Investment Strategy
Our investment policy is conservative. Over the long term, our aim is firstly to secure and then enhance the real value of our clients' capital. In our experience, attractive opportunities do not present themselves everyday, no matter what the investment industry would like you to believe. We are totally focused upon securing absolute, rather than relative, returns. The assumption that the stockmarket will always deliver is, in our view, naive; a fact illustrated by the fact that the FTSE 100 Index is still below its all time high, achieved in December 1999.
Unlike many, we only invest when we believe the odds of a worthwhile outcome are in our clients' favour. As such, we are therefore happy to hold cash if we believe good value remains elusive. Fads and fashions are something we avoid like the plague; you will never see us buying hedge funds. To some, such independent thinking may seem unusual but in our opinion, it is what our clients are paying us for.
Enthusiastically to chase short term speculative profits, at the risk of permanent capital destruction, is in our view, a dereliction of duty. Approximately one quarter of all three and five year holding periods for equity investors have delivered losses. That is ample illustration of why we shy away from today's casino mentality, where, in our view, many stockbrokers and IFAs are enthusiastic participants (with other people's money) in rampant excess.
