Stock Strategies
We offer two stock strategies; one is a focused dividend income portfolio, and the other is a focused growth portfolio. Although they are uniquely different, our two strategies share a few market commonalities. In general, stock markets go up when inflation is low, interest rates are going down and/or are low, and when corporate earnings are going up and or/are strong. The opposite is also true. Moreover, the relationship between supply and demand for an asset is also a major contributor to the trend of the asset.
Our strategies will go in and out of favor with the overall market and economic cycles; however, since we are acutely aware of these relationships, we continually and dynamically optimize and adjust our strategies to keep them on track. We do not follow a set-it-and-forget-it philosophy.
Focused dividend income portfolio: This strategy is ideally suited for buy-and-hold investors. This strategy contains well-established companies that pay a dividend, and may be close to their intrinsic value, or fully valued. The risk and return expectations are in line with the S&P 500 Index, however, over full market cycles, the dividend yield is expected to outperform the index.
Focused growth portfolio: This strategy seeks to identify alpha opportunities through event-driven, opportunistic and/or intrinsic value principles and blends bottom-up research with top-down considerations. It looks for companies which have had strong historical performance and continue to have prospects for sustainable performance (momentum) in several key value drivers, i.e., return on invested capital, growth, cash flows, and valuations. In addition to fundamental analysis, technical analysis is used to help identify price momentum as well as aid in execution decisions.
At any given time, the active equity strategy may contain stocks in various sectors or it may contain concentrated sector allocations as well as various or concentrated market capitalizations. For small-cap companies, the discount from intrinsic value we look for is larger than the discount for mid-cap companies, and the mid-cap category requires a higher discount than the large-cap companies.
To aid in the exit strategy of positions, we have several sell disciplines, some of which are soft rules and others are hard rules. The following are some reasons we may want to exit a securities position:
- Deteriorating fundamentals
- Price has risen well above its intrinsic value
- The position has become overweighed relative to the other positions
- Better investment opportunities have been identified
- A mistake was made in the original equity selection
- A stop loss or trailing stop trigger was executed
