SIMPLICITY
Constructing a portfolio from SMAs that are disciplined in their approach, philosophy and style allows our clients to avoid overlapping holdings. This is a significant benefit as traditional retail models hold the same underlying positions in multiple funds and when multiple accounts own the same funds the problem is intensified. This creates hyper diversification which causes a portfolio to mirror its benchmark while simultaneously lagging behind in performance. S.M.A.R.T. Investing® eliminates closet-indexing which is overly complex and can increase costs while reducing returns.
MANAGEMENT
S.M.A.R.T. Investing® puts investors in control of the management of their portfolio. We use SMA allocations which are custom tailored specifically for each investor based on their personal investment goals, expectations, risk profile and specific management objectives, including the exclusion of any specified securities. Clients can explicitly exclude companies from their portfolio for any reason or select an SMA that satisfies specific investing styles. This allows clients to see all of their holdings and transactions in real time as they happen, giving management control, customization and insights into what is being traded and why. Managers can be Fundamental or tactical, and select investments from large, mid or small cap stocks which could be domestic or global.
ALPHA
S.M.A.R.T. Investing® employs best-of-class investment selection committees to perform due-diligence on individual holdings, fundamental analysis, technical analysis and market trends. The result is active management strategies and concentrated managers –stock or bond managers with generally less than 40 or 50 holdings. Each SMA is carefully selected for a client’s portfolio based on objectives and like-minded styles, strategies and philosophies of the investor and the manager. Our portfolio construction employs SMA’s with historical data that has been rigorously GIPS audited (The Global Investment Performance Standards). We seek to use managers who have high active share (differentiation from benchmark), generally low turnover ratios, alpha generation, and strong historical performance.
REDUCED COST
The cost of S.M.A.R.T. Investing® is our advisory fee. Generally, investors pay investment management expenses directly to the fund managers which is in addition to their advisor’s fee. Investors, however, may not realize this as these costs are incurred long before the fund performance is reported. These costs include expense ratios, loads, 12-b1 charges, turnover costs, soft-dollar arrangements, and more. Using SMA managers allows our firm to eliminate expensive investment costs not visible to investors. Our SMA managers bill our advisory firm directly to receive model delivery. Thus, clients get access to best-of-class, high-quality, active management without paying additional investment management expenses or commissions.
TAX-EFFICIENCIES
S.M.A.R.T. Investing® gives our client’s direct access to the underlying stocks of companies included in the SMA allocation—an important consideration when it comes to voting rights, for example. Owning individual securities also provides greater control of your tax outcomes. It avoids many tax problems that plague mutual funds like an unwanted 1099 generated by the fund from selling holdings to provide liquidity to pooled investors even when you (individually) did not take a distribution. It also simplifies and facilitates tax loss harvesting (strategically selling specific stocks to minimize tax liability).
