Seeking personal investment advice

This investment FAQ is a free web site written for people that want to acquire advanced skills in investment and become competent investors. On the other hand, many readers come to the conclusion that while they found the site immensely valuable they still would like proper professional advice for their own unique situation.

I am a fee for service financial planner from an independently owned financial services licensee, offering a comprehensive and low cost financial advisory service that adheres to the ethical and investment principles I talk about in this site. I rebate commissions whenever possible, including trail commissions, what I charge for my services is entirely transparent and negotiated in advance. I have had a lot of feedback from aus.invest readers that my site is very good but try as they might they can't find a single decent adviser that sounds even remotely like giving the kind of advice this web site contains. If, like me, you have concluded that the financial planning industry is mostly populated by salesmen that charge too much then I am ready to prove to you that there is a person that gives "independent advice".

As you have probably figured out by now, I am a fan of index funds, value investment and contrarian asset allocation techniques. Using robust, time proven strategies of asset allocation and portfolio management I aim to help my clients achieve the best possible return from a properly constructed portfolio. "Best possible" doesn't necessarily mean ultra high way above market performance - you won't get that with a portfolio largely made up of index funds - all it means is that I recognise that fund selection is primarily a chump's game and that in the long term most active funds, even the ones that brag on TV about their wonderful past performance get beaten after tax and charges by good index funds.

My portfolios make heavy use of value index funds by Dimensional Fund Advisors, which are only available directly through certain approved financial advisers and are also available in some low cost wrap accounts and master trusts. For those that say that passive investment does not lead to high performance, I point to the approximately 7%pa outperformance of value indexes for over 20 years as evidence that it can. (NB: part of this period includes modelled results, DFA has not been in business in Australia for 20 years, so a portion of the time period quoted includes backtesting of low price to book ratio value strategies identical to the one employed by DFA today.)

For aggressive investors I use active funds only on the margin, mostly boutique value managers and long/short funds for diversification and the enhanced probability of high performance. Quite a few of the products and managers I use are not available via discount brokers and I wouldn't be too surprised if you've never heard of most of the funds I recommend. Certainly they are not managers you'll see advertising on television. For more conservative investors I almost entirely use index managers, and use a variety of very low cost products ranging from standard Vanguard funds, to wholesale products and exchange traded index funds (including ones listed on the American Stock Exchange). Every concept from this FAQ is used to maximum advantage, and I pride myself on providing a very comprehensive financial planning service.

My goal is to provide high quality, personalised investment advice. I seek to minimise costs to clients and favour a very low turnover long term strategy. I seek to give my clients one or two percent better returns over the long term by keeping their management expenses, transaction fees and tax costs a couple of percent lower, I believe this is the only reliable way to guarantee better investment performance. I even favour the low cost "group rate" insurance products over the more expensive policies sold by insurance salesmen and in my firm there is a mortgage broker who provides advice on low cost mortgages and investment financing.

I don't believe that a multi-choice questionnaire is adequate fact finding for risk profiling and my plans are not the usual "cookie cutter" variety turned out in volume by most advisers. Every portfolio is constructed on its own merits and now that I am an independent adviser not attached to any large dealer group I have the flexibility to determine asset allocation on a case by case basis - as opposed to just pigeonholeing people into one of five risk profiles and then sell them a prepackaged balanced portfolio.

If you feel that you could use an advisor like that, have a look at my other web site, which details the sort of business I conduct. I am not after any particular client type and I don't turn away people that don't have huge amounts of money. I am based in Perth but have clients all over Australia (I send out questionnaires by email or snail mail, and conduct interviews on the phone and via a series of email discussions.) I would be more than happy to talk to you if you want such an adviser.

My other web site is http://www.travismorien.com