Investment Policy Statement (IPS) Construction
At the beginning of the relationship with JB Meridian Advisors, your unique situation is taken into consideration to arrive at an investment plan. We design an Investment Policy Statement (IPS) tailored to your specific circumstances, risk tolerances and with the current investment environment and economy taken into consideration. IPS construction is the result of an objective planning process with specific detail focused on four key areas:
- Diligent investment research,
- Efficient asset allocation,
- Careful Investment placement,
- Disciplined implementation.
It would be difficult to achieve long-term investment success without a comprehensive plan focused on these four key areas, which is why we identify your individual roadmap prior to beginning our journey and then revisit the plan periodically to make any necessary modifications.
Investment Selection
“Developing an investment strategy that matches the risk level for each client is essential to the investment selection process and portfolio composition. It allows us to maximize investment return of each portfolio, while minimizing the overall risk profile of the portfolio.” - Jack A. Kennedy, Chief Investment Officer
When you join JB Meridian Advisors, you’ll complete a Client Information Profile (CIP) detailing your financial goals and expectations and answer specific risk questions, allowing us to gauge your personal tolerance for portfolio volatility. From this foundation, we are able to propose a customized asset allocation aimed at achieving your investing objectives.
After establishing the basic portfolio foundation, our strategic and tactical approach beings. We propose specific investments to populate your portfolio and guide it to your investment goals.
“With so many possible investments and investment categories to choose from, the old recommendation of simply ‘diversifying’ your portfolio has become far more complicated for the average investor. It makes it truly difficult to ‘go it alone’ without the guidance of a skilled advisor having his finger on the pulse of the financial markets and the overall economy.” Jack A. Kennedy, Chief Investment Officer
We navigate possible investment categories, selecting a proper percentage to allocate for each asset class.
Investment Categories
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Gov’t Bonds (T-Bills & Bonds) Corporate Bonds High Yield Bonds International Bonds Municipal Bonds CD’s |
Large Cap Stock (Value & Growth) Mid Cap Stock (Value & Growth) Small Cap Stock (Value & Growth) International Stock Real Estate Investments Mortgage Back Securities |
Limited Partnerships Commodities (Gold, Oil, etc…) Managed Futures Annuities Foreign Currency Money Market |
Individual Stock Selection
We have no interest in generating commissionable transactions for our clients and therefore have no motivation for investing in any particular product or stock. We strive to add alpha (excess rate of return on a security above what would be expected given a particular risk level) to client portfolios. When we recommend an individual equity for your portfolio, you can be confident that we believe the stock is an excellent risk-adjusted addition to your account holdings. Fitting your risk profile, we recommend specific individual equities for appropriate clients for a portion of the overall holdings to achieve your investment goals.
Manager Selection
Selecting top asset managers from each investment category is a demanding and ongoing process that requires persistent due diligence. We take pride in our thorough research process to bring you investment managers that perform well in their peer group over the long-term. Managers that have consistently proven their ability to outperform peers and benchmarks are used as the building blocks for your portfolio.
With over 30,000 mutual fund managers to select from, arriving at who we consider the best in each asset class is an ongoing process that we take pride in.
Here’s a sampling from our screening criteria:
- Consistent peer & benchmark outperformance
- Low relative standard deviation (volatility measure)
- High relative Sharpe ratio & Alpha (risk-adjusted return measures)
- Long manager tenure
- Low duration risk (fixed income)