Orion + AAMA
Advocating Investment Reliability And Greater Collaboration Between Advisors And Strategists Since 2003
AAMA has managed money for advisors on the Orion platform since 2003. Why is that important? Because through this long tenure, we’ve learned a few valuable lessons that are highly relevant for advisors and their clients, which we cover below.
Lesson 1 -
Reliability Is King For Managing Investor Confidence
Since joining the Orion platform in 2003, we’ve seen just about every kind of market environment you can imagine. Through this hands-on experience we’ve come to a clear conclusion – reliability and stability is more important than short-term excellence.
Market outperformance is great, but if those returns aren’t founded in a process that’s time-tested and repeatable, it may actually do more harm than good to your client relationships… That’s because most clients aren’t willing to accept extreme highs and lows. Most clients are seeking a more stable investment process.
Even within a diversified UMA portfolio, most clients don’t like to see wild ups and downs within their equity strategies. They tend to seek strategies that are comfortable (aka – delivers what they expect, consistently).
This is why we advocate a fundamentally-rooted approach within your core equity strategies.
A few key benefits of leaning on the fundamentals:
- Fundamentals (price, earnings, and affordability) are easy to understand, which helps create client confidence.
- Fundamentally-rooted portfolios are easy to track and discuss (just look at the sector over and underweights), which further helps create clarity and confidence.
- The fundamentals of market pricing and sector valuation don’t tend to change quickly, which enables fundamentally-led portfolios to trade in a tax-aware fashion – which can reduce tax drag on investors.
- Fundamentally-rooted portfolios are usually designed around reliability and long-term stability rather than short term opportunity, which we feel is appropriate for the lion’s share of investors
AAMA seeks to help advisors deliver this comfortable growth experience through a process called Tactical Beta – where we tilt allocations toward attractive sectors of the market and away from sectors with higher perceived risk. It’s founded in time-tested fundamental analysis; the black and white statistics of market pricing and sector valuation.
Through Tactical Beta, we’ve helped advisors seek an investment experience that tends to make sense to clients. Our portfolios are designed to be reliable and they tend to be easy to understand and discuss.
Want to learn more about Tactical Beta? Click here for the full overview.
Lesson 2 -
Advisor-Strategist Collaboration Can Greatly Impact Client Experiences
The second lesson 20+ years on the Orion platform has taught us is the value of collaboration between advisors and their strategist partners.
You can find an investment portfolio anywhere. But most advisors and their clients don’t just need a trade desk. You need a partner that adds value throughout the investment experience.
To us, that means that advisor and strategists should work more closely together to serve investors.
A few ideas to garner more value from your strategist relationships:
- Bring strategists into the portfolio design conversations. Strategists should be well-versed on not just their strategies, but the strategies that work well with their own. Strategists can provide invaluable perspective when seeking to tailor a UMA toward a client’s specific goals and preferences.
- Use strategists to more quickly and comprehensively answer your clients’ questions. Whether your clients want your perspective on the market or an in-depth analysis of their portfolio, your strategist partners should be willing and able to provide you with information to help you answer those questions.
- Use strategists to improve your value proposition and even win more business. Do you host educational events for your current and prospective clients? Bring in a few strategists partners to showcase the value you can connect investors to. Do you have a meeting with a high-level prospect or client? Bring the strategists into the conversation that you’re recommending in their portfolio. Rather than detract from your value, the presence of strategists can bolster confidence and brings your value to life.
Over the past 20+ years, AAMA has placed a high emphasis on relationship quality over quantity.
What does that look like?
When you call, we think you should get an answer. And whether you’re evaluating a portfolio blend, seeking perspective on the markets, or fielding client questions, we think you should be able to access the people and information you need to manage your clients – from our investment team to our senior executives.
Want to learn more about our hands-on approach to the advisor-strategist relationship? Click here to schedule some time on our National Sales Manager, Aaron Ploscowe’s calendar. He’d be happy to run you through our process.
What Advisor-Strategist Collaboration Should Look Like
What should you expect from your strategist partners? AAMA’s Aaron Ploscowe demonstrates how strategists can impact the investment experience (beyond investment returns) in this quick overview:
Looking For Portfolios That Are Designed Not To Surprise, And A Strategist Partner That's Accessible And Collaborative?
If investments designed around reliability is something your clients value, and access to an investment team that is willing and able to work with you to solve client challenges is something you need, we’d love to speak with you. Click the link below to schedule some time on our calendar.
Additional Resources:
The information and opinions in this report have been prepared by the investment staff of Advanced Asset Management Advisors (AAMA). This report is based upon information available to the public. The information herein is believed to be reliable and has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but AAMA makes no representation as to the accuracy or completeness of such information. Opinions, estimates and projections in this report constitute AAMA’s judgment and are subject to change without notice. This report is provided for informational purposes only. It is not to be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy or sell any financial instruments or to participate in any particular trading strategy in any jurisdiction in which such an offer or solicitation would violate applicable laws or regulations.