Investing Investing Approach

Enhanced equity
index strategies,
customized to you

Many investors appreciate the desirability of index strategies that mirror broad market returns. We take indexing a step further, providing several enhancements to target outperformance and provide customizations around your risk profile and values.

In today’s financial services market, there can often be too many intermediaries between the investor and the investment. These layers reduce investment transparency and increase fees, which are detrimental to investment performance.

Operating as a Registered Investment Advisor and using separately managed accounts, we can deliver a strategically coordinated portfolio across multiple asset classes that is low-cost, tax efficient and customized.

Indexers Atlas Capital
Passive vs active Passive Enhanced Passive
Targeting Outperformance icon
Low cost icon icon
Broadly diversified icon icon
Transparency of allocation and fees icon icon
Factor investing icon
Downside risk mitigation icon
Tax aware/tax alpha icon
Customized by you icon
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Targeting higher returns, lower risk

Asset allocation has the single largest impact on client portfolio returns.

We begin with a target allocation to equities and fixed income that aligns with the risk-taking capacity of the client. For the equity portion, we apply strong, time-tested research to build portfolios designed to outperform investment benchmarks over the long term. The fixed income strategy is also systematic and aligned with research findings.

The research evidence indicates that systematic portfolios built upon specific factors have outperformed index and stock-picker strategies. These portfolios also tend to have lower return volatility and drawdowns compared with other strategies.

The widely researched factors which inform our equity and fixed income choices are:

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Is the relationship of price to underlying fundamental information favorable? In other words, what investment return is reasonable to expect given the price being paid?

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Has the price been rising?

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How much risk of loss does this asset present?

For the fixed income allocation, these factors help us choose the most appropriate exposure under current market conditions to duration, inflation protection, credit risk and geography.

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Low fees

Controlling costs is one of the most reliable ways to improve long-term investment outcomes. That’s why we provide both asset allocation and portfolio implementation—eliminating the need for an added layer of expensive third-party managers.

We aim to keep costs low across every part of the portfolio. The Atlas implementation includes direct investing in equities and fixed income, at no additional cost to the client, and low-cost, passive strategies which avoid the higher costs of active management.

Similarly, we do not recommend new allocations to costly and illiquid alternative investment strategies, which tend to generate lower net returns than equivalent investments made in liquid assets.

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Client-customized

In addition to building investment portfolios with specified risk and return attributes, the use of separately managed accounts allows us to bring customization to a higher level. We fine-tune a client’s investment portfolio by considering all asset holdings, risk profile, values, preferences and tax situation.

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Tax-efficient

Potential tax liabilities are an important consideration for any investor. Our model looks at the time value of deferring taxes paid for 20 years as part of analyzing expected returns of existing holdings versus replacement candidates. 

If a change is compelling enough, losses will be recognized. Tax loss harvesting will also be employed when opportunities are available. The effectiveness of tax loss harvesting tends to diminish during extended equity bull markets.