Our experience in managing investment portfolios leads us to focus on delivering risk-controlled results by being objective, diligent, and patient.
At The Farris Group, portfolio management is an objective process that allows us to offer internally generated solutions. Our investment portfolios are generally allocated to our own investment ideas based on our proprietary research along with analysis of select Wall Street research and top hedge fund/institutional manager ideas. In addition, we may allocate a portion of our portfolios to various money managers who have exceptional track records against their peers in both good and bad markets. Depending on each client’s risk tolerance, we structure the portfolio allocating to each investment accordingly.
We employ what is often referred to as a “bottom-up” investment approach, meaning we focus on the businesses we appraise rather than attempt to forecast the short-term market direction. We seek to invest in quality assets that we believe are trading at a discount to “traditional valuation criteria”. Target buy and sell prices are established based on this criteria and monitored on an ongoing basis to identify potential fundamental changes that would warrant adjustment to the portfolio. In addition, we also utilize certain technical and sentiment market indicators as tools in a “Top-Down” manner to help us get insight into the emotional aspect of the market in general.
For fixed income, we search for high-quality, investment grade bonds that meet our objective to limit default risk. Allocations to fixed income will mainly be structured around the income needs of the client. However, we may also use fixed income strategies in our portfolios in lieu of holding cash.
We will also utilize ETFs or 3rd party money managers to access high yield, foreign bond markets, and specialized markets when deemed appropriate.