The Dow Difference

Investment Counsel for Our Clients

AVAILABILITY

As a Dow Managed Portfolio client, you have direct access to your portfolio manager, not merely to client relations personnel or a third-party financial advisor. Our investment professionals stand ready to address your questions and concerns in the broad context of your unique investment, business, and family circumstances.

EXPERIENCE, PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS, AND COMMITMENT

With decades of investment experience, our portfolio managers have a sound understanding of the securities markets. Significantly, professional qualifications and continuing education are critical to providing comprehensive investment services and rendering sound advice. In fact, as a marketplace leader, we provide accredited continuing education courses on investing to attorneys, accountants, and other financial professionals.

Commitment to our clients' interests is our foremost concern. Dow Investment Group is an independent, family-owned business. Our separation from the brokerage wirehouse and investment banking mindset assures you that the advice you receive is influenced only by your best interests.

Academically Disciplined Portfolio Management
Dow Managed Portfolios are accepted on a discretionary basis and under a fee-based arrangement. Portfolios are managed to conform to our underlying investment principles, while accommodating the client's risk tolerance and other client-specific considerations. We maintain a separately managed portfolio for each relationship, enabling us to address individual investment, tax, and financial needs.

CONTROLLING FOR RISK AND CAPITALIZING ON GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES

Long-term investment success requires a strategy that positions a portfolio to take advantage of prosperous times, while remaining resilient during challenging markets and economies. Long-term success requires that a portfolio be oriented simultaneously for both market conditions.

Fundamental to investment success is avoidance of irrecoverable portfolio loss, even if such a loss is perceived to be a rare event. As obvious as such a goal may seem, many
-- if not most -- investment programs appear to provide inadequate protection against severe economic and market crises, or long-term erosion of wealth due to inflation.

Efforts to minimize such risks, while still being positioned to benefit from prosperous markets, underlie our investment strategy.

Several significant aspects of our investment approach include:*

  • We seek a high level of protection from adverse markets and a hedge against inflation through broadly diversified portfolios of high quality common stocks (stocks which typically carry Standard & Poor's quality ratings of A+, A, or A-).
  • The ownership of growth companies (those with healthy income statements) provides solid appreciation potential. In addition, holding prospering companies (as opposed to so-called "value stocks") might be expected to provide the portfolio with greater resiliency during a serious economic downturn.
  • To the extent that clients hold fixed-income securities, we emphasize short-term high-quality debt instruments, helping to insulate portfolios from market volatility and lessen inflation risk.
  • Depending on client circumstances and interests, portfolios may be refined further with a modest-sized aggressive growth stock component.

Dow Investment Group has developed a proprietary system for gauging and monitoring the quality of a portfolio and its growth-orientation. These metrics are the Portfolio Quality Index (PQI) and Portfolio Growth Index (PGI).

Dow Managed Portfolios generally carry a Portfolio Quality Index of 80% or higher. By comparison, 50% is the market average -- for example, the PQI of the S&P 500 Index is about 50%.

Dow Managed Portfolios are further optimized with a Portfolio Growth Index of 80%. Again, 50% is the market average.

Comprehensive investment philosophy papers are available on request and many are located on our website, dows.com.

A Comprehensive Approach to Managing Wealth
Beyond portfolio management, we help clients achieve their objectives involving tax, charitable giving, and estate planning considerations. In addition, we commonly work with our clients' attorneys, CPAs, and other trusted advisors to ensure that the portfolios are managed within the broad context of our clients' circumstances.

 

*Specific investment criteria are determined for each client relationship, and so may vary from our traditional investment approach. Market dynamics, tax issues, and broader wealth management considerations also may result in variations.