Investment Advice

At Chris Humphrey Private Wealth Management, we specialise in investment advice. We put investment advice and strategy before financial products. Furthermore, we rebate all investment commissions received from investments where the investments contribute towards a client's Funds Under Management (FUM).

Our investment advice is tax-focused and customised to your personal circumstances and views.

At Chris Humphrey Private Wealth Management we:

• Do not believe market cycles can be timed successfully time after time;
• Acknowledge there are good and bad times to invest; and
• Are very aware that equity markets are a leading economic indicator and a recovery from a bear market can happen before economic data suggests.

We endeavour to maximise client wealth by tailoring our investment advice to their investment views and preferences. Determining our clients' investment risk profile is an integral step in our investment advice.

What can we do for you?

Our investment advice includes recommending:

• Active fund managers (generally we recommend Individually Managed Accounts - see below)
• Passive fund managers (Index tracker funds and ETFs)
• Investment strategies specific to client views, including writing covered calls (buy/write strategy), hybrid bonds, etc
• Direct residential and commercial property (see our property advice page)
• Sourcing of firm stock of placements and IPOs (equities and bonds).

What we don't or rarely recommend

• Structured products
• Tax effective schemes (ie Agribusiness)
• Hedge funds (mainly due to their lack of regulation)
• Mortgage funds.

How we select our investments

We favour investments and investment managers that attempt to maximise investors' after tax investment returns. Sadly, our after tax investment return focus is not common amongst the financial planning community. Other considerations are:

• Investment fees
• Transparency of the fund
• Track record of the fund manager (not the fund itself)
• Internal gearing
• Client risk profile
• Structure of the investment (ideally Individually Managed Accounts).

After tax investments returns are enhanced with low investment turnover and the ability to sell stocks before year-end to crystallise either capital gains or losses.

Low investment turnover results in:

• A higher portion of tax credits attached to dividends (due to the 45 day rule); and
• Higher unrealised capital gains, which reduces taxable income and hence tax - capital gains tax can be discounted by up to 50% if investments are held for more than 12 months.

Individually Managed Accounts

Individually Managed Accounts are investment portfolios that are managed by investment managers through a custodian where the underlying investments are beneficially held by the investor and not the investment manager.

Advantages of this approach are:

• Complete transparency of transactions and costs of the fund manager;
• Ability to sell stocks before year-end to crystallise capital gains or losses; and
• Individual tailoring of investment portfolios (eg an investor could ‘black list’ BHP if they required).