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Welcome to Cantebury's New Web Site. I hope you find it informative and pertinent. Please contact me if you have any questions. All the best, Tom Carpenter Director

What We Do

• We work with individuals and institutions on how best to reach their financial goals. Once we agree upon a strategy, we implement an appropriate allocation, monitor it for re-balancing and make sure our clients’ behavior stays true to our Principles and Practices.
  
  
• We don’t say that the investments we recommend will "outperform" other investments. (We certainly don’t rule it out; we just can’t promise it - particularly over the short term.) But when using the principles we practice, we firmly believe our clients will end up with far better lifetime returns than most investors.
  
  
• Seeing that these are two different things, and why they’re different, is the beginning of investment wisdom - and the beginning of understanding what we do.
  
  

What We Can't Do

• We cannot, with any consistency or precision, forecast the economy in the short-run (anything less than 5 years). We don't believe anyone can.
  
  
• We cannot, with any consistency or precision, forecast the markets in the short-run, much less "time" them. We don't believe anyone can.
  
  
• We cannot, based on past performance, forecast future performance of similar funds or managers. And once again, we don't believe anyone can.

Principles and Practices

Principles (Beliefs):

• Faith in the Future: We believe that the world does not end, despite whatever current "crises du jour" is sensationalized in the media or among your colleagues. Over time, the free market advances permanently (albeit non-linearly) even as it occasionally contracts temporarily.
  
  
• Patience: We cannot know when the market will recognize the increasing intrinsic value of the underlying companies, we only know that it eventually will. Therefore, patience dictates not doing something inappropriate during the inevitable periods of under-performance.
  
  
• Discipline: Like patience but more pro-active, we view discipline as the decision to keep doing the right things, despite how the markets are reacting, e.g., continuing to make contributions despite a drawdown in prices, and continuing to rebalance the portfolio.

Practices (Actions):

• Asset Allocation: As it applies to the mix of Stocks & Bonds, we are strong proponents for the historical return advantage of stocks over bonds. Although we fully recognize the purpose(s) of fixed income — accruing wealth is not one of them.
  
  
• Diversification: As it applies to the portfolio within an asset class, we practice diversification that creates some "tensions" within a portfolio, i.e., owning components that historically run on different cycles.
  
  
• Rebalancing: Returning the portfolio to it's target diversification will (by definition) cause the sale of high-priced/low-value sectors and the redeployment of those funds into low-priced/high-value out-of-favor sectors.