Our Investing Philosophy
Purpose-Driven. Process-Based. Risk-Aware. Always Focused on You.
nVest Advisors was built to support the financial and investing needs of everyday families with the same care and diligence we give to our high-net-worth clients. This means having a variety of approaches to crafting an investing strategy, while always adhering to a core set of investing principles:
1) Place your goals front and center
Successful investors need a reason to invest, not just a strategy. Those reasons are crucial to keeping you focused during difficult markets or periods of uncertainty. They help you stay grounded when your strategy might seem to be challenged by unexpected events.
Our job as advisors is to help you identify what matters most to you, quantify what your money needs to do for you (and by when), and set your investing course squarely focused on those objectives.
2) Bring on only enough risk to accomplish your goals
Investing always involves risk. It cannot be avoided. Even so-called “safe” investments like Treasury bonds carry the risk of losing serious value under the right conditions.
At nVest, we practice the philosophy of risk mitigation as a primary focus of our strategies. We believe in time-honored principles like diversification and systematic rebalancing, but we also believe in shifting your strategy toward safety automatically when economic conditions warn us that trouble is ahead (LINK HERE TO OUR MACRO APPROACH). We also recognize that your tolerance for risk will change over time (particularly when the world gets scary), and will shift strategy when your appetite for risk changes.
Gains are great; we love them! But not at the expense of putting your hard-earned money at risk of unnecessary losses.
3) Markets are rarely ever rational and efficient
One of the great myths of investing is that markets are always properly priced. The theory is, so many people are seeing the same information at the same time, that there is no way for errors to occur.
If that were true, we’d never have booms and busts, insider trading, or “pump and dump” scams.
The truth is, markets move all over the place, every minute of every day. Sometimes those moves are rational, but often they are based solely on the emotional responses of investors to news headlines (true or not), unfounded rumors, and even a celebrity’s social media posts.
Trying to make sense of that chaos (and stay sane) is a terrible way to try to invest for long-term growth. Your goals are well-thought-out, reasonable, and important to you – why should the clamor of the herd have that much control over them?
4) Focus first on the economy
So if markets are rarely rational and efficient, what can we base our investing decisions on that provides better clarity and structure?
In a single word: the economy.
The economy is the world in which all companies and investors must participate. It is non-political, unemotional, doesn’t pick winners and losers, and can’t favor one investor over another.
A focus on the economy gives us a clear, unbiased view of the basic investing conditions. When the economy shows that growth is ahead, we can prepare our strategies for good times, and when the economy shows signs of slowing down, we can “batten down the hatches” and wait for the storm to pass.
5) Use a process, not a hunch
Some investors (and even a few advisors) put their money into the markets by playing their hunches or making professional guesses as to what the next “hot stock” or trend will be. This, obviously, can have wildly unpredictable results.
Investing is not gambling. It is about setting the course for your funds by employing quality investment assets that work together to minimize your risk and accomplish your long-term goals.
Our management style is data-dependent and rules-based. We do this to remove the emotion and bias (and hunch-taking) out of our decisions regarding your money. Instead, we follow a proven, principled process to make changes to your investing strategy.
6) Keep it cheap & liquid
Some investors (and even a few advisors) put their money into the markets by playing their hunches or making professional guesses as to what the next “hot stock” or trend will be. This, obviously, can have wildly unpredictable results.
Investing is not gambling. It is about setting the course for your funds by employing quality investment assets that work together to minimize your risk and accomplish your long-term goals.
Our management style is data-dependent and rules-based. We do this to remove the emotion and bias (and hunch-taking) out of our decisions regarding your money. Instead, we follow a proven, principled process to make changes to your investing strategy.
