Investment Advice

At Humphrey Partners we specialise in Investment Advice in the Brisbane area and beyond, we pride ourselves on our investment philosophy and endeavour to put ourselves in our clients' shoes.  This is why every investment strategy and investment portfolio is individually tailored to suit the specific and individual needs of our clients.

What is an investment portfolio?

An investment portfolio is the assets held by an investor. 

Broadly speaking asset classes are broken into growth and defensive categories.  Below is a list of the asset classes split into the broader growth and defensive categories we generally consider in our portfolios. 

Growth assets

• Listed Australian equities (shares)
• Listed international equities
• Property (inclusive of direct property)
• Infrastructure (toll roads, airports, etc)
• Commodities (agriculture, precious metals , energy etc)
• Alternative assets (private equity, single or multiple trading strategies -see “Investment styles” for more information)

Defensive assets

• Government bonds (Australian and international issued)
• Corporate bonds (Australian and international issued)
• Cash and term deposits
• Hybrid bonds
• Mortgage backed securities

When determining whether an investment asset is defensive we consider them on a case by case basis.  The predominant factor is the likelihood that the original capital invested is returned at the end of the investment period.  For example even though a Greek bond is a government bond we would never consider a non investment grade bond as a defensive asset.

Objectives of our investment portfolios

The aim of our investment portfolios is to meet our clients’ needs and objectives.  As we appreciate that no two investors are the same, when recommending a client an investment portfolio we consider a range of factors including the following:

• the client’s need for capital preservation over the short, medium and long term i.e. the client’s risk tolerance;
• the client’s bias towards a specific asset class e.g. property, shares;
• the projected pre- tax return of the portfolio;
• the client’s tax situation with the view of maximising after-tax investment returns;
• the client’s need for capital draw downs; and
• the client’s need for income.

How we select our investments

We take great care constructing our client portfolios.  We construct our client portfolios in a three step process. 

1. Determine an appropriate spilt of growth and defensive assets after assessing the client’s need for capital preservation, risk tolerance and capital draw downs – also known as the client’s risk profile.
2. Consider the client’s income requirement and tax situation then select the most appropriate asset class allocation and investment style within those asset classes.
3. Select investments using a ‘best of breed’ professional money/fund manager approach.

The risk profile concept

Our risk profiles and splits between growth and defensive assets are:

• Conservative: 20% Growth- 80% Defensive;
• Moderately conservative: 40% Growth-60% Defensive;
• Balanced: 60% Growth-40% Defensive;
• Growth: 80% Growth-20% Defensive; and
• High Growth: 100% Growth-0% Defensive.

How we measure our portfolios performance

We endeavour to track our clients’ portfolio performance against the most appropriate benchmark.  For example if a client had an investment portfolio consisting of Australia shares we would benchmark the portfolio’s performance against the ASX200 accumulation index.