The Ross Asset Advisors Approach
Higher Returns · Lower Risk · Smarter Investors
We strive for productive, long-term relationships. We deliver top-quality, completely unbiased service, and we engineer properly-constructed, personalized portfolios using proprietary asset allocation techniques. We do not speculate, and we do not encourage unnecessary risk-taking. The owners of well-constructed portfolios sleep well at night.
You are a Capitalist, the CEO of You, Inc.
Most investors are unaware that they are running a real business with their invested wealth. As a capitalist, you have income, expenses, and risk. Your income derives from dividends, interest payments, and capital gains. Your largest expenses are likely to be taxes, mutual fund management fees, and trading costs. Prepared or not, you are the CEO of this business. When you choose Ross Asset Advisors as your personal CFO, you are making a sound investment. Your costs will be returned many times over in the form of higher income, lower expenses, and lower risk. Thanks to your properly-deployed capital, your business will flourish and your long term prospects will be bright.
The following tenets are the foundations of our investment approach:
Listening to Your Story
We start with your vision of how your wealth should build, and what you want to accomplish in the short and long term. This may include large portfolio inflows and outflows at various times, and these timeframes may not be well-crystallized. A measure of uncertainty is normal – just a problem for us to solve together.
Starting With What You Have
Existing investments in non-taxable accounts are simplest, because they can be sold and re-allocated to new asset classes with no tax consequences. Investments in taxable accounts may have a very low cost basis. Selling these assets will trigger long term capital gains, and therefore must be considered within the context of your goals. We’ll evaluate these investments together. If information about cost basis is unavailable for whatever reason, we’ll work around it. Although we are not going to put new funds into individual stocks, old holdings can be incorporated into a properly-diversified portfolio.
Developing a Strategy
We’ll develop a written strategy document that summarizes your short and long term goals, your current assets, and your expected inflows and outflows. We’ll lay out which assets we expect to sell, and which we propose buying to construct your new portfolio, which will probably be spread across multiple non-taxable and taxable accounts. You will have many questions during this process, and we’ll answer them.
Our “No Exceptions” Guarantee
We believe that our guarantee is unique in our industry. We are completely confident in our skills and advice, and we know that you will enjoy working with us. Should you be unhappy at any time during the first 90 days, we will refund your full quarterly fee. Learn more.
Diversified Asset Allocation
Good portfolios allocate assets across a broad spectrum of global asset classes. In other words, you want stocks and bonds from around the world, as well as real estate, gold, and commodities. The point of diversification is to have assets that don’t all go up and down together. News moves markets, but your portfolio will be insulated from single pieces of news as much as possible. Our ambition is steady growth. Of course the US economy has an impact on global equities, but we use science to combat this in your diversified portfolio.
Index vs Active Investing
Our portfolios are constructed of index funds, plus optional individual bond issues for those with more capital. If you’re not familiar with the principles and advantages of index investing, then we ask that you read our article, Active vs Index Investing. The article is easy to read, and a basic comfort with index investing is essential to our constructing an effective partnership.
Managing Risk
Risk is the source of all return, and our portfolios maximize returns at any given level of risk. We look at volatility and downside risk versus your short and long term goals, and guide you towards a level of risk that won’t disrupt your sleep. Many aspects of life are highly stressful, and your investments should not be part of the roller coaster. Our job is to ensure that you can stay in your portfolio through multi-year ups and downs.
Controlling Cost
As our Fees page and our many Articles attest, cost is the major enemy of achieving market returns. We will use a combination of institutional index funds and ETFs to reduce management costs. For bond investors, cost is paramount, and we will use either funds or individual bonds depending on total account assets and your need for current, tax-efficient income. As fee-only advisors, we’re passionate about reducing costs, and we’re good at it. Your portfolio returns will benefit from this focus.
Reducing Taxes
Taxes are almost always your biggest cost, and an overtaxed portfolio suffers from decompounding. We’ve all seen images of how compound interest creates amazing growth over many decades. Decompounding has the opposite effect: if you pay taxes now instead of later, you’ll reduce your ability to compound your growth, with terrible consequences. Our article, Taxes: Your Largest Expense, goes into this in more detail.
Ongoing Management
The perfect portfolio we start with will inevitably change. You will experience a sudden surge of new money, or you will suddenly need money, and we will make changes together. We use income rebalancing to keep portfolios efficient, meaning that as new money comes in we will allocate it to asset classes that have dropped below their initial allocation. This forces you to buy low, and is part of the mechanics of proper investment. We’ll be there with you as you go through life’s many changes, including new family members, the passing away of relatives, changes in jobs, changes in real estate, and so on. Life has many turning points, and as your CFO we will help you keep the process of creating wealth on track.
Unbiased Advice
Because we are fee-only, you can always be certain that we will provide unbiased answers to your questions about different types of investments. Commission-based advisors will naturally steer clients towards investments with higher commissions. We don’t earn commissions of any kind, so we’ll never have a motivation that is different than yours.
Learning More
If haven’t already done so, we recommend you familiarize yourself with the principles of index investing. We’ve written a series of easy-to-read, informative pieces in our Articles section. The first article, Active vs Index Investing, is a good place to start
Working Together
When you’re feeling comfortable with our approach to investing, please Contact Us. We’ll answer your questions and ensure that there is a fit between us.
The process of working together is simple. We’ll send you our contract to review, and once we’re officially working together we’ll start the process outlined on this web page, which really does include our starting with your story. Along the way there will be administrative steps, including possibly opening of new investment accounts. This will be done so as to avoid wasting your time filling out endless forms with repeated information.
When we’re done with implementation, you’ll have a new portfolio and the usernames/passwords you need to keep tabs on it. Our clients find the entire experience very empowering.
Next Steps