At Charter, we do a lot more than just pick stocks and buy bonds. We look at your total financial picture and design an investment portfolio that is tailor-made to fit your lifestyle, income, and expectations. We integrate your investments into a total wealth-management plan to help you achieve your financial goals and live the way you want to.
We start by understanding what your total financial picture looks like: your assets, debts, income, and expenses. In the context of this understanding, we work with you to articulate your financial goals, and then develop a plan for how to achieve them, taking into account the uncertainty associated with financial markets.
We then design a portfolio tailored specifically to your situation, using a combination of different assets. We utilize a whole range of investment vehicles, as we believe that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution to investment management. Your portfolio might be comprised primarily of large-capitalization stocks with high and growing dividends, or it could be mainly municipal bonds issued by your home state. It depends on your personal situation.
Having said this, the majority of our clients are well-served by holding a diversified combination of stocks, bonds, exchange-traded funds, and mutual funds to complement their personal holdings of real estate, bank deposits, and other assets. When evaluating investments we use a combination of quantitative, fundamental, and technical tools to determine whether an asset is fairly valued or not.
We take a team approach to do this. Our Investment Committee includes ten professionals with differing backgrounds. Each member of the Committee has a different research responsibility, and when we get together weekly we discuss our findings and how they impact client portfolios. When conducting research we access a variety of tools: subscription services, on-line analytics, conference calls, public filings, and other items. Our team structure is designed so that any member of the Committee can contribute. We find that our collective understanding performs better than any one individual, no matter how knowledgeable.
Over time, we build portfolios that help our clients build their wealth. We have found that our client-focused team approach that uses all available information, is the best way to help them reach their objectives.
