Structured Investing

Investing
SHERPA INVESTMENT PHILOSOPHY

We are held together by an investment philosophy based on a basic fact: Markets perform over time. It is a fact that most of the time, those money managers who trade actively in an attempt to "beat" the market, tend to underperform the markets they seek to outperform, and mostly because of transaction costs.

Individual investors, as tracked by the independent research company Dalbar, consistently underperform the major stock indexes by a significant degree.

On the other hand, surveys of 100 pension firms since 1988 confirm that Asset Allocation (diversifying assets widely by type of underlying investment) is responsible for nearly 93% of investment gains.

Therefore we believe in a structured asset allocation approach, personalized to each person's or family's anticipated cash flows, utilizing a disciplined, consistent strategy. We also strongly advocate the use of an Investment Policy Statement (IPS) to clearly state your purpose for investing, your allocation, your methods, and how these policies are to be carried out. This should be an active document, and revisited on a regular basis.

GUIDANCE

Every coach needs a coach. We strongly adhere to the historical investment realities discovered by some of the world's most prominent academic economists at the University of Chicago, Dartmouth, Yale, Stanford, and a number of other universities who manage $162 billion in pension funds. We are constantly in learning mode, and we apply these investment truths in a very detailed manner to each individual's or institution's particular cash flow and time horizon needs.

Our disciplined approach is summarized in the booklet entitled Structured Investing In an Unstructured World.

FINANCIAL BEHAVIOURAL PSYCHOLOGY

Investing is an emotional business, and it is important to recognize the biases which cause us to be over-confident at times and TO "throw in the towel" at other times. In order to make money in markets, It is important to recognize these biases in ourselves and to remain constant in our investing behaviour.

A financial advisor who is invested in a deep understanding of a client's objectives, aspirations and life situation can help to stabilize and bring about the realization of these dreams, be they entrepreneurial, or security-oriented.

We strongly recommend the book Your Money and Your Brain, by Jason Zweig.

If you are interested in partnering with a Sherpa Financial Advisor, please take advantage of a free discussion opportunity in the near future, to discuss your expectations, the relationship, the costs, and the rewards.

All the best to you, Sherpa Financial