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Show It will take time and attention to make portfolio grow & meet investment goals By pam Nichols ' ; ' Financial Consultant ' Shearson, Lehman Hutton Aside from the experience and ucpertise heeded to manage an in-restment in-restment portfolio, a good deal of jme and attention must be spent on a daily basis if your portfolio is to grow, and meet your investment ob-' jectives. " In fact, it has been estimated that . it takes up to four hours a day of research re-search to effectively manage, a $100,000 portfolio. Clearly, few investors in-vestors can afford to spend that amount of time tending to their financial fi-nancial interests. ;i 4 , , ? w Enter the moneyor investment- manager. More than 10,000 of these individuals, manage billions of dollars in assets for large and small investors across the United States While some managers, work with ' clients who have as little as $5,000 to invest, most agree professional individual management is not needed need-ed for amounts under $50,000. . Unlike some segments of the securities se-curities industry, investment managers are not closely regulated. Because of this-and the fact that there is no auditing of their activities ac-tivities by any regulatory board-great board-great care should be exercised when selecting and evaluating these individuals in-dividuals and their firms. V' H While the vast majority of these , professionals are honest and maintain main-tain the highest ethical .standards, some unscrupulous money . managers have made exaggerated claims about their past performance. perfor-mance. If you have decided to use a professional pro-fessional manager for your port-, folio, several basic 'guidelines can be helpful both, in selecting and ( evaluating this expert. The first and perhaps most important of these is I to establish clearly your individual ; investment objectives or goals. Are you most concerned with preservation preser-vation of capital, or are you looking for maximum growth? What annualized an-nualized rate of return do you expect? ex-pect? - . Armed with the answers to these and other questions, you're now better prepared to look for a money method of evaluation is to compare the performance of the portfolio with those of selected indexes, the Value Line Index, the Standard and Poor's Index or others depending on the ' management style being employed. ;. :. Fees charged for . money management services can range be- tween one-half of one percent up to. . two percent of assets invested for the money management alone. Commissions could add an additional addi-tional one to two percent on a . $100,000 portfolio. : For many years,' large institutional institu-tional investors with assets of ,$500 million ior imore to manage including corporate pension funds, union, professional associates and )s municipalities-have turned to fi-' fi-' nancial consulting . firms to help them find and evaluate investment managers. However, over the past decade, brokerage firms have provided pro-vided similar consulting services to investors in the $100,000-plus range. If your investment portfolio has grown to the point where it's no longer feasible to manage it yourselrVyou might Consider retain- : ing armoney manager. Your financial finan-cial consultant is a good starting point to review a number of possi- . ble options for your particular requirements. manager whose investment-philosophy investment-philosophy and styles are consistent with your personal objectives. ' Howeveiybefore making your final decision, ask several "promising" managenf about ; their investment Strategies, proof of past perfor-:;. perfor-:;. mance, .personal background and ' experience, size of their companies, and the support services available to their firms. . . . . . But don't stop the evaluation process at the selection stage. Once you've chosen a manager who inspires in-spires your confidence, pay close attention at-tention to his investment decisions on your behalf. While this initially may take a bit of your time, it helps ensure that the manager's decisions are consistent with your objectives. From the start of your new relationship, rela-tionship, insist that the manager be accessible to you either directly or through your financial consultant It is important that you have access to someone who is watching over , your account If you con-; con-; sistently cannot get through to your advisors, you might want to start looking elsewhere for this service. While "bottom line" results are critical-it's also important to rej member that evaluationof youf manager's performance must ex-" ex-" tend beyond a simple look at the return on your investment. Market . cycles and other factors can impact . portfolio . performance, and these should be considered apart from the manager's contribution. A , good |