Risk Management. For many clients, limiting volatility is our first priority in money management. Our active strategies continually monitor market risk and systematically adjust investments to stay within each client’s comfort level of risk and volatility.
Discretionary. We establish discretionary authority with nearly all our clients. This simply means we will buy and sell on your behalf in a strategy that is aligned with your specific circumstances.
Diversification. We use mutual funds and ETFs that are well diversified, which eliminates many risks associated with owning individual stocks. In addition, we are strong believers in strategy diversification. Just as an investor can benefit from owning several different investments, implementing several low-correlated strategies can also be beneficial. We use this approach in many of our active models.
Holistic. We believe in advising our clients in a holistic way, not just on the portion of investments that we manage directly. For instance, our financial advisors regularly give advice to our clients regarding how and when they should take social security benefits, how to allocate investments in their 401k and much more. Whatever the financial question or concern, we want to be a valuable resource for our clients to make informed decisions.
Experience. Our financial advisors have significant experience and expertise. See the bios and resumes on the Advisors page for more details.
Track Record. Our advisors have been managing money consistently for many years. We don’t always beat the market, but the approach we take is designed to reduce the potential downside risk of a major market crisis, like those that happened during the tech bubble of 2000-2002 and the financial crisis of 2008.
Breadth of Knowledge. Each financial advisor has a different area of expertise and we regularly draw from each other’s knowledge to give advice to a client’s situation. These areas of expertise includes:
Derek: ETFs & Mutual Funds
Paul: Bonds, Individual Stocks & Banking
Dwight: Financial Planning & Income Investing
Tim: Retirement Planning and Advice
Jim: Real Estate
Teaching. Our principal advisor, Derek Schmidly, is an adjunct professor at Evangel University and teaches advanced investment strategy classes on equities, derivatives, and fixed income portfolio management.
Aligned interests. Our compensation for portfolio management is based on assets under management, which ties together our success and your success. When your portfolio goes up in value, we make more money and when it goes down, we make less.
Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Our accounts are managed primarily with ETFs. This allows us to keep the costs of your investments low and gives us the flexibility to implement the time-sensitive decisions we make without having to wait until the end of the day.
Transparency. We use Interactive Brokers, Schwab, Betterment, American Funds or Human Interest as our custodian depending on the client’s circumstances. Our clients have their own login to each custodian’s website and can view their account balance and activity at any time.
Fiduciary duty. As investment advisors, we are held to a high standard. By law, we have a fiduciary duty, which means we are obligated to do what is in the best interest of our clients no matter what. And if conflicts of interest do exist, we must disclose them to our clients.
Independent. Many financial advisors and brokers are influenced by a large insurance or brokerage companies, who often forces the advisor into a limited set of products which may or may not be the best investment choice for their clients. Because we are independent, that gives us the freedom to recommend the most suitable investments from the entire breadth of the market and give objective advice without the controlling influence of larger entity.
Attention. Personal attention and care are given to every client because cultivating long-term relationships with each client is a priority to us. We contact each client regularly to review performance and wealth management, and in addition, will contact clients when there is important market news or when we are making significant changes to the investments.
Personalized. Every client is unique, and our investment strategies are customized to match each client’s individual goals and risk preferences. We make no distinction between large and small clients. Our goal is to help each person regardless of where they are financially and to give them the time and advice they need to better themselves.
Giving Back. Every month we set aside over 15% of our revenues are to be given back to support local, national, and international charitable organizations. This has been a priority to our business since the very beginning. We believe giving back is not only the key to building a stronger community, but it is also the key to keeping greed from wrecking our attitude toward money.
Consideration. We believe it is important for people to actively consider the kinds of causes and charities they want to support. For that reason, we take client suggestions are into consideration whenever we make charitable distributions.
Character. Our advisors are actively involved in their churches and community. See the Advisors page for more details.
