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The short term adjustments to stock markets should not worry investors that are looking long term

Investment Planning

Anyone seeking evidence that investment decisions can be hard often needs to look no further than the front page news. China, oil, VW and Glencore are among the assets that have made the headlines in the past few months after suffering sudden, unexpected and dramatic changes in price.

Investors with exposure to those volatile assets might be licking their wounds and reconsidering their positions. This is because many investors have an investment strategy that relies on their (or someone else’s) forecasts about the future. In the simplest terms, their starting point is a blank sheet of paper, where they build a portfolio of assets they think will do better than the alternatives. Sometimes those decisions are right; sometimes they are wrong.

We have a different starting point. Our investment advice is based on things we know rather than things we don’t know. For example, we know that financial markets do a good job of setting prices, so we don’t try to second-guess them. Instead, we begin with the belief that investors will, on average and over time, receive a fair return for investing their money.

Our aim is to give our clients access to that long-term return through broadly diversified, low-cost portfolios of assets that aim to beat the market average. The portfolios do this by using information in market prices that tells us about a security’s characteristics and its expected future returns.

The decisions we make about what assets to hold are based on decades of academic research rather than short-term hunches. This means we can focus on meeting your long-term goals rather than becoming absorbed by short-term market movements.

Generally speaking, investment decisions are hard, but if, like us, you start with information you know is backed by decades of evidence and build an investment philosophy and strategy around it, we think you can improve your chances of being a successful investor.

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