Asset Management
We believe any investment strategy should be designed from outset to deliver the client’s objective, within the constraints imposed by the risk assessment, with the minimum possible chance of failure.
To do this, the portfolio designer must have a reasonable idea of the returns available from the investments that are purchased, a reasonable idea of the risks associated with each investment, and an idea of how various holdings within the portfolio react with each other. When dealing with asset classes, it is possible to reach conclusions on these parameters, when dealing with individual shares, it is not.
Our asset management service offers our clients, access to Institutional class index-tracking investment funds from a major US Fund management Company founded in 1981. We are the only company in Ireland currently able to offer these funds to Irish retail investors.
The company manages around €100Bn for over 175 of the world’s top institutional clients, as well as for high net worth investors through a limited number of registered, fee-only financial advisers.
Strategies are engineered to capture specific risk/return characteristics with reliability and transparency.
The goal is to provide investors with a series of precisely defined, low-cost building blocks, paying careful attention to trading costs allowing them to maximize the benefits of asset class diversification and to assemble balanced strategies.
The basis of all these investment funds is that markets throughout the world have a history of rewarding long-term investors for the capital they supply.
Companies compete with each other for investment capital, and millions of investors compete with each other to find the most attractive returns. This competition tends to drive prices to fair value, making it difficult for investors to achieve greater returns without bearing greater risk.
Traditional investment managers strive to beat the market by taking advantage of pricing "mistakes" and attempting to predict the future. Too often, this proves costly and futile.
Predictions go awry and managers miss the strong returns that markets provide by holding the wrong stocks at the wrong time. Meanwhile, capital economies thrive—not because markets fail but because they succeed.
The futility of speculation is good news for the investor. It means that prices for public securities are generally fair and that persistent differences in average portfolio returns are largely explained by differences in average risk.
It is certainly possible to outperform markets, but not in general without accepting increased risk.
Evidence from practicing investors and academics alike points to an undeniable conclusion
Returns are related to risk.
Gain is rarely accomplished without taking a chance, but not all risk-taking is rewarded.
Financial economics over the last fifty years has brought us to a powerful understanding of the risks that are generally rewarded and the risks that are not.
Everything we have learned about expected returns in the equity markets can be summarized in this way:
*Market Shares have higher expected returns than fixed interest or cash.
*Size Small company shares have higher expected returns than large company shares.
*Price Lower-priced "value" shares have higher expected returns than higher priced
"growth" shares.
Many economists believe small cap and value stocks outperform over the long term because the market rationally discounts their prices to reflect underlying risk. The lower prices give investors greater upside as compensation for bearing this risk.