Exclusive Wealth Management Solutions

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MANAGING CLIENT PORTFOLIOS

At Lockhart Capital Management we believe that investment portfolios should be managed on an evidence-based approach appropriate for the prevailing market conditions. For example, during the 1990’s this approach would have allowed you to benefit from the burgeoning theory of Behavioural Finance, and for the first decade of the new Millennium to benefit from the use of Risk Targeted Investing.  Assessing the impact of Fiscal and Monetary policy is, naturally, always appropriate, and has been crucial over the last fifteen years.

When looking to select a Wealth Manager, a client should consider appointing one that has experience in managing capital through both positive and negative business cycles. A manager who can navigate safely through turbulent waters is every bit as essential as those who thrive during the boom times. Markets have been increasingly unsettled over the past three decades and one should look to employ a team that has successfully managed portfolios through, say, the 1997/98 Asian Currency Crisis, the Technology boom and bust of 1999/2000, 9/11, most notably the global Financial Crisis of 2008/9, and more recently the COVID 19 pandemic.  History rarely repeats, but it can rhyme.

Our Investment Team does have this experience and exists solely to manage the portfolios of Lockhart clients, to ensure that their financial planning goals and aspirations can be achieved.  They construct unconstrained portfolios with demonstrable longevity, and that can perform at least acceptably in the widest variety of possible circumstances.  Their flexible and long-term approach has proven appropriate and successful for clients for nearly thirty years.

THE TEAM

Andrew Wilson, our Chief Investment Officer, previously led and managed a hugely successful discretionary investment service for a large national wealth management firm, where, upon his departure, he and his team were responsible for managing some £6bn of client assets.

In 2017 he then co-founded the Lockhart Capital Management Private Investment Office which had until mid-2024 been responsible for managing the wealth of the Lockhart family of clients. This launch, which again was one of the most successful of its vintage, managing close to £700m for a select group of individuals and their families.

To further finesse and enhance the Lockhart investment proposition, and to take into account the ever evolving economic, political and fiscal landscape Lockhart Asset Management (LAM) was launched in September 2024 in conjunction with our partners at Pacific Asset Management. LAM will continue to be headed by our CIO Andrew Wilson with the ongoing support of Robert Seachoy (Portfolio Manager) and Wee-Tsen Lee (Head of Fund Research). It will manage an exclusive range of Dublin listed funds which when combined will make up the Lockhart Capital Management portfolios and which will offer access to active, passive and factor style investing from best-of-breed fund management houses from around the globe.

For further information on the team and their solutions please go to www.lockhartassetmanagement.com

 

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THE FINANCIAL MARKETS

Given the robust valuations of many financial assets, the changing level of interest rates and inflation, and the central banks somewhat “maxed out” positions, future investment returns for traditional investors and processes may well prove to be below par in real terms.

It is possible that some of the tailwinds which have assisted asset prices for the last 35 years will dissipate or potentially even become headwinds. Investors will have to work considerably harder in the future to preserve and grow their wealth post inflation, taxes and currency fluctuations. An investment process built today needs to be forward-looking and acknowledge this likelihood.

Modern markets are seemingly ever more liable to trend, be it up, down or sideways given the dominance of valuation-insensitive algorithmic trading. Furthermore, the marginal investor is now mainly passively invested. To this end, one must accept that upside volatility, or the exposure to market risk, is not necessarily bad and that it may have to be embraced if sufficient future investment returns are to be captured.  A longer-term approach can help with this and is a diversifying feature of the portfolio.

Asset allocation should be pragmatic, but occasionally dynamic, to benefit from dislocations in the market and abrupt changes in investor sentiment.  This is both to protect the portfolios, but also to take advantage of opportunities as they emerge, even if fleeting.

PHILOSOPHY & PROCESS

The Lockhart Asset Management process acknowledges that financial markets are complex, adaptive systems which are driven by earnings and liquidity in the long term and by sentiment in the shorter term.

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PHILOSOPHY & PROCESS

The Lockhart Asset Management process acknowledges that financial markets are complex, adaptive systems which are driven by earnings and liquidity in the long term and by sentiment in the shorter term.

Our Exclusive Wealth Management Solutions will employ a five signal process, which will embrace the momentum in financial markets, as well as the role of investor psychology. It doesn’t claim to predict the future, rather that we have the confidence in the average outcome in specific conditions. The process crucially does manage investment risk effectively.

We will invest across multiple assets classes and currencies and seek to have exposure to the best institutional fund managers available. We will employ and embrace active, passive and factor style investment management techniques.

Warren Buffett suggests that the most important skill in finance is ‘temperament’ and a process based on extreme objectivity increases the possibility of meeting that requirement. We also firmly believe that it is a necessity not to make today’s good portfolio the enemy of tomorrow’s perfect portfolio.

A good portfolio can often perform in a wider variety of circumstances than a scenario-dependent portfolio, which carries greater risk and requires higher levels of turnover and cost. A process should be clear, robust and repeatable. It should make intuitive sense and, most importantly, for any process you should be able to stick with it. Finally, it should of course work in practice and reality.