How Intelledgement can make a difference to your life
The secret of success is constancy of purpose.
— Benjamin Disraeli
Our focus at Intelledgement is on attending to the big picture and then applying the wisdom gained thereby to improving your life. We expect that you can benefit from engaging Intelledgement as your investment advisor directly and indirectly.
We believe that specialization is a hallmark of civilization. However, it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and as with the daily news media, most financial advisors tend to focus on transitory minutia to the detriment of appreciating the big picture. Studying USA banks affords one the advantage of knowing which are the stronger ones…until the dollar crashes, tanking them all!
Our investment advice: designed to protect and inform
Our constant purpose is to help you to navigate around the potential shoals of “forest” level developments, so that you don't get stuck, metaphorically speaking, in a seemingly unassailable evolutionary niche cleaning the teeth of sharks only to discover one day that they have gone extinct.
To this end, we aim to benefit you directly by seeking the best ROI we can get on the 70% (or whatever) of your savings you commit to the stock market, utilizing Macro strategy-informed investments in—primarily—exchange-traded funds.
We also aim to benefit you indirectly by keeping you up to speed on the impact forest-level developments may have on your life, aside from your portfolio. It is rare that a single tree-level event is going to meaningfully effect your life. (The 9-11 attacks constitute a good example of such an exceptional tree event.) But forest-level developments—climate change, energy shortages, the decline of the manufacturing base in the West, high-tech health care advances, etcetera—have the potential of engendering changes that ripple through everything, or at least a lot of things.
Here are the specifics as to how we do it:
- Strategy: Macro Analysis. Macro analysis is one of the classic strategies employed by hedge funds. Typically, macro hedge funds aim to profit from changes in global economies brought about by shifts in geo-political factors that impact interest rates, currency, stock, and bond markets….
- Tactics: Exchange Traded Funds. In times gone by, it was not easy to employ a Macro strategy approach for a modest-sized portfolio. You couldn’t invest in a hedge fund unless you were an accredited investor. And to duplicate the strategy yourself, you would need a brokerage account with a margin agreement, a commodities trading account, and a currency trading account….
- Risk Management: When Leverage is Evil. Leverage per se is not evil. We only get a problem when an invester goes overboard…as hedge funds typically tend to. When the secretive Citadel Investment Group—a multi-billion dollar hedge fund—filed disclosure documentation in 2006 (preparatory to issuing bonds), they revealed that of $5.5B in expenses during 2005, 90% went for interest payments….
- Next Steps: Do You Need a Portfolio Diagnosis?. Many folks know if their portfolios are up or down, but not whether their investments beating, matching, or trailing the performance of the market overall…or if they’re on track to meet their financial goals. Or maybe they’re not sure about how to define their goals. If you think you might use some help with this, our Portfolio Diagnosis service might be right for you….
- Next Steps: Due Diligence. If you like what you’ve seen so far, you may want to review the documents Intelledgement are required to file with the State of North Carolina each year (forms #1, #2, and #3). And, you can peruse our standard contract for investment advisory services (#4) and our Privacy Protection Policy Statement (#5). You may also find our Client Objectives Questionnaires (#6) helpful. And there are some Fidelity forms relevant to opening an account with them….