Curiosity drives us. We are always searching - for new investment ideas, for better ways to construct the portfolio, for more efficient ways to do things, and for things that could go wrong. In short, we never stop exploring ways to improve the portfolio and to help our clients. 

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Areté's investment principles

These are the beliefs and mental models that guide our investing:

1. The market is fairly efficient.  The best way to exploit limited opportunities and to leverage investment acumen is to concentrate bets.
2. Alpha is elusive.  It requires constant diligence and flexibility to consistently outperform benchmarks.
3. Valuation theory is valuable.  Although valuation disparities may occur for shorter periods of time, stocks migrate to intrinsic value over longer periods of time.
4. Long-term thinking helps filter out short-term noise.  It provides a greater “signal-to-noise” ratio.
5. The future is indeterminate.  We don’t know what is going to happen for sure, nor does anyone else.  We can assess probabilities, however, and manage the distribution of potential outcomes.
6. Culture is critical to sustainable, long-term, organizational success.

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Areté's approach to investing

We believe that an important first step to creating an investment management operation fit for the purpose of helping investors is to avoid structural obstacles to good performance.  Research and empirical evidence reveal fairly clearly how investors are most likely to get the biggest bang for their investment bucks - and these are straightforward business decisions.

Active management
There is ample evidence that active management can be a productive exercise for identifying interesting opportunities and avoiding unnecessary risks as well as an essential activity for well-functioning markets. 

Inefficient asset classes
Active management has the greatest chance of succeeding in asset classes which are not efficiently priced. For those asset classes that are fairly efficiently priced, indexing makes more sense.

Reasonable fees
The single most important reason why most active managers underperform is because fees are too high. This is a business decision not an investment reality.

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Areté's asset management service
Quick takes

• We manage money for individuals and also welcome institutions

• We are independent are therefore are well-positioned to provide conflict-free services

• We actively manage money by focusing only on segments of the market where ample opportunities exist to differentiate performance.  

• We currently offer the All-Terrain Allocation strategy.

• The strategy is available for initial investments of $100,000 or more.