The basis of our work.
Many people assume that all financial advisors must always act in their client’s best interest. However, it is estimated that approximately 85% of financial advisors do not always have fiduciary responsibility to their clients. In fact, many insurance agents, stockbrokers, and financial planners operate under a suitability standard, meaning they are merely required to make recommendations that are suitable for their client. And because they are not fiduciaries, they can be motivated by commissions earned from selling insurance and investment products.
In contrast, Jentner Wealth Management is a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) that is legally required to act as a fiduciary 100% of the time, putting our clients’ needs ahead of our own. We don’t earn commissions or sell financial products so we can always make recommendations believed to be in your best interest.
What some money managers call active, we call misleading. Active management is risky behavior. Research shows that the majority of active managers fail to outperform the market. And it’s nearly impossible to predict who will beat the market, and those who do manage to outperform are unlikely to maintain their success. Active management, which seeks to pick hot stocks or time the market, is like playing with fire.
Instead, Jentner uses proactive management, which is the cool-headed approach that rewards steady, long-term investing. We employ a passively engineered investment strategy and disciplined rebalancing to reduce a portfolio’s risk and increase the likelihood of a successful investment experience over the long term.
You know the danger of putting all of your eggs in one basket. There are numerous stories of notable, innovative companies suddenly going bankrupt, and history shows how an asset class can be the top performer one year and the worst performer the following year. This is why concentrated portfolios are generally viewed as a breach of fiduciary standards.
Diversification can be the wise investor’s primary defense against potential disaster in one’s portfolio. In a well-diversified portfolio, the failure of any single company or asset class is mitigated. Diversification helps provide stability and reduce risk. Jentner diversifies client portfolios by investing broadly across the global markets to lower the risk of being too reliant on the fortunes of any one company, asset class, or economy.
Research shows that trying to time the market leaves investors with disappointing returns and concentrated portfolios are hazardous. Most people cannot afford to engage in these risky behaviors.
For these reasons, we developed the Jentner ProActive Investment Strategy™, an evidence-based, low-cost, passively engineered investment philosophy that is focused on long-term returns while reducing overall risk. We do this by choosing institutional asset-class funds, index funds, index exchange-traded funds, and alternative investments to invest broadly in more than 10,000 companies on six continents. Asset classes include large and small stocks, value and growth stocks, international and domestic and emerging markets, government and corporate bonds, domestic and foreign bonds, and more. With this methodology, our portfolios are designed to mitigate risk in both good times and challenging times and earn meaningful returns over the long term.
Then, we employ disciplined rebalancing to keep your portfolio on target. Portfolios shift with market changes, and new factors can affect your desired level of risk. Rebalancing is critical for keeping you on track for achieving your objectives. It controls portfolio value drift, keeping you near your target risk level, while promoting buying low and selling high.
It’s important to understand the reasoning behind your investment philosophy. Click here to read our white papers to learn why we implement a passively-engineered investment approach.
Watch the Video: Fee-Only, Fiduciary, and Independent.
There are three important criteria to consider when choosing a financial-planning and wealth-management firm: Are they fee-only; are they a fiduciary; are they independent?
