It seems inevitable that as market values rise investors start catching "performance fever" where the only cure is ever increasing returns. Famed investor Warren Buffett recently advised his shareholders that "long term returns in excess of 20% annualized are next to impossible to achieve". That doesn't stop many from trying however, often in direct contravention to their goals.

Investments, or more particularly, the returns from investments, are really just the means to accomplish something, that something being your goals. The problem is we can scarcely turn on the TV or open a magazine without someone asking "where is the best place to put my money now?" While this question may have some entertainment value it is mostly irrelevant to your particular goals looming on the horizon. We have to decide if we want to be market focused, twisting and turning to market whims, or goal focused which necessarily implies a longer term orientation. Dimensional Fund Advisors helps us toward that end with solutions rooted in financial science. Click here to see a short video clip on the fundamental beliefs of Dimensional (particularly Chapter 8 titled "Our Fundamental Beliefs").

Second only to panicking out of the markets in volatile periods, there may be no surer  way of obtaining subpar investment outcomes than by overinvesting in whatever has been red hot in the last block of time. Yet this is exactly what investors do over and over due, at least in part, to the short term sales orientation of most financial firms. The person at the furniture store is no more a "consultant" than the broker or insurance person trying to sell something so why do we think otherwise?

Our role is to provide both insight (derived from our decades of experience) and clarity (from our understanding of client goals) to the wealth management process.