Investment Philosophy

Equity

We believe that equity securities (and/or strategies with equity-like returns) provide the growth necessary to support long-term spending goals and preserve purchasing power. A long-term portfolio with ongoing spending requirements requires an equity-oriented approach. The role of fixed income is to provide staying power for a market downturn and liquidity to fund near-term spending requirements.

Diversification

In order to manage risk and provide stability to the portfolio’s spending rate, the portfolio must be invested in a number of different sources of risk and return.

Active Management

Where markets are inefficient, we believe that partnering with exceptional investment managers provides an additional source of return that can contribute meaningfully to the portfolio’s ability to meet its long-term objectives.

At ASC we believe that good active managers can add value by providing an additional source of return that may be less correlated to other sources of risk in the portfolio. The firm has a long history of advising clients to allocate to alternative investments as a way to access those differential sources of return and risk.

However, simply allocating to alternative investments is only the first step. The illiquidity, complexity, and wide dispersion of outcomes among alternative investment managers make manager selection crucial. For over two decades, ASC’s investment professionals have been evaluating alternative investment managers in a wide range of asset categories including private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, real estate, and real assets.