Philosophy
Why should I hire Olympic Financial Strategies instead of managing my own money?
Regardless of the investment approach you choose to implement in your portfolio, managing money is difficult to do well on your own. It’s time consuming and requires a tremendous amount of discipline. This is where I can help.
Strategy
I will work with you to create a detailed investment strategy and then will work on your behalf, making sure it gets implemented and keeping your portfolio at an appropriate risk level over time. I will keep you moving in the right direction, offering advice and guidance to counter the emotional element that can derail the best of investment plans.
I favor using a globally diversified portfolio of mutual funds, exchange traded funds and some individual securities. I have access to thousands of mutual funds, exchange traded funds and other securities, and I owe my allegiance only to my clients. My independence allows me to choose what I regard as the highest quality investments available for your portfolio. I implement a majority of the investment strategy with low-cost index funds from Vanguard and other providers.
Risk Management
While your feelings about money play a prominent role in determining the investment strategy that is right for you, I don’t believe that emotions, including my own, should play a role in making decisions about your investments. I don’t act on stock tips or try to guess the direction of the market over the next six months.
However, I do actively manage investment risk by closely monitoring the valuation of securities, investment fundamentals and financial market trends. I also implement a quantitative risk management system that is designed to reduce volatility and increase returns over a full market cycle.
Reducing the up-and-down movements in the value of your investments creates more stable returns. Typically this produces better results than investment programs whose returns are more volatile, because if you can limit losses in an adverse market climate, you can be better positioned to take advantage of lower prices when they’re available. This also makes it easy for you to stay with the program long enough to experience success.