Investment management is a key component of our practice, and we take our roles as fiduciaries as a top priority when working with you and your portfolio.

The fiduciary standard, established as part of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, states that an advisor must always act in the best interests of his or her clients and place clients’ best interests before his or her own. It also means that an advisor must make sure to provide financial advice that is sound, accurate, and free from conflicts of interest. Furthermore, fiduciaries are required to disclose any potential conflicts of interest to their clients and must strive to transact on behalf of clients in a manner that is as efficient and low-cost as possible.

Our Investment Process

These points provide an excellent summary of our investment management practice:

Once you have completed our DIP process (Discovery, Information Gathering, Proposal) and are on board as clients, we work together to find the appropriate investment management method that makes the most sense for you.

Method 1: Athlon Wealth Advisors Management

Our internal Athlon Wealth Team conducts our own equity research and risk assessment, and then reviews your goals, risk tolerance, time horizon, etc., to create a customized, actively managed portfolio. Risk is a significant factor in our portfolio development — not only the risk of the individual holdings but of the person as well. Our “Athlon Stop Process” is designed to protect against a dramatic downturn in the market. The simple explanation is that we have set a “downside” value that alerts us when the value drops to a certain point. With that information, we determine if it is the appropriate time to sell. We can do the same for an “upside” value and sell it with the goal to lock in your gains. All of the decisions we make are based on your individual portfolio and life goals. These all tie in with your long-term objectives identified through our Financial Planning services.

Method 2: Turnkey Asset Management Platform (TAMP)

This method utilizes various professional money managers, each with their own CFA teams and specialties. We do this to diversify investing styles, techniques, philosophies and expertise. Athlon still manages the portfolio, but instead of picking the individual securities, we pick different money managers who pick the funds.

Our Athlon Wealth team mixes and matches money managers who have different styles (strategic, dynamic, active, tactical). In this fashion, we put each money manager and their CFAs, analysts, computer programmers, and economists to work to complete extremely deep dives into markets, sectors, companies, industries, countries, etc. Their jobs are to pick the securities for our models and then communicate back to us what they are doing, when and why. We monitor the strategies on an ongoing basis. As long as we agree with them on what they are doing and the performance of the strategies is within a reasonable range, they continue working with us.

Our team spends a fair bit of time each year doing research on a variety of strategies and managers so that we always have options available should we need to replace a management team. Again, all of the decisions we make are based on your individual portfolio and life goals, and they align with the long-term goals discovered and outlined with Financial Planning.

Security Selection

Because we are an independent investment management firm, we are not locked into endorsing particular securities the way a large brokerage could be. As fee-based professionals, what we earn is typically based on a set percentage, so that as your portfolio grows, we benefit as well.

Regardless of the investment management method chosen, your portfolio stays top of mind for us, with periodic reviews that help us measure whether your portfolio’s targets are being met. Our level of attention is especially important during times of market volatility. You can contact us any time you have concerns — or reach out whenever you’d like. We’re always here for you.

Disclosure

Diversification and asset allocation strategies do not assure profit or protect against loss. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Investing involves risk. Depending on the types of investments, there may be varying degrees of risk. Investors should be prepared to bear loss, including total loss of principal.