We often find clients have taken on much higher risk in their investments than is necessary to meet their goals. Therefore, we believe in determining how much risk a client needs, and how much risk they are comfortable with taking on before proceeding with any investment advice.
We always try to find a balance between a client’s willingness to take on investment risk, their ability to take on risk, and their need to take on risk. It is essential to have this balance for a sustainable investment strategy.
There are three broad approaches that you can consider when choosing how to invest your money: Conventional Management, Indexing, and an Evidence-based approach.
At Weingarten Associates, we prefer to follow an evidence-based approach. This approach is based on rigorous academic research and allows us to gain a comprehensive insight into various markets, which in turn, enables us to provide our clients with the best possible investment advice.
The portfolios we have access to are structured according to expected returns. We base this on the historical knowledge that stocks provide higher returns than bonds; small cap stocks offer higher expected returns than large-cap stocks; and value stocks provide higher expected returns than growth stocks.
We prefer the portfolios of institutional fund manager Dimensional Fund Advisors to implement this evidence-based approach. DFA portfolios utilize the research of some of the best academic minds of our time including Professor Eugene Fama who is a 2013 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences.
Finally, we think it is important to focus on the aspects of investment management we can control to create the best possible strategy for our clients:
- Advance with science
- Let markets work for you
- Consider expenses and turnover
- Diversify globally and rebalance
- Stay disciplined
On this last point of staying disciplined: we work with all clients to craft a written Investment Policy Statement before any client funds are invested. This ensures a strategy that is designed to work in all market conditions.
To learn more about having a successful investment experience, please contact us at 609-620-1770.