YOUR VALUES, YOUR INTERESTS

 At Eberhardt Wealth Management, LLC (EWM), our investment philosophy uses a goal-based approach with our clients.  Your long term and short-term goals, your values, your interests, etc., all play a part in the plan used to invest your portfolio.  Our initial meetings help us to learn these important aspects about you and then, following our unique process, arrive at a plan to meet, and hopefully exceed, your life goals.

We use the perspective and expertise of the team at AXIOM Integrated Advisor Solutions, an innovative, industry leading, fee only, managed money solution.  Using this partnership helps us find the best investments available by utilizing the AXIOM methodology for choosing money managers. The methodology used and due diligence conducted by the AXIOM Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA’s) are incredibly detailed, resulting in only the most qualified money managers being allowed on the platform. Once the managers have been chosen, we then divide your investments between fixed income / bond investments and equity/stock-based portfolios based on your goals and tolerance to risk and market volatility.  Each category may include individual stocks/equities, mutual funds, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), and possibly other types of investments.

When building our client’s portfolios, we believe in primarily utilizing an active investment approach, supplemented by some passive investing. Active investing is when money managers pick and choose specific investments using their proven research methodologies. By picking specific investments, active investing is what provides us the opportunity to outperform the market. The passive approach is done by investing in a particular index, such as the S&P 500 (large companies), or the Russell 2000 (small to mid-sized companies). Passive investing does not rely on the expertise of the money manager. They are simply mirroring the index they choose to follow and, thereby, match the index market returns. This combination allows the investor to benefit from the expertise of proven and successful active money managers in the industry, while controlling the costs of their portfolio by utilizing, to a lesser extent, the less expensive passive index/ETF holdings where appropriate.

Another important part of the EWM philosophy centers on the idea of how an investor’s actions can impact their investment success. Years of research done by various financial experts/money managers, including AthenaInvest in Denver Colorado, have resulted in the field of study called Behavioral Finance. This research has shown that the investor’s behavior is the single most important determinant of an investor’s financial success[1].  It is our job to keep you on-track and not let fear and/or greed guide your investments. Other studies have shown that asset allocation is more important to financial success than the selection and timing of a particular investment over time.[2]

For questions about the EWM Investment Philosophy, please contact us here.

[1] C. Thomas Howard, Behavioral Portfolio Management, 2014

[2]Adam Butler, “Asset Allocation vs. Security Selection Which Wins?”  2016, Advisors Edge web site, advisor.ca