Foresight Investment Counsel
We believe that investing is an art, not a science.
Foresight Investment Counsel, established in 1995, is a qualitative domestic manager of individual, basic, American securities for private clients. We are independent, stand alone, investment advisors, and are registered with the State of California as Registered Investment Advisors (RIA).
We believe private investment counsel and management to be an extension of securities analysis. Experienced portfolio management plus security analysis equals investment counsel. Your portfolio will be privately managed by a portfolio counselor/security analyst. We do not use products or contracts. We use simple, plain vanilla securities that everyone understands.
Investment recommendations are based on ensuring that our clients achieve their objectives while establishing and maintaining peace of mind.
Foresight Investment Counsel is devoted entirely to achieving the objectives set by the client.
Our Investment Philosophy
We have three basic goals for our clients:
Creation of wealth.
Preservation of capital with secure income.
Peace of mind.
Our experience with Institutional Management decision-making techniques directs us towards personal investing. Therefore, this experience allows us to use concentrated or over weighted positions of individual common stocks. Our concentrated equity positions are balanced since we are risk-averse investors. Using this format, the results have shown that we can outperform our equity benchmark which is the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
THE ART IN INVESTMENT COUNSEL
“Too many stocks mean just one of two things, you don’t know how to pick them or you have no sense of timing.”
Our private clients are not just risk averse, but also loss averse. Our perspective for each account has the fiduciary tolerance of a bank trustee under trust common law. Our objective is to manage money in all types of markets to provide consistent performance over the various market cycles. Our managers watch the market for our private clients. We invest as if it is our own money since we want to sleep well at night. Every security in all portfolios is monitored daily to make sure it fits with our current strategy and guidelines. As the investment climate shifts, we adjust account positions to retain client goals.
Our fiduciary investment management approach is based on economics and business conditions allocating funds between money market funds, individual common stocks, and uncovered individual bonds, depending upon the market cycle. Short term bonds may be a hedge against a declining market, and are used to supplement current income needs as demanded. Cash reserves or money market funds for equities and bonds are recommended on a timely basis to reach our client’s objective.
Our investment committee creates its stock universe (a work list of stocks) which is made up of unit growth brand name companies or dominant producers that have management systems with product/service superiority. What this means to our private clients is that we invest in quality common stocks, showing leadership positions worldwide. These companies must create consistent profits; have brand recognition with superior financial returns over the long term. Our favorite catalyst in a company is its exploitative product brand growth. Cyclical or secular growth companies may be the equity foundation of our accounts. We use a unique "Buy/Hold/Sell" (B-H-S) strategy for each security. High quality and marketability are present in all securities used in our portfolios. The implementation of this list requires patience and time to build the desired portfolio. Most of our equities must “run like water” since illiquidity hampers our results. Our objective is to create a portfolio exclusive to each of our private clients.
Our private clients must have patience with our style of portfolio management which is based upon compound returns. Our aim is to buy low and sell high during the complete market cycle. Our investment and strategy committee mandates that our firm have a exit discipline for every stock that is purchased. Our fiduciary relationship is most suitable for those private accounts (taxable and non-taxable) that can exercise patience with moderate turnover of assets to achieve the desired investment objective.
DIVERSIFICATION
“Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense for those who know what they are doing.” – Warren Buffett
Diversification works only if everyone isn't doing the same thing with immense leverage. You can spread risk but you can't eliminate it. Foresight Investment Counsel utilizes a boutique investment counsel style on small to very large U. S. corporations. Security analysis of our universe of companies and bonds is a key to our management of investment portfolios.
Today, diversification is described by asset class allocation. This process divides investments among different kinds of assets, such as stocks, bonds and cash, to optimize the risk/reward tradeoff based on a client's objectives. As long-term investors, we focus on asset class diversification, not industry or company diversification. Our asset class diversification portfolios are based upon the current and future needs of the account.
OPERATIONS
Our independent fiduciary portfolio management services and investment counsel are designed for each account, which is fee based rather than percentage based per transaction. Hourly services are available for portfolio appraisals and court appearances. The firm does not accept commissions on transactions, or take custody of securities.
A privately managed account composed of individual securities with a specific account investment objective is created for each client. This separately held securities account is directly managed by a portfolio counselor as your personal portfolio manager. Within our fiduciary relationship, our clients must remain in control of their custody accounts. A pool of money, liquid assets (securities), or mutual funds to be managed is placed in a bank or brokerage custodial investment account with investment trading powers.
We provide quarterly appraisals of each account and quarterly Financial Briefs that includes our current investment strategy. We encourage frequent meeting and telephone conversations that are held confidential, as needed to provide peace of mind for all parties.
OTHER SERVICES
In addition, Foresight Investment Counsel does offer discretionary management services as a sub-advisor or third party advisor to individual registered investment advisors and banks.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Our New Account Kit is given to all new clients and available to all prospects who request it. The Kit is described in our Service section and must be requested from our Contact Page.
