payment for your first home, or another goal? Together, we will determine your risk tolerance and preference as well as your general investment comfort level. We will also discuss and analyze tax planning regarding your investments particularly right before your retirement years.
Diversification
You may have heard the phrase "don’t put all your eggs in one basket."
Investment-wise this means not to hold all of one’s investments in a single stock, for example.
Diversification is the practice of building a portfolio with a variety of investments that have different expected risks and returns. In turn this can reduce risk and improve portfolio performance.
Our portfolios include primarily no-load, low cost mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs). We create models for clients that cover multiple asset classes including large, mid and small cap US equities, developed international and emerging markets equities, fixed income, and, as appropriate, may include specific sectors and/or alternative investments as well as a limited number of single stocks as appropriate. We use active model management and risk mitigation but with lower expense ratio fees typically found with passive managers.
Be in the stock market for the long-term
We do not recommend equities for short term investment or speculation. We also do not recommend market timing or day trading.
Our view is that stocks and stock mutual funds/ETFs as well as other risk assets are more appropriate for long-term time horizons.
“If you are not willing to own a stock for 10 years, do not even think about owning it for 10 minutes.” —Sir John Templeton
Minimize Taxes
Taxes have an uncanny ability to reduce your portfolio returns especially over time. While your portfolio’s investment returns are important, what really matters is how many dollars you actually get to keep after taking taxes into account.
We work with our clients and their tax professionals to plan tax-efficient strategies for their investments. Included are tax-advantaged retirement and other savings accounts, gifting strategies, asset location strategies, tax-efficient funds and tax-free bonds, and tax-loss harvesting.
Develop a plan and stay the course
It is difficult for institutional money managers to beat the market especially over the long run and even more so for individual investors. Individual investors often buy high and sell low when their emotions get the better of them.
We believe that better investment results come from adopting an Investment Policy Statement (IPS) customized to each client’s personal goals, objectives and time horizon balanced with their risk tolerance and preference assessment.
The key is to follow one’s IPS through market upswings and downturns. At Artisan Financial Planning we will work with you to develop an IPS customized to your individual circumstances.
We keep your investments aligned with your IPS and help guide you to stay the course over the long term.
As your investment manager we do make updates to our models periodically including:
- Recognizing opportunities to “tilt” towards value or growth as appropriate
- Increasing tilt toward specific sectors during certain market conditions
- Increasing tilt toward particular asset categories
- Replacing funds/ETFs as appropriate in order to achieve better alignment with goals
"The stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient.” — Warren Buffett