Tactical Strategies

Investment Philosophy—this strategy analyzes and recognizes technical patterns in the market to help deliver long-term, repeatable results. We use quantitative analysis to remove emotion from our decision-making. A disciplined methodology underlies everything this manager does. The model has been built over 18 years, and is based on a continuous process of design, test, validate, and repeat.

Strategy Objective—this strategy aims to capture 85% of the market’s upside, while limiting our losses to 50% of its downside, so that over the long-term, the goal is to grow money at 35% more than a buy & hold strategy.

Investment Philosophy—this strategy utilizes a tactical investment approach that adapts to the current market environment with the goal of delivering above-market, risk-adjusted returns with lower drawdowns than market indices like the S&P 500. Our strategies seek to participate in up markets while protecting capital during down markets. We rely on our proprietary quantitative models to remove human emotions from the investment process and help us objectively navigate the global financial markets.

Strategy Objective—this strategy seeks to outperform the S&P 500 during bull and bear markets. This is an Individual stock strategy that allocates to 20 stocks when both of our trend models (Alpha and Omega) are positive. There is 50% exposure to stocks when one model is positive and 0% exposure when both models are negative. There are no fixed allocations. The strategy can allocate 100% to stocks and 100% to bonds and T-Bills.

This strategy uses a combination of technical and fundamental analysis. This strategy seeks to identify alpha opportunities through event-driven, opportunistic and/or intrinsic value principles and blends bottom-up research with top-down considerations. It looks for companies that have had strong historical performance and continue to have prospects for sustainable performance (momentum) in several key value drivers, i.e., return on invested capital, growth, cash flows, and valuations. In addition to fundamental analysis, technical analysis is used to help identify price momentum as well as aid in execution decisions.

At any given time, the active equity strategy may contain stocks in various sectors or it may contain concentrated sector allocations as well as various or concentrated market capitalizations. For small-cap companies, the discount from the intrinsic value we look for is larger than the discount for mid-cap companies, and the mid-cap category requires a higher discount than the large-cap companies.

To aid in the exit strategy of positions, we have several sell disciplines, some of which are soft rules and others are hard rules. The following are some reasons we may want to exit a securities position:

-Deteriorating fundamentals
-Price has risen well above its intrinsic value
-The position has become overweighted relative to the other positions
-Better investment opportunities have been identified
-A mistake was made in the original equity selection
-A stop-loss or trailing stop-trigger was executed

This strategy is a tactical bond strategy that uses a trend-following model that monitors the day-to-day price changes in the bond market. Multiple bond markets are observed, including high yield bonds, emerging market debt, muni bonds and multi-sector bonds. Risk management is a primary concern, allowing us to participate in a rising market but limiting our downside exposure. On average, the model will generate 4 to 8 trades a year. The model can be fully invested in bonds or 100% in cash equivalents or any combination thereof. The model can utilize both mutual funds and ETFs.