Investments
Investment Strategies That Evolve With You
Thoughtful portfolio design is essential to turning long-terms goals into reality. Our team of experienced investment professionals knows how to protect and grow your wealth so you can meet your objectives. It all starts with your goals and your constraints. Each client is unique, and so is each client’s portfolio. We develop an asset allocation tailored to your unique characteristics, taking into account the numbers, your risk tolerance, and your emotions.
Avoiding significant losses during downturns is our top priority. Our focus is on portfolios that can perform in any market environment. The key to doing that is using sophisticated vehicles and strategies — not a “set it and forget” philosophy. One vehicle is the use of alternatives investments such as real estate, gold and other holdings. These are designed to perform in an uncorrelated fashion with stocks or bonds, thereby providing additional diversification, reduced risk, and higher returns.
Client Stories
"Bubble Bust"
In early 2008, we were concerned about stock valuations and equity markets. After the dot-com bubble bust of 2000-2002, the economy recovered through 2007, with the S&P 500 up around 50% in 5 years. Still, we were concerned about equity valuations and the economy. We had been tracking the alternative markets for four years at that time, and in early 2008, we prepared the “Bubble Bust” report for our clients, outlining our concerns about the markets and the need to reduce equities and increase alternatives. Our clients agreed with us, and we cut their equity allocation in half (e.g. 70% reduced to 35%). We added alternatives and increased fixed income, producing a diversified, conservative allocation overall.
By the fall of 2008, the Great Recession hit and equities lost 38% that year, but DWM clients lost less than 10% of their investments, with positive returns in fixed income and alternatives offsetting much of the equity loss. Markets do come back with time, but if you can reduce losses, your assets bounce back much quicker.
DWM Protects Clients with Charles Schwab and the Daily Download
DWM uses Charles Schwab as its custodian for all our clients. Schwab is one of the largest and most trusted custodians providing a wide range of investment options with no charge for almost all trades. Schwab makes most of its income by lending cash to clients. Another benefit of using Schwab is protection: in addition to the standard SIPC coverage of $500,000 in securities, they provide “additional excess SIPC” coverage through Lloyd’s of London providing an aggregate of $600 million of excess protection for its clients.
On every business day at DWM, our portfolio management team’s first job is the daily download. During this process we look at every transaction made through Schwab on the preceding day, as well as all transactions through outside custodians for which we have download linkage through Morningstar. Whether there are 100 or 10,000 transactions, DWM reviews every transaction to make sure it is correct and conforms exactly with what we expect as documented within our Client Relationship Management (CRM) system.
Client Stories
DWM Daily Download At Work
One morning during our daily download, we noted that a client’s Schwab account was reduced by $2,200 for a check that our CRM had no record of. We contacted the client and ultimately determined it was a bogus check. Schwab voided it, sent it back, and reversed the charge. DWM is all about close personal attention.
Job #1 is to protect your assets. Job #2 is to grow them.
BOOT
CAMP
“Boot Camp” is an exercise we ask all our new clients to complete in order to give us a clear picture of your financial health. (We like to compare it to Mayo Clinic’s week-long “Executive Health Program,” which is designed to assess and optimize one’s overall health.) “Boot Camp” usually involves 3-5 meetings over a 4 to 8-week period.
Completing this exercise gives us a solid groundwork from which to start planning, and it’s often quite illuminating for clients!
*There is no additional cost for Boot Camp.