Critical to diligent money management is constant awareness of the various  forces that might affect your portfolio. Though a description of our process seems to imply a top down straight line flow of decisions, ours is in fact a furtively analytical environment in which we constantly monitor key factors at all levels, with information flowing up and down as circumstances dictate.

Markets

Valuations - We look for value everywhere, even in markets in which we do not participate. Price movements often create compelling reasons to shift assets - flows that affect your investments.

Price earnings ratio (PE) - A flow of earnings is what is actually purchased when one buys a stock. Knowing absolute and relative PE's helps steer your money to where earnings can be acquired most effectively.

Price to Book ratio (PB) - Earnings are dependent upon future, and unknown, events. Sometimes defensive, loss-reducing support can be found in stocks in which the underlying assets are worth as much as or even more than the stock's market price.

Earnings growth - In seeking forward looking sectors and industry leaders, we are really searching for earnings growth which can have a multiplicative effect on returns.

Economic statistics - Due largely to globalization and instant information flow via the internet and media sources, awareness of economic trends worldwide is more critical to asset management now than ever before. Rest assured that we are watching over the forest as we pick through the trees.

Portfolios

Discussed in more detail elsewhere, we constantly monitor asset allocation, industry weightings, and diversification among companies. Within the deferred compensation plans we manage, including 401k's, 403b's, and 457's, we even rebalance either on demand or automatically. When economic factors dictate a shift in allocations, we can make the appropriate adjustments firm-wide within a day.

Within each account, we assess portfolio risk versus client risk profile. We check appropriateness of holdings relative to the client's stage in the life cycle. We make sure that account specific limitations are in force. Of course, we utilize the latest tools to monitor yield, maturity, volatility and a host of other statistics intended to identify value and maximize the impact of our work.

Funds

For all of the retirement programs we manage, and when appropriate for individual managed accounts, we rigorously evaluate mutual funds to present the best and most cost effective solutions to the specific investment attributes sought. We monitor:

Performance

Past performance in no way indicates future returns, but particularly poor performance can be indicative of a problematic philosophy or practice while consistent, positive long-term results might indicate discipline and prudence.

Style consistency

Short-term fixed income funds should not own 30-year bonds, even if a manager thinks rates are heading down. Small cap stock funds should not own shares of General Electric. A growth fund should not hold Ford. We check prospectuses for limitations, scan portfolios, and confirm findings with third party sources to be sure a sought investment exposure is indeed what is acquired upon investing in a given fund.

Fund Expenses

We will never present funds with sales charges, whether upfront as in the case of 'A' shares or deferred as in the case of 'B' and 'C' shares. We also examine management and administrative expenses, as excessive rates are often a primary source for fund underperformance.

Management Changes

When fund management changes, the fund itself might change. We have alerts set up whereby we will be informed when portfolio managers join or leave funds on our watch. As with style consistency, we want to know what we are investing in.