Retirement Asset Allocation

Priority #1: Determine your investment strategy in the Top-Down Approach:

This strategy will determine how to design your initial portfolio based upon a comprehensive exploration of your assets, earnings, work plans and retirement goals. A well-designed portfolio will be personalized to match your individual situation. Together we put a lot of thought and analysis into which asset classes can help you reach your long-term investing goals. 

The absolute proper mix of assets depends on your unique set of needs, wants and wishes and financial goals and risk tolerance. If you have significant growth needs, you may be better off investing in assets that have historically provided higher returns but also carry higher short-term volatility, like stocks. If you require less growth and need more cash flow, you may be better off increasing your portfolio’s allocation towards assets that have historically produced lower long-term returns and lower short-term volatility, like bonds. 

Priority #2: Manage your portfolio to capitalize on the marketplace:

Once we have your appropriate mix of assets determined, allocated and invested, adjustments are made as needed based on market expectations. On occasion we will employ a tactical approach to your portfolio to achieve risk-adjusted results that take advantage of what the markets are offering. Our goal is to use this approach to continually manage your portfolio to achieve competitive risk-adjusted results.  

• Asset Allocation: If the research and forecasts are predicting a downturn in the stock market in the near term, many investors may want to re-allocate to more defensive assets. This can be dangerous if done frequently or not managed properly for timing. Many investors will change their portfolio to make a tactical move based on a market condition. When you do this, the tactical decision now must change with the trend. Sometimes a good tactical decision can turn into a poor one only because of timing. Protecting what you have earned is always our priority. We encourage all our clients to use extreme caution in making decisions based on market news because frequently this introduces emotional factors we try to avoid. This is precisely why you need Vestbridge. Capitalizing on the market is not magic; but it does require an understanding of many factors. Having a trusted, experienced and knowledgeable resource like Vestbridge to navigate your smart and personalized portfolio through market conditions is crucial. 

• Sub-asset Allocation: When a particular segment of the market projects to underperform, many investors choose to hold fewer securities in those areas and move to securities they believe will outperform the market. Your smart personalized portfolio is flexible and global. If we see overseas stock markets outperforming, we may decide to move assets there. We discourage holding too many correlated assets in one sector of the economy or one region of the world. Your portfolio diversity is crucial to achieving favorable risk adjusted returns. Managing your sub-asset allocation is an important part of your plan. 

We want to keep your original goals in place and only move to capitalize on the market.  If your goals change, as they often can, we will review them and adjust your portfolio accordingly, as necessary. 

Portfolio management is complex as market conditions are always changing.  It is made more complex for the average investor as they often receive their news from so many different places which all have their own unique motives for their respective investment opinions.  

Having an Vestbridge advisor to do the research and keep you focused on your long-term financial goals will provide you peace of mind and helpful counsel. 

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10 Smart Investing Principles

At Vestbridge, we have many years of combined experience helping investors with significant savings achieve risk adjusted results in the stock market. And we’ve learned a thing or two along the way about how to:

• Manage your taxes with “direct indexing”

• Capitalize on global markets

• Weather short-term fluctuations in the market

• Leverage technology to spot emerging trends in the market

We put together this guide to share with you 10 of the most important investing principles we believe can help you achieve greater peace, happiness and prosperity in life. We hope you enjoy it!

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