Investment solutions in a complicated environment

Investing in the stock market can be a difficult and daunting task for individual investors. Since the credit crisis of 2008, investors have watched their portfolios decline in value and many are unsure how to reverse this trend. Investing has become more challenging than ever and it takes a more refined Investment Advisor to guide you through the traps, twists, and turns of the financial markets. However, with sound fundamentals and a disciplined approach to the markets your portfolio can be navigated with the finesse of a Grand Prix show jumper or Dressage rider. So, let’s begin with some simple strategies:

1. Know What You Can Save & Invest – this is the key to living comfortably through the accumulation of savings. Knowing how much you can consistently save each month, without fail, is paramount to becoming a smarter investor.

2. Have A Goal – knowing your goal, or your expectation for the return on investments makes it possible to create a strategy to help you achieve that goal. The two keys to any long term investment goal are the amount of money being contributed each month, and the length of time to obtain the goal. Once these two keys are known, we can now move to the third and most crucial part of the equation: the required annual return, or the amount of money necessary to achieve your annual goal.

3. Develop A Strategy – the required annual return is where most long term investors fail. Not knowing the required annual return to meet your investment objectives can cause you to choose unwise investments that, most likely, will not perform as expected. Again by not knowing the required return needed, investors end up taking on too much risk, leading to bad investment decisions, caused by emotional investing, due to market volatility.

At Woodlands Portfolio Management, through years of experience with individual clients, we can help reduce investment risk, focus on your current investing life cycle, and reduce emotional investing, by building into your portfolio investment discipline.

Diversification: The foundation of Asset Allocation
Diversification is the method used to help reduce risk on your portfolio by investing in several different types of investments or simply put, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. When you diversify your investments over more than one investment, you help reduce the risk of holding only one single investment. Individual investments have a certain amount of inherent volatility and can fluctuate broadly in value. In addition, diversifying over several asset classes may offer returns that are not perfectly correlated and help reduce overall risk for your expected return.

Dollar Cost Averaging — is buying a fixed dollar amount of an investment on a regular schedule. By adhering to a schedule your cost per share will be reduced over time and thus reducing market timing risk.

Match Your Investments to Your Goals
Before deciding what types of investments are appropriate from a risk perspective, you should evaluate your savings goals. Is your goal to preserve your principal or perhaps generate income for your current expenses? Maybe you want to grow the value of your principal to outpace inflation. Whatever your answer, you should find an appropriate balance between the rate of return you hope to achieve and the risk you are willing to assume.

Woodlands Portfolio Management Core Strategy
WPM focuses on portfolio management centered on a risk/reward relationship. There are many risks associated with investing, one way to achieve an absolute return is to identify and mitigate those risks through asset allocation, hedging and active portfolio management. We believe a portfolio should be designed for more than just capital appreciation. Often markets do not rise. In such times we want to see income from dividends and interest to support a portfolio. We focus on absolute versus relative returns. We believe that investing is a long-term process built around a solid savings plan.

The conservation of principle and creating a total return on your investments often happens through a combination of income, capital appreciation and interest income. This formula can help achieve success in investing.

Let’s Sum It Up:
Investing can be a difficult task, but with the right Investment Advisor as your guide, and the right plan, and a disciplined approach, the prudent investor can increase their chances of successful investing. Remember through Asset Allocation, we can create an investment portfolio strategy which seeks to balance risk versus reward according to the investors risk tolerance, goals, and investment time horizon.

At Woodlands Portfolio management we believe in being conservative, disciplined and different.

For a complimentary portfolio analysis or free 401k rebalancing, please call or e-mail at the button below.

Advisory services provided through PKS Advisory Services, LLC. Firm is an SEC registered investment advisor headquartered at 18 Corporate Woods Blvd., Albany, NY 12211