Family Offices - Asset Management
Tradition manages both stock and bond portfolios as stand-alone and balanced accounts. Within our equity portfolios, we seek companies with strong sustainable businesses. These businesses will exhibit above average profitability and free cash generation and above average secular growth. Stock purchases made at discounts to our estimate of intrinsic value, or with a margin of safety, help produce strong risk-adjusted returns. Margin of safety, preservation of capital, and positive risk-adjusted returns drive our mandates. We believe in participating in the growth of quality companies purchased at reasonable prices. We also selectively include asset or value plays that have a catalyst—like new management, restructuring or a product launch that will improve the business and set the company on a course for quality growth going forward.
Our experienced, knowledgeable and dedicated investment team is passionate about owning individual stocks of quality companies. We are not traders trying to outguess the market; rather, we are business and security analysts making an investment that, in our opinion, will provide a suitable risk-adjusted long-term return. Our process is focused on getting to know the business drivers: products, services, brands, assets, research pipeline, patents, networks, competitors, and supply/demand. Estimating the value of the business and buying the stock at a discount to this estimate of intrinsic or business value. We are a research and process driven asset manager focused on long-term performance.
Tradition claims compliance with the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS ®) and has verification for the performance reports detailed below. These are available upon request.
Dividend Value
All-Cap Advantage
CHESS (Call Harvesting Equity Stock Strategy)
Fixed Income
Diversified Global Strategies
Diversified Global Strategies match a client with a diversified portfolio that meets specific goals of income, safety and capital appreciation. Diversifying across low-correlated asset classes helps lower a Strategy’s risk at a similar expected return. While Tradition is skilled at selecting individual stocks and bonds, we outsource client capital to leading asset managers to bring the additional diversifying benefits of alternatives, global and other unique asset classes to our clients. These proven complementary investment assets diversify and improve a portfolio’s risk-adjusted expected return profile. We recognize the benefits of including alternatives and global assets to provide a complete investment solution. Alternative assets are a broad term that generally refers to almost any asset that is not a plain vanilla stock or bond such as: Risk Arbitrage, Covered Call Strategies, Reinsurance, Alternative Lending, Distressed Debt, Real Assets, Variance Risk Harvesting, and Bond Arbitrage to name a few. Global assets allow participation in opportunities around the world whether they are stocks or bonds or in the emerging markets or developed world. The common theme to both Global and Alternative is finding assets that move at an independent, or low (un)correlated pace and direction compared to U.S. stocks and bonds.
A sound asset allocation strategy is driven by complex statistical modeling that includes expected return, expected standard deviation and a correlation matrix. Optimizing Asset Allocation is a more complex process than simple diversification, but the goal is the same—risk reduction. Asset allocation is the process of selecting a mix of asset classes that closely matches goals and objectives. It is based on the premise that the different asset classes have varying cycles of performance, and that by investing in multiple classes, the overall investment returns will be more stable and less susceptible to adverse movements in any one class. All investments involve some sort of risk, whether it’s market risk, interest risk, default risk, inflation risk, or liquidity risk. Asset allocation strategies seek to mitigate the risks of any one asset class through diversification and balance. Risk tolerance, cash flows, and market realities determine a Strategic Allocation and the actual Tactical Implementation. Longer investment horizons naturally reduce risk as it diminishes the negative impact on any one year. Long duration also allows a portfolio to bear increased expected risk in exchange for increased expected return as time will have the benefit of allowing patience and recovery, from any one bad year, before the capital is needed.
