Investments… Just… Not… Growing…
POTENTIAL SITUATION
Sandy and Jill are not particularly happy about the performance of their portfolio and want a second opinion. Despite a long bull market, their investments just aren’t growing.
PARAGON’S SOLUTION
PARAGON’s investment management team may find that Sandy and Jill’s portfolio is the typical “kitchen sink” approach that we find in most investment advisors’ portfolios. Packed full of expensive “long-short,” “managed futures,” and “multi-alternative” mutual funds designed mostly to make money for Wall Street, while delivering mediocre returns at best for investors, this would be a perfect opportunity for a tune-up of Sandy and Jill’s portfolio.
Our team would help Sandy and Jill transfer their investments to a low-cost professional account at Fidelity and rebuild their portfolio. First, we would upgrade them out of high cost, “mystery” mutual funds, by adding a “sleeve” of individual high-growth potential stocks selected based upon their accelerating earnings, relative strength within the market, and increasing institutional demand - a strategy that has historically outperformed the market for decades. Next, we would rebuild most of their portfolio with low-cost, tax-efficient Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and individual, investment-grade bonds to reduce unseen costs and provide higher returns than they were previously achieving. Finally, using the latest research in factor investing and market-cycle returns, we’d position them to try to maximize their returns for the amount of risk they are willing to take - and, going forward, we would continually protect their accounts from devastating market crashes using our Recession Protocol service.
PARAGON would then continue to provide continual coaching and market updates, helping Sandy and Jill transition from average investors, worrying about the market because of the 24-7 news cycle, to disciplined, confident, effective investors, content to watch their money grow over time.
VALUE TO THE CLIENT
Enjoyment of a low-fee portfolio and confidence about the future because of detailed retirement planning, Sandy and Jill will be able to reduce their income tax burden because, unlike mutual funds, Exchange Traded Funds are generally very tax efficient, distributing little or no taxable “phantom income” that makes tax planning difficult.
Now, instead of a basket of high-cost, meaningless portfolio holdings, Sandy and Jill would now enjoy a lean, focused portfolio they’d understand, designed within their risk tolerance, protected from recession-driven market crashes by our Recession Protocol™. This investment policy would allow them to be competent, confident investors – a critical component of portfolio
*Please Note: Limitations: The above Case Study is hypothetical-not involving actual Paragon clients. Case Studies illustrate the hypothetical experience of a fictitious client based on a scenario that an actual client might experience. The Case Studies are designed to generally illustrate how we may provide our services to our clients. Keeping in mind that no two clients, situations, or experiences are exactly alike, the Case Studies are not to be construed as an endorsement of Paragon by any of its past or current clients, nor any assurance that Paragon may be able to help any client achieve the same satisfactory results. To the contrary, none of the Case Studies should be construed by a client or prospective client as a guarantee that he/she will experience a certain level of results or satisfaction if Paragon is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services.
Every day, I hear the same commercial on the radio. It starts off with Is your retirement account likely to drop 60% during the next market crash?