Our Philosophy

At Monocot Wealth Management, we recognize there are many potential hazards for investors today. For this reason, our investment philosophy is based on a conservative approach with two primary goals:

• To protect the wealth our clients have worked so hard to attain.
• To grow our clients’ assets in a conservative fashion.

Our approach is designed to protect our clients’ investments against big market drops. We do this to avoid negative compounding—a situation that can quickly become hard to recover from. For instance, if a portfolio loses 50 percent of its value in one year, it’s not good enough to recover 50 percent the next year; that leaves the portfolio with only 75 percent of its original value. Instead, it must recover 100 percent of its original value—which is quite difficult to accomplish.

While our general approach to investing is conservative, we do offer portfolios and products that provide additional capital appreciation for clients who are willing to take on more risk.

Our operating philosophy is intrinsically linked to our investment process, which begins with our wealth simulation model. Walking with our clients through the wealth simulation helps us pinpoint their specific needs and goals.

Standing Apart From the Crowd

We take full advantage of our freedom as an independent firm to break out of industry paradigms, offering our clients a philosophy and approach to investment that is different from what is available at most large investment firms, as well as other independent firms.

We are continuously engaged and involved in our portfolios. We don’t adhere to the common industry practice of “buy and hold,” which we also call “buy and hope.” Instead, we take an active role in managing our clients’ assets. This enables us to quickly make adjustments whenever needed and provides the opportunity to make money for our clients in a variety of financial environments. We see ourselves as navigators and stewards of our client’s livelihood, so we never sit back and let our portfolios remain idle.

We believe that our clients should have access to all investments that can benefit them and that it is our job to make that decision an informed one. A standard investment philosophy holds that clients should always have a particular mix of U.S., international and emerging market stocks, along with some bonds and possibly other products—and that the only maintenance needed is occasional rebalancing. Monocot Wealth Management, however, believes that there are times when a client shouldn’t be in stocks or other investment products at all, such as volatile periods when stocks run the risk of losing a significant amount of their value. We use our experience, expertise and continuous, close observation of the financial world to make the right choices for our clients, even when that involves stepping away from a standard approach.

We don’t hesitate to recommend commission-based products when they are the right choice. A common belief in the investment industry is that commission-based products are inherently bad because they carry the risk of conflict of interest and, conversely, fee-based products are inherently good because there is no conflict of interest. That is simply not the case. There are certain potentially beneficial products—insurance, for instance—that can be invested in only through a commission-based structure. When we believe products such as these can provide benefit to our clients, we fully disclose all costs and features and let our clients make the final decision.

We believe some clients can benefit from sophisticated investment products. While most investment advisors stay where they’re comfortable—stocks, bonds, cash and real estate—we fully understand the more sophisticated investment products that can offer a better risk-reward tradeoff for some clients. When these options fit with our clients’ needs and wishes, we don’t hesitate to recommend them. As an RIA we can offer access to a wide range of uncorrelated alternative investments that may never make it to a wire house. Private Equity funds, REITs, first trust deeds and Real Estate Opportunity funds can be effective add-ons to traditional investments. Delaware Statutory Trusts (DST) and fractional ownership of real estate can be excellent tools for executing 1031 exchanges on your property when it is hard to identify a replacement property yourself.