Our Investment Committee recently convened.
Its responsibility is to oversee the investments we recommend. In other words, governance.
An essential part of this is to review our investment philosophy which we covered in an earlier post. Our investment philosophy has developed somewhat since then, but the central pillars remain the same.
What is your investment philosophy?
This document covers what we believe in detail, but in short, we believe:
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The most important thing is to invest in a diversified portfolio of investments and hold it for as long as possible; everything else is secondary.
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This portfolio should hold as much in global equities as is suitable for someone’s circumstances and psychology.
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Holding a portfolio for the long term has much more to do with behaviour than anything else. We believe financial planning and advice can help massively here.
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Asset Allocation (how much to invest into UK Equities, US Equities, Global Bonds etc.) is a significant driver of returns within diversified portfolios.
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In a strategic approach, reducing speculation is vital. Nobody can predict the future consistently.
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A portfolio’s exposure to different structural risk factors is essential. Risk factors include how big a company is or whether investors undervalue it, and these play a large part in explaining why diversified portfolios perform differently.
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As asset allocation, risk factors, and investor behaviour drive returns, there is little scope for active management to deliver value. We would only consider an actively managed fund if we have confidence in it to provide an asset class or risk factor we could not access any other way.
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Ongoing maintenance, including rebalancing the portfolio to its original mix, is essential to manage risk.
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Finally, we would only deviate from the above to increase the chances of holding a portfolio for the long term. An example of this would be for those who want to invest ethically. An example of where we would not deviate is how we do not believe in income investing for those relying on their portfolios to fund their spending.
