We run globally diversified, evidence-based portfolios, held at low cost, with no stock-picking or market timing.
We manage each portfolio with tax impact in mind at every step. Depending on your situation, that can include asset location, tax-loss harvesting, and direct indexing, applied where they fit your circumstances rather than as a one-size-fits-all package.
We do not pick stocks or try to time the market. Portfolios are built on decades of academic research and diversified globally, held in low-cost mutual funds and ETFs. What we control — cost, tax, and how the portfolio is structured — is what reliably adds up over the years. What we cannot control, where the market goes next, we do not pretend to predict.
The S&P 500 is a good snapshot of large U.S. companies, but it leaves out most of the investable world. We invest across the whole market: large and small companies, developed and emerging markets, with thousands of holdings rather than a few hundred. Spreading that widely reduces the risk that any single company, sector, or country pulls the whole portfolio down.
Decades of research have found that certain kinds of stocks have tended to outperform over long periods: smaller companies, and those priced low relative to what they earn and own. These are long-run tendencies, not guarantees. They can go missing for years at a time; cheaper stocks trailed for much of the 2010s. We hold more of those companies than a standard index does, as much as your risk tolerance allows. That deliberate lean is what we mean by a tilt, and it's a long-term position, not a bet on the next quarter. It also means your portfolio will sometimes move differently from headline indexes like the S&P 500. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Stocks grow the portfolio; bonds steady it. We use high-quality, shorter-term bonds, the kind backed by the U.S. government and financially strong issuers, to cushion the ups and downs of the stock market. That cushion matters most in retirement, when a market drop hurts more because you're taking money out instead of adding to it. Where it suits the client, we add alternatives: investments that don't move in step with the stock market and can further lower overall risk.
Which account holds which asset changes what you keep after tax, and over enough years, getting the asset location right adds up to real money. Income-heavy holdings like bonds and REITs usually go inside an IRA or 401(k), where the yearly income isn't taxed as it comes in. Stock funds you'll hold for years sit better in a taxable account, where a sale gets the lower long-term rate. The positions with the most room to grow go in the Roth, where that growth comes out untaxed.
For clients whose tax situation calls for more — harvesting losses position by position, direct indexing, tax-efficient transitions — we go further.
Your advisor is not building these portfolios alone. The model portfolios are built and maintained by Focus Partners, the investment team we work with, whose investment committee keeps the research current and handles the day-to-day monitoring and rebalancing. You get one point of contact, your advisor, backed by a full investment team.
Discovery: your goals, timeline, and risk tolerance, written into an investment policy statement
A portfolio built around that policy, diversified globally and structured for tax efficiency
Reasonable restrictions you want to place on specific holdings, honored and documented
Ongoing monitoring and rebalancing as markets and your circumstances change
Regular check-ins, not just a plan that sits untouched after the first meeting
Tell us what you're invested in today. We'll show you what a tax-aware, evidence-based portfolio would look like instead.
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