Investments

Core Investment Principles

Our disciplined approach seeks to filter through short-term noise and emotion in individual stocks and bonds. Instead, we focus on where we can add the most value: interpreting research and scientifically designing portfolios. We follow a consistent investment process – one that clients can understand and stick with, even in challenging market environments.

• The Future is Unknowable: Time in market leads to better results than timing the market. Chasing short-term “promises” of better returns from active fund managers only leads to long-term disappointment.
• Evidence Over Hope: We believe in long-term strategic investing based on Nobel prize-winning academic research. Tilting portfolios towards empirically proven sources of higher expected returns results in better long-term results.

Portfolio Categories

We manage a wide variety of strategies to suit client needs and personal interests, regardless of portfolio size. Our global investment team builds portfolios with tax efficiency, cost and sustainability in mind, allowing clients to build a portfolio that works for them.

• Best Ideas: The five to six strategies we believe are best suited for current markets. These are our preferred tilts for the next 18-24 months.
• Single Stock: Baskets of 20-50 stocks that target specific investment themes or regions, built from a universe of 14,000 stocks using a systematic scoring framework. Direct ownership of individual company stocks with zero 3rd party costs.
• Funds & ETFs: Low-cost and diversified strategies across equity, fixed-income and commodity markets. ETFs allow us to avoid concentrated bets, target preferred exposures and keep overall costs low.

Single Stock Portfolio Construction

We believe markets are mostly efficient and spotting one-off mispricings is a fool’s errand. Easy and instant access to information makes it all but impossible to pick the right individual stock at the right time. A systematic investment approach is required to take advantage of the minor inefficiencies that do exist. Ours follows a three-step process:

1. Identify the Universe: Define the portfolio’s objective and identify stocks that fit into the relevant universe.
2. Apply a Consistent Framework: Don’t ignore investment principles to include a popular stock. Systematically rank the universe via a 30-factor framework that includes Valuation, Quality, Safety, Payout, Technical, Sentiment, and of course, ESG, measures.
3. Build and Maintain: Select the highest-scoring stocks to get desired regional and sub-sector exposures. Qualitatively adjust for areas that systematic screens cannot capture. Review the universe, stock rankings and rebalance regularly.¹

Fund & ETF Portfolios

Funds and ETFs² provide diversification³ that single stock portfolios can’t. We first identify the portfolio goal, then desired market exposures, and ultimately the best funds and ETFs with those exposures. Quality and explainability of performance, total cost, liquidity, tax and structural implications, and manager transparency are key. These portfolios fall into 3 broad categories:

• Core ETFs: Global diversification at low cost allows investors to “set and forget” their exposure. Customized for clients’ risk tolerance, tax and currency objectives. Managed to participate in markets and seek improved returns via style and thematic tilts over a full market cycle.
• Thematic ETFs: Specific themes without concentrated bets. Typically used to complement exposure elsewhere and not driven by clients’ risk objectives. These portfolios provide specific exposure for high-conviction views.
• Active and Alternatives: Some investment goals cannot be accomplished via stocks and ETFs. In such instances, we turn to Closed End and Private Funds for market access. Contact us to see if such strategies are suitable for you.