Investment Management

Our Investment Approach

At Up Financial our investment approach is to first work with you to understand your personal goals, risk tolerance, risk appetite and unique individual situation. From there, we determine the best possible investment allocation that will help you to achieve those goals while carefully managing how you are exposed to risk. By focusing first on what you’re trying to achieve we can help you to avoid emotional decision making and instead focus on your disciplined, long-term success.

Diversification

Diversification is ensuring that your portfolio is not overexposed to any one particular risk. It’s easy to point to stories of individual assets that exploded in value; much harder to replicate such explosive growth year after year. The most successful investors are those who are properly diversified – managing their risk and still being exposed to the opportunities that will help them outperform over time. We focus on diversification between sectors, industries, geographics and asset classes. It’s not a one-time process either – diversification should be adjusted as worldwide economies shift; a portfolio should be a living, breathing thing that changes with the times.

Tax Efficient Investing

When it comes to asset allocation and portfolio construction, tax matters. Tax and inflation are the two largest hindrances on the growth of your portfolio. Understanding how Interest Income, Dividends, Foreign Dividends and Capital Gains are taxed will affect how your portfolio is constructed. Foreign dividends don’t qualify for the dividend tax credit, and within a Tax Free Savings Account foreign investments are subject to withholding tax. Corporate accounts are subject to the highest tax rates in Canada but get to take advantage of the Capital Dividend Account and Return of Dividend Tax on Hand. Trusts offer opportunities for splitting income due to their flow-through nature. All of these structures play into how you should build out your asset allocation. Rather than looking at each account (RRSP, TFSA, CORP, NON-REG etc) individually, each should be used to maximize the tax efficiency of your portfolio as a whole.

Passive vs Active

We’re agnostic about the benefits of active vs. passive investments – it’s our job to do research and select the best tool to do the job we’re seeking to do. When there is no active alternative that can match a passive asset (Index Fund or ETF), we use the passive option. When there is an active manager who regularly exceeds the performance of the passive option, particularly when adjusting for important metrics like down-side or risk, we’ll use the active option. Both are tools in a toolbox – it’s far too limiting to assume that one is always the best when each has its own pros and cons.

Independence

When you go to a bank, they’ll sell you products the bank owns, not the best options on the market. If you’re tired of just being another number and being sold generic portfolios please reach out and we can show you how much better off you could be.