As time-poor investors, you’ll want a disciplined and understandable investment strategy that’s systematic, built on the best research available, and prioritises strong ‘environmental, social and governance’ (ESG) investments. Something you know will best-serve your interests, to the extent that you can put your money worries to one side, knowing they’re being well looked after.

We want our clients to be relaxed about their investments. Being a patient, reflective and disciplined investor trumps an emotional, irrational and intuitive one, every time.

Our key objective

To build and deliver well-researched, sustainable and diversified portfolios that deliver strong returns over the long-term, in line with our clients’ goals and attitudes to risk.

We employ a sensible, systematic approach to investing, which is informed by academic research and empirical evidence. It’s not easy to stay calm when markets are soaring or in free-fall, which is why we try to take the emotion out of investing.

Our investment philosophy is built on five key principles:

Have confidence in the markets

As investors, we all have the ability to invest in companies, in the hope of receiving a dividend in return. On average, UK equities have delivered returns of around 5% above inflation going back as far as 1900. This shows us that, if you take out the peaks and troughs of short-term market volatility, equities are generally a good way to grow your pension pot over the long-term. Markets are an efficient mechanism for rewarding those who provide capital, to those engaged in the pursuit of wealth creation.

Risk and return go hand-in-hand

One of the inescapable truths of investing is that to achieve higher returns, you need to take on more risk. Risk is multi-faceted; many risks exist that need to be identified and managed appropriately, such as a default on bonds, currency risk, changes in interest rates or simply a company that you own shares in going bust. Yet risk should not be feared, because when appropriate risks are taken, they can achieve the kind of returns that investors seek.

Let markets do the heavy lifting

Generally, there are two main ways in which an investor can try to deliver better returns; timing when to be in or out of markets - known as market timing, or a ‘top-down’ approach. The other is to pick individual stocks - known as stock picking, or a ‘bottom up’ approach. We avoid both these methods, instead relying on empirical evidence to identify markets and assets with the greatest chance of delivering a successful outcome for our clients. We avoid trying to time the market or pick stocks - instead letting the markets do the heavy lifting.

Be patient and think long-term

There is no easy or quick way to achieve investment success. Think about the hare and the tortoise - sometimes you have to wait, potentially for several decades - to capture the best returns the market has to offer. Warren Buffett once said, “The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.” If you want to be a good investor, you need to be patient.

Patience and discipline are close bed fellows

Once you realise that to generate good long-term returns takes time, patience and belief in the markets, it is essential to put in place the discipline to stop yourself succumbing to impatience and ill-discipline. We construct well-researched and tested portfolios, sticking by those logical reasons for owning stocks in the first place, rather than chasing those investment ‘fads’.

Further reading

Systematic investing: An overview to our investment philosophy and process.