Our small "family" of Funds is designed to offer a range of investment options for investors with different objectives and temperaments. There are bond funds, stock funds and a balanced fund. There are differences in fund size, portfolio concentration, volatility, and tax sensitivity. But there are certain common threads which run through all eight of the Funds.

"We eat our own cooking."  All of our investment professionals have a majority of their families’ liquid net worth invested in our Funds. Our Trustees each have at least $100,000 invested in our family of Funds—some considerably more. This does not guarantee that the Funds will go up, but it means that we win or lose together and that shareholders definitely have our attention.

We are patient, long-term investors.  When we analyze potential equity investments, we think about the business behind the stock and try to buy shares at a large discount to the company’s underlying business value. Ideally, the business value rises over time and the stock price follows. This often allows us to hold the stock for many years, minimizing transaction costs, taxes, and the need for new investment ideas.

We try to stay within our "circle of competence."  "Knowing what you don’t know" is important in all aspects of life, but it is crucial in investing. We think our odds of investment success are much higher when we invest in securities of companies we understand and, ideally, where we may have an edge over other investors. As a result, our portfolios are not diversified among all the various sectors of the economy and thus may often be out of step with the general stock market.

Risk—we worry about permanent loss of capital—not price volatility.  We believe in concentrating our portfolio in the most attractive investment ideas and this can cause short-term price volatility of our portfolios.

We think "benchmark risk" is part of investment life.  Our firm’s goal is to earn good absolute investment returns over long periods of time without exposing our clients’ capital to undue risk. We do not think about any particular index when we make investment decisions. We also believe that cash is sometimes the most attractive investment. We know this approach causes headaches for some of our favorite consultants and plan sponsors, but we think flexibility and common sense will continue to serve our clients well over the years.