Dealing With Investment Uncertainty

By Bob Barber, CWS^®, CKA^®

We have all been living with a lot of uncertainty over the past 12 months. The Coronavirus continues, the new administration’s socialist agenda and Biden’s numerous executive orders, continued massive borrowing and printing of money and what will be the short term and long term effects of all this borrowing, the possibility of higher taxes, and now inflation. On top of all this, add in the different social media opinions, 24 hour news channels, and professionally paid doomsdayers making up all kinds of conspiracy theories to scare people into buying high commission gold and silver and you would think mankind and the world as we know it is coming to an end any day.

STOP! STOP! STOP!

My advice is to pray and seek God’s wisdom, turn off all the “noise”, meaning social media, the news, the internet, and TV for a few days or even a few weeks and go for walks or hiking or fishing in the many parks surrounding all of us and enjoy God’s creation. Read and meditate on these two scriptures as well, Matthew 6:25-34 and Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. During both good and uncertain times, our team always uses the following SEVEN, proven, long term Biblical principles and wisdom for managing your money.

These Seven principles are:

1) We never allow emotions, feelings, social media, or professional doomsdayers with their conspiracy theories dictate to us how to manage our portfolios.

2) We consistently monitor and actively manage using a forward looking approach, but we do learn from history.

3) We invest your money only in companies that have:

• Pro family values
• Produces things we all need like food, clothing, shelter, technology, healthcare, transportation, etc.
• Treats their employees well with fair pay, good health insurance benefits, a retirement plan, and time off for family
• Provides a safe working environment for their employees
• Has good employee training programs
• Are compassionate towards their employees’ needs
• Care about the environment and God’s creation

4) We avoid companies that:

• Support destructive behaviors and lifestyles
• Make money on gambling, tobacco, alcohol, pornography, and abortion
• Support organizations like Planned Parenthood that take away human lives in their most vulnerable state
• Supports the LGBTQ agenda and liberal causes

5) Once companies make it through our values screening process, we then look at their:

• Income Statements: Revenue (TTM), Revenue (Quarterly YoY Growth), EPS Diluted, EPS Growth, Net Income
• Profitability: Gross Profit Margin, Profit Margin, Dividend Yield
• Price and Valuation: Market Cap: 52 Week High (Daily), 52 Week Low (Daily), PE Ratio, Price to Book Value, Debt to Equity Ratio, Free Cash Flow (Quarterly), Return on Equity
• Top Analyst Consensus Recommendations: Buy Recommendations, Outperform Recommendations, Hold Recommendations, Underperform Recommendations, Sell Recommendations, Consensus Recommendation, Consensus Rating, Price Target Upside Potential

6) Then, we diversify into Large, Mid, and Small sized companies across the Value, Growth, and Blend style boxes, as well as by sectors and countries.

7) Finally, we utilize an investment strategy for each individual client’s short and long term needs. Examples include: income for retirement, emergency needs, college costs, etc. We then diversify their investment dollars across our five (5) actively managed portfolios to correspond with their goals and needs (listed):

• Ultra Conservative – Immediate and short term needs, time horizon of 1-3 years. Fixed income, low interest focused, no growth potential.
• Conservative – Intermediate needs, time horizon of 3-5 years. Interest focused, some growth potential but never more than 20% in the stock markets.
• Moderate – Intermediate to long term needs. 5-8 year time horizon. An equal emphasis on income and growth, weighted more or less in the stock markets and fixed income depending on where we feel the economy is heading.
• Growth – Long term time horizon, 8-10 years, up to 80% in the stock market with the remainder in fixed income, also under or overweight depending on where we feel the economy is heading.
• Aggressive Growth – Very long term time horizon, 10 years plus. Up to 98% in the stock markets. High tolerance for risk and volatility.

 

As a Fiduciary Based Asset manager, we can never allow ourselves to be out of touch with where the markets are headed in order to make the small, necessary adjustments along the way for all of our portfolios. Investment management of our clients’ assets must run like a well-oiled machine with constant tweaks being made along the way to keep it running at peak operating conditions.

If you’re already one of our clients, then we hope this helps you process uncertainty in the markets as our team is managing your assets according to the procedures and principles listed above. If you’re not one of our clients, then contact our office today at (830) 609-6986 to get started with our active, forward approach, Biblically Responsible investment management so that you don’t have to go it alone.