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Financial Planning and the Policy Portfolio Our Philosophy and Method of Operation Financial Planning Financial planning is the important first step in this
part of your financial journey. It is used to figure out exactly what you
want to do and the most efficient ways to approach whatever that is. Only
after you and we figure out the direction you need to go, can we begin
designing investment portfolios. Financial Planning is the phrase we use to discuss
everything having to do with your finances. Unfortunately, the term has
acquired some negative connotations because of the "plan salesmen" who sell
plans by the pound sending you home with a fat invoice and a 300-page
document that is out of date before you read the first page and is usually
never looked at again. We believe financial planning is a never-ending process
that cannot be captured in a document stored in a ring binder. We believe it
consists of the questions that come up about financing the next car or the
mortgage or planning for retirement or college funding or any of the myriad
other financial questions that pop up daily. Financial Planning is an integral and continuing part of
the service we offer our clients.
Policy
Portfolio
Example - Pattern - Archetype - Standard - Prototype - Model These are other words that can be
used to describe what we refer to as a Policy
Portfolio.
Our Policy Portfolio is the starting point we use to guide us when we
design clients' portfolios. Such a portfolio rests squarely on one premise,
life is uncertain. We
cannot know the future, but we have to prepare to live in it. Also, while we
cannot predict the future we do know about the past and can learn from it.
Consequently, our Policy Portfolio is based firmly on what we know has already
happened and what that implies for the future. This basic portfolio allocation
has proved to have a very good balance between risk and return. However, we also
realize that because the financial markets have behaved in certain ways for the
past 150+ years does not mean they will behave similarly in the future. There
are so many more types of investments today that did not exist even a few years
ago that the entire investment palette has changed dramatically. We cannot
continue to paint the same investment picture as in the past.
One concept
we stress with our clients is the difference between investments and
investing. Investments are the individual components or puzzle pieces
– each but a part of something larger than itself. No one can control or
modify the risk/return characteristics of a single investment, but when you
combine different investments into a well designed portfolio, you can,
indeed, affect the risk/return characteristics of the portfolio. That is
investing. Most
people would logically describe a “good” investment as one that grows in
value and a “bad” investment as one that declines in value. Actually, we
think of good and bad investments in terms of predictability. A “good”
investment is one that does what we expect it to do and a “bad” investment
is one that surprises us by its actions. As we stated previously, we cannot
control the risk/return characteristics or behavior of any single
investment, but we can design and assemble a portfolio that is predictable.
“Predictable” allows you to sleep better. One insightful writer has compared investing and
portfolios to food — one of my favorite subjects. He says that people have
historically thought of their investments as you would a salad and creating
an investment “portfolio” was like adding different vegetables to the salad
bowl. While it may be an enticing mixture of ingredients, each vegetable — and each investment — is still uniquely identifiable
and continues to maintain its own identity, function and “flavor.” The raw
ingredients may be sub-divided into different classes — stocks can be
divided into domestic vs. foreign, small vs. large, value vs. growth — but
dividing a carrot for the salad into 6 or 12 different slices does not
transform it into something new or different; it is still a carrot. Salads
are good. Mixtures of investments may be good, but such a mixture does not
necessarily make a portfolio.
Now, let’s
think of soup. When you combine the raw ingredients to make soup, you
anticipate that the resulting concoction will be uniquely different from the
ingredients that go into making it. The finished product is not just the sum
of its components; it is a different product. The raw ingredients have been
transformed into something new and different — the soup. Such is the case
when designing an investment portfolio. A well designed portfolio is much
more than just the mathematical sum of its component investments. The
resulting portfolio has unique characteristics of risk and return that are
different from any of its component investments. The portfolio is a new and
different investment designed to allow the specific client’s pursuit of
financial needs and goals. One should not look inside the portfolio to
determine which of the component investments will provide income or
growth or risk aversion. The investments are no longer as important as the
portfolio. The whole is indeed, larger and more important than the sum of its parts. Listen to an audio discussion about portfolios. Our
Policy Portfolio includes three components,
market exposure,
alternatives and
opportunistic assets.
Market
exposure
assets are those assets that simply offer exposure to traditional financial
markets; that is, you seek exposure to various markets with no real attempt
to "beat" the market. Instead, you accept market returns and take only
market risk. The most efficient way to gain this market exposure is through
the use of low-cost closed-end exchange traded funds or index-funds that
invest in the indexes we seek to emulate. The allocation to market exposure
assets will be within the range of 50% to 70% of the total. The Market
Exposure portion of our Policy Portfolio is the “soup stock” that serves as
the base from which we design specific portfolios. Within that market exposure allocation, a portion is
allocated to fixed assets, a portion to equity assets (stocks) and a portion
is allocated to real assets. The fixed assets include three basic components: cash and
cash equivalents, domestic fixed income securities and foreign fixed income
securities. The allocation to fixed assets will be within the range of 10%
to 40% of the total. Depending on the size of the portfolio, the fixed
income assets may include high yield securities and emerging markets debt in
addition to sovereign and corporate debt securities.
We think the
most efficient way to gain this core stock exposure is through low-cost
exchange traded funds or index funds. We see no empirical reason to pay the
higher fees
associated
with actively managed mutual funds to acquire this fundamental market
exposure. By saving the extra fees, you may boost your total return. Market exposure to real assets is also gained primarily through low-cost exchange traded funds or index funds and should be between 5% and 20% of the total. Again, we see three basic components of real assets: real estate, commodities and natural resources. Commodities include things such as crude and heating oil, aluminum, gold, wheat and corn. Natural resources include things such as oil and gas, metals and mining, energy equipment and services, containers and packaging, paper and forest products, construction materials and others.
We have just described the core or market exposure
portfolio. This strategic portfolio is based on thoroughly researched and time-tested
investment strategies that have been successful for many, many years. This
portfolio is the logical ending point of portfolio design for most
investment advisors and brokers. Such a portfolio will, over a long enough
time, return a handsome profit that out-paces inflation and will be cause
for smiles — if you have enough time to wait out the inevitable down cycles
and the occasional “impossible” occurrence. In the very recent past, we have
seen things happen to our investments that are supposed to only happen
“theoretically” or so seldom as to be rightly ignored. Well, these things do
happen and they happen to all of us. They can no longer be ignored or
assigned as “improbable.” The core asset allocation portfolio of the past,
as time-tested as it may be, may no longer by itself serve the needs of
today’s investors. Not only
are there many more types of investments available to the smaller investor,
but many more strategies are now executable that were virtually impossible a
short time ago. Alternative assets and alternative strategies both offer the
possibilities to hedge against unexpected movements in various markets. Such
prevarication may help your portfolio travel a smoother route; allowing your
assets to grow while allowing you to sleep better at night. In addition to the basic portfolio described above, which
is still the main driving force behind a well-diversified investment
portfolio, we seek to add the
alternative assets that may not have as wide or liquid a market as some
of the better known categories but still hold enough importance that we see
the need to include them. A few examples may be alternative energy sources,
water and structured products. We know that our planet cannot support consumption of
fossil fuels at the same rate we have been using them but for a few more
generations. Alternative sources of energy must be found and the
technologies developed to make them commercially viable. Typical alternative
energy sources discussed today are wind, solar and geothermal and I am sure
there will be sources discovered in the future that we cannot even imagine
now. The point is, as a race of human beings, we must develop alternative
energy sources. Some one will make money doing it, why not us? We realize
that this is a very long-term category, but we feel it is of enough
importance and has such a great potential for profit that we may need some
small exposure. Water is the most basic commodity that all living
creatures need to survive, yet there seems to be less and less clean water
available to ever enlarging sections of our world population. Again, someone
will make money providing clean water. Why not us Structured products, also known as principle protected products, present the opportunity to invest in otherwise "risky" markets with a safety net guaranteeing that you will not loose your original investment. Many are FDIC insured CDs. This is the perfect investment for Benjamin Franklin's adage that the return on your investment is not as important as the return of your investment. One further example of our alternative assets
category may be Treasury Inflation Protected Securities or TIPS.
TIPS are US Treasury bonds that pay a variable interest rate that is tied to
the Consumer Price Index; the interest rate is tied to the inflation rate.
While Treasury bonds are certainly not "alternative" investments, this
little twist of variable interest rates makes them fit better into the
alternative asset category. Politics aside, we see inflation as a large
future problem and this may be one way to help stay even.
There are
many other such alternative asset classes that may find a place in our
portfolios. Such is the focus of much of our research.
Alternative assets will occupy an
allocation of the total portfolio between 0% and 25%. Beyond alternative assets, there are those talented asset managers who use attractive strategies and tactics of managing specific types of portfolios. The management focus may be on higher return or lower volatility or seeking to profit from inefficiencies in specific types of trades or markets. As we pointed out earlier, we see no proven advantage to using actively managed mutual funds in search of traditional market exposure assets, but we do see value in using some active managers in search of specific alternative strategies. The portion of the total portfolio allocated to alternative strategies will be between 10% and 40%. Lastly, the portion of the total portfolio that interests
many people the most is opportunistic
assets. Here, we seek those assets that have the potential to pay a
profit well beyond market returns and usually over a shorter time. These are
the “high-flyers” that folks like to brag about at cocktail parties. These
are the securities with interesting stories. These are the “fun” things to
talk about. They are also the most volatile assets with the greatest
potential for loss – up to total loss. We believe that such opportunistic
assets deserve a place in the total portfolio, but a relatively small place
in the portfolios we manage. We see this asset as having a portion of the
total portfolio between 0% and 10% of the total portfolio. Let’s recapitulate what we have discussed so far. Investment portfolios, as we manage them, should have three major components: market exposure assets, alternative assets and strategies and opportunistic assets.
We’re not
finished yet. Remember, we said that once the market exposure portion
is properly allocated, it could be an entire “normal” portfolio. This is the
time-tested buy and hold strategy that seems to have worked for many decades
– until the last few years. We believe this basic asset allocation still has
great merit and is not to be abandoned. These core assets will still provide
the greatest amount of portfolio growth over time but as a portfolio, it
cannot be left to its own devices. It cannot be a buy-and-hold or
set-and-forget portfolio. Once we have allocated the market exposure portion of
your portfolio, that is, we have properly invested your
strategic asset allocation, we
then track the different components of it weekly to ascertain the trends
being established by the respective markets. No one can predict what the
financial markets are going to do, but with a little bit of insight and a
lot of data, one can determine the general tendencies or trends. We look to
have your portfolio fully invested most of the business cycle but we also
look to sell certain assets or certain categories as their trend begins an
apparent downward spiral. We anticipate offering some amount of insulation
from future down markets by closely watching the trends of the various
components of your market exposure assets and acting accordingly. Acting accordingly means that on top of your
well-designed market exposure portfolio (strategic asset allocation), we
will overlay the risk management strategy of
dynamic asset allocation.
Simplistically, when a specific market as represented by the chosen security
(either an ETF or index fund as discussed earlier) is trading above its
average price for a specific period, we will either buy or hold onto the
security for that asset class. When the price of that security drops below
its average price, we will sell that security. Selling the security does not
indicate that we no longer “like” either that specific security or the asset
class it represents. It simply means that our model is indicating that it is
in your best interests to be out of that particular asset class at that
particular time. We will perform these inspections and potential trades each
month for each of the market exposure classes. Additionally, we will sometimes use ETFs that perform inversely to their specific market. For example, if U.S. Stocks as measured by the S&P 500 index drop by say, 6%, an inverse ETF may actually increase by 6%. These inverse funds would potentially be used when an asset class as represented by its ETF falls below its average price and requires that we sell that ETF as in the previous paragraph. We would sell that ETF and then consider buying the market inverse ETF to take advantage of falling markets. We anticipate that by using these inverse ETFs we may eek out a bit more positive return in the long run. However, since markets historically have risen more often that they fall, we will be judicious in the use of inverse funds.
While this dynamic asset allocation has the potential to increase the total return of your portfolio over a full business cycle, we view it primarily as a risk management technique. Know that during roaring bull markets such as we experienced in the 1990s, your portfolio may not return as much as the overall stock market. However, when the “bubbles” burst, as they always do, your portfolio may very well be spared some of the severe drops in portfolio value or what is known in the industry as “drawdown.” The financial markets have experienced some pretty large drawdowns in the last couple of years, but because of our attention to risk management, your portfolio has held up reasonably well. Through the application of dynamic asset allocation, we intend to mitigate such losses in the future even more diligently. While no technique will insulate your portfolio from “shock” events such as October 19, 1987, the infamous "Black Monday" when the US stock market lost more than 20% in one day, the intent of implementing this technique is to allow your portfolio to grow along a smoother curve; to increase the statistical predictability of your portfolio; to make the bell curve steeper with fewer fat tails. Call us for more details. The
following chart shows a simplified example of the difference in simply
holding U.S. Stocks (S&P 500 Index) vs. using Dynamic Asset Allocation. The
use of inverse investments is not included in this illustration:
Once we have chosen the market exposure assets and
allocated your traditional market exposure core-portfolio, we are free to
research the alternative assets, alternative strategies and opportunistic
assets that help differentiate FCVA portfolios from other advisors’ who use
less diverse and less attentive portfolio allocation strategies. That
benefits you; your portfolio is designed to increase the growth of capital
and provide income — the only reasons you invest — while offering enough
diversifying strategies and tactical risk management to allow you to sleep
at night knowing your portfolio is in thoughtful hands. Please remember, this is discussion is about a
model portfolio, not a
required portfolio. Virtually every client's portfolio will vary in some
way from the standard
discussed here but all will have the basic tenants of growth
with safety so that you may be more likely to have what you need, when you need it.
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Allocation
to equity market exposure — common stocks — will be within the range of 10%
to 60% of the total portfolio. Within that stock portion, we will allocate
to both domestic and foreign stocks. Again, depending on the size of the
individual portfolio, the equity portions of the portfolio may include small
capitalization stocks as well as stocks from emerging economies. 
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