TWM’s Investment Management Service:
When the market seesaws, your investment framework is solid.

Intelligent + Asset Allocation

We help clients create a systematic, intelligent framework for making investment decisions, aimed at realizing their most important life goals. To ensure accountability, as well as cost and tax efficiency, assets are managed individually and not as pooled funds or farmed out to third party money managers.

Every relationship starts with a financial review to to create a logical basis for accepting and rejecting risk in the investment plan, to determine each client’s financial situation, investment objectives, and risk-taking capacity. Based on this review, we provide a written Investment Policy Statement (IPS), summarizing objectives, allocation guidelines, investment restrictions, reporting and performance requirements. Going forward, the IPS provides an advance strategic roadmap and mindset for dealing with market fluctuations, one of the more vexing aspects of investing for many.

Our investment focus is not on timing markets or on economic forecasting, but rather on those things we can control and which add value to a portfolio over time: asset allocation, diversification, portfolio turnover, fund costs and investment taxes, how much we spend and save, and behavioral alpha -- our own psychological approach to markets. These are the fundamental determinants of investment success.

TWM's preferred strategy, "Intelligent + Asset Allocation," refers to the intersection of two powerful investment approaches: asset allocation and value investing. The combination adapts the benefits of a systematic, endowment style of investing to the unique concerns and goals of individual investors. Asset allocation and diversification are the primary determinants of risk and return in a portfolio. To that we would add a healthy regard for the price paid for an investment -- another thing one can control.

In fact, we named our strategy after The Intelligent Investor, written by Ben Graham, Warren Buffett's professor and mentor. Graham's thesis? The risk of an investment rises and falls with its price. The prospective return falls as its price rises

Investment success involves discipline and taking a patient, long-sighted view of markets. But discipline also means keepng an eye on market valuations, reducing exposures on the rare but dangerous occasions when market valuations are extremely high, and opportunistically increasing exposures when bargain prices are there for the taking.

Finally, our experience teaches us that education and consistent, focused communication is essential to the success of an investment plan and an advisory relationship.