« Previous Commentary | Home | Next Commentary »
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
The Race is Long
This is a natural time of year for reflection, and here at Warren Capital we've been looking back on lessons learned in order to improve our practice. Our challenge is that we can always find a competitor, or benchmark, or sector, or country, or asset, etc. that we'd like to have beaten but didn't. But is that really the nature of our race? If so, when does it end?
When I started Warren Capital in 2005 my goal was to build a complete wealth management practice that increased the likelihood of clients reaching their financial objectives. Whether it be monthly income, early retirement, a vacation home or saving for a child's education, our goal is to help our clients meet their aspirations. This requires much more than picking good investments because clients have to file taxes, get life and health insurance and provide a home to shelter their families at the same time. We know that helping our clients make good decisions on all these matters gets them to their goals. So, we've spent most of the last year enhancing and building those practice areas.
While we've worked with clients on their insurance needs in the past, we are actively building our insurance and annuity practice under the direction of John Norce and Paul Barbieri. Collectively, John and Paul have 45 years of insurance experience and are experts in their field. We've also brought on John Walsh, CPA, to help our clients with taxes. John has been a CPA for 33 years and handles personal and corporate filings as well as 401k administration for our clients. Finally, I acquired an interest in a mortgage broker and we are financing mortgages at very low interest rates. We are working with many clients in these new areas right now, but if we haven’t spoken to you about your needs, please give me a call.
So, how did we do in 2011? If you asked any of our clients that utilize our entire wealth management practice I believe they would say quite well. What makes me most proud is that we had a few clients retire earlier than they thought they would. This proves our process works, and we are doing our job. But I'm a perfectionist, and I'm always trying to find ways for us to do better. So, in addition to expanding our tax, mortgage and insurance business, we've added a new investment technique that is already producing sizable results —shorting stocks. In the past we've used our proprietary analysis to find companies we want to own but we didn't fully capitalize on the companies we believed were strategically disadvantaged or overvalued. We now are doing such and will be launching a product that allows us to short in retirement accounts.
It's easy to look at the S&P 500 which, after all the erratic headlines, ended the year unchanged and say very little was accomplished in 2011. But in reality there is more than just this benchmark. With our enhancements in the insurance, tax and mortgage arenas we've built an unparalleled wealth management practice that allows all financial matters our clients face to be handled in one place and to work in harmony. This all came together in 2011, but it has taken many years to put all these pieces together as much time and substantial effort was needed to find the right people. So, as you look back on your year and set goals for the upcoming one, I encourage you to look beyond the calendar as accomplishments aren’t necessarily tied to such. Whatever your goal, be it personal or financial, are you closer to meeting it? Because the race is long, but in the end it is only with yourself.
Happy New Year and I appreciate your continued trust and confidence.
