• We are a fiduciary.  We have a legal and moral obligation to put our clients’ interests first.
  • We advocate goals-based financial planning and investing. We view wealth as a tool that ultimately serves our clients’ goals. Thus, our financial plans and our investment strategies ultimately exist to serve our clients’ goals.
  • We care most about the Big Questions.  The Big Question is not about passive vs. active investing, regular IRA vs. Roth IRA, or even value stocks vs. growth stocks.  The Big Questions are, in order of importance:
    • Do I want a plan?
    • Do I have faith in the plan?
    • How can I best implement the plan?
    • How can I stick to the plan?
  • We respect the individuality of our clients and we believe in their freedom of choice.  We do not reside on Middle Earth, and there is no “One Ring/Strategy To Rule Them All.”  As such, different investing strategies will be appropriate for distinct clients with disparate goals, objectives, circumstances, personality traits, and knowledge bases.  “Best” is a subjective term.  “Understanding”, “Comfortability”, and “Adherence” are not.
  • We believe that Mr. Market is your servant, not your master. We make no attempt to predict market prices in the short term. Instead, we seek to take advantage of market fluctuations by buying relatively undervalued assets and by selling relatively overvalued assets via portfolio rebalancing and security selection.
  • We take a long-term view. Because daily, weekly, monthly, or annual fluctuations in market prices are unpredictable, we take the long view on investments.  Thus, we endeavor to evaluate the results of investment strategies over a complete market and/or economic cycle (usually 5 to 7 years).
  • We value education and transparency for our clients.  We do not want to keep our clients in the dark about how we manage their portfolios, and we want to teach our clients about our investment approach through our quarterly letters, our blog posts, and other communications.  We are delighted when clients ask us questions.  Simply put, we are like the jellyfish: completely transparent with our ideas, thoughts, and our portfolio holdings.
  • We eat our own cooking. The majority of our own liquid net worth is invested in one or more of the strategies offered by Triple Summit.
  • We are selective about our clients, as our clients should be when selecting a financial advisor.  Not every prospective client will fit with our values.  We put our clients’ interests first, and thus we do not accept clients whose goals, expectations, or investment horizons do not match what we can provide.