Ensuring your money works as hard as possible to support your life plans

We all accumulate money that isn’t required for immediate use. This might be simply through excess income over regular expenditure or pension funds that accumulate throughout our working lives. We may receive an inheritance or sell an asset such as a property or business which provides a one off lump sum.

Our Investment Management service is designed to work for those new to investing as well as for experienced investors. It can be adopted whether you have money to invest for the first time, or where you have long standing investments that require reviewing and bringing in line with your financial plan.

Knowing how best to put that money to work can be daunting and challenging even for the most experienced investor. Fortunately, our Investment Management service can guide you through the necessary steps.

The Role of Life Centred Planning

We do not believe that it is possible to provide a comprehensive Investment Management service without first establishing an effective life centred plan. This will identify where you are in life, what life transitions lie ahead, where you want to get to and the associated financial implications of achieving what you desire.

With a plan in place it is possible to identify the intended purpose for different parts of your money and once the purpose is known it is possible to calculate the investment timeframe applicable.

Knowing the investment timeframe will aid us in determining the level of risk required to meet your objectives, and we can compare this with the level of risk you are comfortable with taking.

This then enables us to tailor investment portfolios that are right for you.

Investment management, as traditionally practised, is based on a single core belief: Investors can beat the market and superior managers will beat the market. However contrary to their often-articulated goal of out-performing the market average, investment managers are not beating the market; the market is beating them”. Charles D. Ellis

Our Investment Philosophy

Time in the market is better than trying to time the market. Investing should be a long-term game, so a buy and hold strategy is superior to a tactical buying and selling approach which attempts to time the market. By reducing the number of trades we will inevitably reduce the trading costs adhering to our low cost core principal.

Our evidence based investment philosophy brings science, efficiency and innovation to investing.

We utilise more than six decades of market data, Nobel Prize winning academic research and behavioural finance to build globally diversified, risk adjusted portfolios tailored to support your financial plan.

Our Approach to Investing

Our investments portfolios are built based on decades of financial data and award winning academic research. There are 4 overriding principles:

1. Capitalism works

We can all benefit from our capitalist society by owning assets including shares in the world’s largest and best-known companies by investing via stock markets. We believe that the market is efficient in determining a fair price for those shares, based on supply and demand, and the readily available public information on the financial health and stability of those companies.

2. Risk and Reward go Hand in Hand

By taking investment risk, long-term investors expect to be rewarded by higher returns over time. Furthermore, when investing in the stock market investors should also expect the value of their investments to fluctuate due to market volatility. This relationship between risk and reward is a key factor in designing the perfect investment portfolio for you.

3. Diversification is Key to Minimising Some Risk

The old saying, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is certainly true for investing. We believe buying a very broad set of investments, spread globally and not specific to any industries or sectors of the market enables some risk elements of investing to be eradicated.

4. Keep the Costs of Investing to a Minimum

There are costs associated with investing, but they can vary considerably. We identify these costs and strive to drive them down as low as possible.

In addition to our 4 key principles, we tilt the portfolios towards certain factors that have been proven to enhance returns over time. These factors have been identified through the decades of market data and scientific evaluation. These include, Market Beta, Value, Size and Momentum.

The Need for Ongoing Review and Monitoring

Just like creating a financial plan, you are unlikely to have a successful investing experience if you treat it as a one-off exercise. Markets are dynamic and prices change constantly. Your investment portfolio will be made up of thousands of underlying assets, all rising and falling at different times and by deferring degrees.

Therefore, it’s important that these are monitored and from time to time rebalanced (sell some of the assets that have performed well and buy more of the others that haven’t) to maintain the appropriate level of risk agreed at outset. Furthermore, whilst the markets are dynamic so are our lives, with things changing which can affect the purpose and/or the timeframe of our investments.

We work with you to ensure that your investments are constantly working the hardest for you with the appropriate level of risk that reflect your current circumstances.

To explore how Strategic Wealth Management can help you and your family or to arrange an informal coffee and chat, please get in touch.

1 East Point | Seal, Kent TN15 0EG | T. 01732 760 000 | F. 01732 763 816 | E. info@strategic.uk.net

Strategic Wealth Management Ltd, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The FCA does not regulate tax advice, trusts or wills. Registered in England and Wales no. 2205890.

Past performance is not necessarily a guide to future returns. The value of stock market investments can down as well as up and you may get back less than you invested.