A while back, in reference to my personal move into the investment
world, I wrote this:
Don’t worry, I’m not going to start incessantly shilling
for the new
business. However, I may occasionally
shill for the new business.
It’s actually been 3 1/2 years since I put up that post, so I guess I
didn’t even live up to my threat to shill occasionally. But now,
on the occasion of our having recently completed a track record of our
investment performance, I thought I’d take the opportunity to do so.
My firm, Pacific Capital Associates, is owned by me and a partner, John
Simon. We manage investment accounts for individuals, businesses,
and trusts*. We also provide general financial planning advice to our
investment clients.
Our investment approach is quite different from the mainstream.
From our FAQ:
In our experience, the vast majority of investment advisors
end up with
investments that are remarkably similar to one another and, by no
coincidence, to the major stock market indices. We take quite a
different approach. To put it very briefly, we combine the independence
and rigour of traditional value investing with a heavy focus on global
economic and monetary trends. The end results are investment
allocations that are very different from those of the typical
index-hugger, and ones that we think will provide our clients with
superior long-term returns while exposing them to less risk.
In fact, we use the same fundamentally-driven and forward-looking
analytical approach that
I used
here at Piggington to identify and analyze the housing bubble, except
that we apply it to the broader investment
markets. This approach has been very successful, as our
investment track record indicates:
A brief explanation of this chart: the blue line represents the
asset-weighted total return, after fees, of our discretionary
managed
portfolios. The accounts are all separate, so few if any clients
achieved this precise return. (In fact, newer clients can vary
quite a bit from the average because based on market conditions we
might buy different investments
for new clients than we are holding for existing clients — but over
time their returns tend to fall into line with those of longer-term
clients).
Instead, this line represents the average
quarterly performance, after all fees and weighted by portfolio size,
for all our
discretionary clients for each quarter.
The gray line represents the total return of the S&P 500 starting
over the same time period. The graph shows that we outperformed
the market in both good times and bad, leading to much better returns
for our clients in the long run.
For more background on the calculations, including the standard 1/3/5 year
returns and so forth, please click here to view our full performance report.
I am obliged to mention here that both sets of returns
include reinvestment of all income. I also need to reiterate the
old classic: past
performance is not indicative of future results! We present these
results not to suggest that we will achieve them again in the future,
but to show that all the analysis and charts and generally nerdy stuff
that we do
can actually translate to real-world outperformance.
If you are interested in learning more about us, please feel free to
visit our website and especially
our FAQ list. If you have
any questions that aren’t addressed there, drop
me an email at rtoscano@pcasd.com.
And now, back to housing and the like…
(Note: All public content pertaining
to PCA
must be approved by a compliance lawyer. This is fine for the
occasional article or writeup such as this one, but it effectively
prevents me from going back and forth in an online discussion.
I’ve therefore disabled comments to this post. If you have any
questions or comments, please email them to me directly at
rtoscano@pcasd.com.)
* Investment advisory services and
securities offered through Girard Securities, Inc., member SIPC/FINRA.