Investment Management
How We Help
We lead with personalized financial planning.
Well-designed portfolio management offers a range of benefits that contribute to the overall success and effectiveness of an investment strategy. BWM centers our portfolio management and investment strategy on well-established scientific and academic tenets. We also incorporate all your assets into your investment strategy. Investing each account separately leads to higher risk, higher taxes, and lower returns. Even non-liquid assets like real estate, private equity, and business interests should be considered together as a part of a comprehensive investment strategy.
BWM investment strategies follow a systematic and disciplined investment approach that is based on empirical evidence rather than subjective judgments or emotions. By relying on data and proven methodologies, this approach aims to deliver consistent and repeatable investment results over the long term. Every portfolio will be built around diversification, risk control, and tax management.
Our portfolios are focused on long-term investment objectives rather than short-term market fluctuations. Studies time and again show that attempting to time the market or make frequent changes to a portfolio based on short-term market movements is challenging and most often leads to more risk and less return. By taking a long-term perspective, investors can benefit from the power of compounding and allow their investments to grow over time without being swayed by short-term market noise or behavioral biases.
Customized Portfolios
Academic research, including the Fama-French paper, has shown that certain factors, such as the value factor (buying undervalued stocks) and the size factor (investing in smaller companies), have historically delivered higher returns over the long term. By including factors that have a low correlation with each other and with traditional asset classes, such as stocks and bonds, investors can potentially reduce portfolio volatility and increase the potential for more consistent returns. Diversification across factors helps mitigate the impact of any single factor’s performance on the overall portfolio.
Optimized Returns
Effective portfolio management also takes into account tax considerations to help optimize your investment returns. Our goal is to maximize after-tax returns for each client. This involves strategies such as tax-loss harvesting, where capital losses are used to offset capital gains, and asset location where investments can be placed in different types of accounts depending on their tax implications. We utilize best-in-class trading software to fine-tune every portfolio to the individual client’s needs. Each client’s tax situation is different and rebalancing decisions are made for each client individually.
It is important to note that factor-based investing is not without risks. Factors can experience periods of underperformance or exhibit different behavior during certain market conditions. Furthermore, factor-based strategies may not outperform the broader market in every period. It is crucial for investors to consider their risk tolerance, investment horizon, and individual goals when implementing factor-based strategies. That is why each advisor at BWM works closely with their clients to ensure their portfolio is designed specifically to their needs and risk tolerance. When the investment strategy and portfolio management are closely tied to the client’s end goals, there is a much higher likelihood that you will have a successful investment experience.