Dear Scott

I got mail:

"Dear Scott, I received my quarterly report, thank you. I only have one question: My portfolio is up over the last year, all my friends say that their's is not. How do you do it? Can I refer you? Sorry, that was two questions..."

Actually, I don't do it. We have a team (interestingly, my former business partner didn't like the term "team", another story for another day, however...) who works diligently to try and determine the best portfolio strategy for each of our clients.

Not only that, my own money (and the rest of our team's money) is invested in the exact same models as is our clients, so I (and we) have a vested interest in the performance of our models.

For each individual and / or family we do a Wealth Forecast (prepared by our Certified Financial Planning Professional) to determine their current financial situation and how their goals, risk tolerance and time horizon dictates what strategy and combination of our investing models best suits their situation, now and into the future, through retirement for the remainder of their lives.

We do not invest for anyone until we have made that determination (because how could we ever begin to assume that one set strategy was right for everyone?). Some advisors just go about gathering clients and their assets and popping them into a pre-ordained strategy that is pretty much the same as every other client. 

But everybody's circumstances are different and therefore their investing strategy should be tailored to those differences.

That is why we are not advisors. We are a portfolio management company: a team of varying (and accredited) skill sets that work closely together to identify appropriate strategies for ourselves and our clients. Many advisors do not have the same combination of accreditations (ask your advisor what their accreditations are, just to be certain). 

Disk jocky's, journalists, former politicians, meteoroligists, psychics, etc. may even have a title like VP alongside their name, but unless they have CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst), CIM (Chartered Investment Manager) or CFP (Certified Financial Planner) among others, they are not accredited to properly look after you with active portfolio management (and many advisors don't).

Active portfolio management. That is the difference maker.

It has been a tough year (since last April) for investing because stock markets hit their highs in May and fell thereafter. 

Having more than normal cash in your portfolio and perhaps less stock market exposure has helped. This has been no secret, because I go on and on (and perhaps on, even more) about that on this blog, on our weekly webinars and anytime a client asks about the over-weight "cash-equivalent" in their portfolio or in their portfolio reviews or just in general conversation (another difference we bring: our clients can talk directly to the people managing their portfolios, anytime).

The Canadian dollar move from $.83 US to $.68 US and back to $.78 US has left heads spinning (and for those with $US in their portfolios some pretty wild swings). Our benchmark (as most of you know) for equity markets is the MSCI All Country World Index and it has had a total return (including dividends and currency adjustment) over the last year of about - 6%.

So it is understandable if portfolio values might be lower.

However, our active management strategy (and a few very good  value additions along the way in our tactical model) has benefitted our models and our and our clients portfolios.

So, I say to you (client who thanked me): thank you for putting your trust in us, because it is a major leap of faith to do so and something that we do not take lightly.

Oh and certainly feel free to refer "us"! 

(Although I will also say: we will be limiting the number of households that we look after in order not to compromise our level of service, but at the moment, we have some room for new families and individuals who appreciate our philosophy and methodology).

If you would like to receive this blog directly into your inbox: please email bianca@highrockcapital.ca and we would be ever so happy to do so.