At Charter Trust, our investment process revolves around you, our client. It begins with a clear articulation of your objectives and goals. By understanding what you want to do with your money—generate income, protect it from taxes, grow it for the future—we can better understand what kind of return you require, and how much safety you need. These two factors are the cornerstone of our investment process.
After we understand these, we move on to look at specific issues, such as income requirements, your liquidity needs, what your time-horizon might be, tax issues, or other concerns. By developing an investment plan that is custom-designed for you, we design your investment portfolio before we ever buy a stock or a bond. Asset allocation is a key factor in this process—what kinds of stocks, bonds, or cash items you may need, in what proportions—on the road to meet your financial objectives.
Once this plan is in place, we begin the process of constructing your portfolio. Portfolios should be built over time to last. We do not believe in high-frequency trading. All that does is generate commissions for brokers. It seldom meets the needs of the client. By assembling your portfolio over time, we are able to take advantage of any market volatility to buy high-quality assets at reasonable prices. We have found that such investments provide stable incomes and secure returns.
Once the portfolio is designed and constructed, we rigorously test it to make sure that it is doing what it is supposed to do. As circumstances warrant, assets may be rebalanced, adding to assets that may have gone down in price, and trimming those that have appreciated. Such periodic rebalancing takes advantage of short-term fluctuations in order to increase long-term results.
Finally, we meet with you regularly to review your objectives, see if anything has changed, and make sure that your investments’ performance meets or exceeds your expectations. Such periodic meetings are a key part of what we do, and assure you that you are experiencing “The Charter Difference.”
