Protecting Your Investments

If two people invest $100,000, don’t add or withdraw any funds and average an annual return of 7% over 10 years, which person will have more money? Like many questions, the answer is "it depends"!

Depends on what? On how stable or volatile the investment is during the market’s ups and downs. Even though the two investments averaged the same annual return the investment with less fluctuation will likely have a larger value at the end of the period since it lost less during downturns.

When investing, isn’t the real goal the end result as opposed to the journey? I believe this is true whether you’re an aggressive investor looking for the "home run", a more conservative investor seeking preservation or you fall somewhere in between.

With this in mind and remembering that no investment or strategy can be guaranteed to perform as we expect or wish, it changes the way we might look at growing your investments. Instead of first looking at the potential for growth, we can start by considering an investment’s ability to protect and then establish a base of investments designed to provide greater protection and less volatility. Then we add different layers of investments around this core with each layer gradually taking on more risk to potentially achieve larger returns. This approach can be applied to any investor....growth or income focused.

With many current issues, such as Greece’s financial situation, the housing and commercial real estate industries, bank lending, unemployment and rising uncertainty about the world economies and markets, there are legitimate concerns about the impact of these issues on your investments. This is an excellent time to review portfolios and investment strategies. Give us a call if you would like to discuss your investments or financial situation.

Thank you

Mike