THE GCM DIFFERENCE

Dan McAdams President and Founder with Security Analyst, David Hodge (seated).

The Gimbal Capital Management is a superior investment manager for several key reasons:

• We are proactive and risk-conscious managers.
• We manage every step of the investment management process.
• We are independent and entirely focused on investment management.
• We offer excellent personal service.
• We have broad-based, hands-on experience in business.

Active Management Wins

Active managers try to outperform the market by picking investments they believe will perform better than the overall market. This requires a great deal of due diligence, judgment and proactive thinking, since active managers succeed by taking advantage of opportunities before they are recognized by other investors. 

At the same time, active managers must carefully assess the risk associated with their choice of investments, since there can be a temptation to chase returns by investing in overly risky investments. We manage risk based upon each client’s individual needs and rely on our unique perspective of market opportunities to guide our investment selection, rather than chasing returns through overly speculative investments.

Integrated Portfolio Management

The first step of investment management is to define client investment objectives, including risk tolerance and tax considerations. This forms the foundation of the investment management process.

Next, we develop an asset allocation strategy and structure a portfolio consisting of equities, bonds, and cash. We use traditional investment securities and ensure portfolio liquidity by using only listed, readily marketable securities. More conservative investors usually require a greater allocation to less volatile bonds, and more aggressive investors tolerate greater equity exposure. 

We watch the economy and current events to evaluate future prospects for each asset class, and make adjustments as opportunities arise. This differs from many “efficient frontier” portfolios, which are based on complicated mathematical formulas that attempt to predict future performance based on past results, not on current events.

We fill out our asset allocations with the best investment securities from each asset class using proprietary in-house research. Tax considerations and risk tolerance strongly influence investment selection, and we carefully consider the suitability of prospective investments for each client. In addition to traditional research, we gauge investor sentiment relative to underlying economic and geopolitical conditions. By impartially watching market activity, we avoid being caught up in the herd mentality that dominates Wall Street.

We compare our performance to appropriate benchmarks every week. This process alerts us to emerging trends in the financial markets and helps us identify underperforming investments. Finally, we consider investment actions that will improve investment performance and if deemed appropriate implement these actions.  

Not all RIAs perform all of these functions, but we believe that our clients are best served by integrating these activities so that we can make timely decisions and invest proactively.

Independent = Focused

Gimbal Capital Management is an independent investment advisor. As such, we are free to build relationships with service providers that add the most value to your investment portfolio. This is contrary to the common industry practice of bundling services, such as accounting, banking, brokerage, and wealth management services along with investment management. We believe that the tradeoff of the increased convenience of bundled services is weaker performance overall, since captive units do not have to compete for business. We focus on investment management, and let other professionals on your team of advisors do what they do best.

First-class Personal Service

In order to maintain a high level of personalized client service, we focus on a limited number of relationships. By selectively maintaining a client roster, we are large enough to enjoy the efficiencies of state of the art portfolio management, research, and trading capabilities, yet small enough to participate in opportunities that may be inaccessible or inefficient to larger firms. Our smaller size also concentrates our attention on performance and risk management, ensuring that we remain focused on the most important aspects of investment management.

Experience Counts

Our professional staff has a combined 35 years of business and investment experience in a broad range of disciplines.  This range of experience provides us with an exceptional perspective on economic events and financial markets.  Further, years of hands-on business experience has instilled a high degree of discipline that provides our clients superior quality investment management.

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