Oakland, CA | East Bay; A Second Set of Eyes – Advising on Portfolio Comparisons

Hi, I’m Erik Wolfers. I’m the founder and managing member of First & Main Financial. We’ve been helping clients with perfectly personalized financial solutions since 2001. We also provide ongoing support for our client’s—we provide a lot of peace and comfort in knowing where they stand and if their money is going to last throughout their life time, meeting their living standards and other expenses—like college or private K through 12 school for their kids. I want to talk just a little bit today about portfolio comparisons.

I was on the phone today with a client, looking at what’s happening with a different company managing their money. As fiduciaries, we’re bound to tell the truth and do what’s best for our clients—if some other entity is doing an excellent job or a good job, then we would tell our clients. When looking at the portfolio of the other company, there was no question that we could add value compared to what was happening. Over the last five years we had done a couple of percentage points better in return for our clients where the money was manage similarly.

It’s hard to compare portfolios perfectly because there can be movement of money or changes to the Investments over time—but over 5 years or 10 years, if you’re comparing portfolios that are managed similarly, it’s a pretty good comparison. Something else we do is look at each of the individual holdings very specifically. We’ve been shopping for and using different investment vehicles for almost 20 years. We do it all the time; we monitor lots of different investment vehicles and consider other investment vehicles regularly. It’s easy for us to look at something—we may be familiar with most of the holdings or some of the holdings in a client’s portfolio. Within just a moment’s time generally, I know whether something is good or whether I would put their money in something that’s better; that’s managed more soundly or has better expenses or has pretty significant outperformance.

We have clients sometimes that are pretty darn good at managing their own money, and we’re happy to tell them so. If they’re pretty good at it, maybe just help them tweak things a little bit around the edges—to put together a more complete portfolio or all-weather portfolio. We have clients that are good at managing money but they want us to manage just some of that money because they want an ongoing relationship with us and all the service and advice and perspective that that includes.

If you’re curious about how your portfolio is managed, we are experts and we’re happy to look at it for you and provide totally honest feedback.

If you are looking for some financial guidance; whether for a one time financial plan or continuing advice on your investments, we invite you to meet with a First & Main Financial planner for a free consultation. We would be more than happy to sit down with you, assess your situation and review our services to help navigate your financial future.