Contact Us
Please contact us for a free consultation to see how we can help you create a personalized portfolio that supports a just and sustainable society. Call us at 1-800-793-7512 or click here to send us an email.
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Our Approach
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New York Times Mutual Fund Study |
In 1993, the New York Times initiated a 7-year study of mutual fund investment approaches. The paper asked five of the nation's leading investment advisers to design model portfolios for a hypothetical investor having $50,000 and 20 years to go until retirement.
Jack Brill, founder and current Senior Advisor of Natural Investments (Natural Investment Services at the time), was asked to participate, along with four other highly regarded investment professionals. On the heels of his first book, Investing From the Heart, Jack was the only socially responsible investment (SRI) advisor in the competition.
As such, whereas the other four advisors had access to the entire investment universe, Jack's portfolio used only socially screened mutual funds; back in 1993, there were only 20 SRI funds available! While we always maintained that this would not limit opportunities for successful results (and we appreciate today's array of 200 funds), skepticism about SRI was the prevailing attitude at that time.
During the course of the study, the Times published a quarterly article detailing the investment process of each adviser and comparing their quarterly and cumulative performance. Beginning July 1, 1993 and ending 28 quarters later on June 30, 2000, the landmark study served as a high profile opportunity to highlight both SRI funds' competitive returns and Jack's success as an investment advisor.
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Read more: New York Times Mutual Fund Study
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While investors are interested in helping people and the planet, we also want our investments to generate sufficient return. Decades ago, when there were only a handful of managers willing to conduct ethical screening and shareholder advocacy, it was more difficult to create fully diversified portfolios which offered competitive financial returns.
Today, with hundreds of socially responsible funds and managers investing in virtually every asset class, it is possible to design and maintain investment portfolios that consistently perform similarly to the conventional investments.
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Read more: Performance
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Our Approach to Investing-Diversification, Model Portfolios, Monitoring the Markets
Natural Investments conducts extensive research on the wide array of investment securities available to socially responsible investors. Equally important is the understanding of how combinations of securities work together to reduce risk and enhance performance. With the work we've put into our investment research, we have confidence in guiding our clients through the sometimes-challenging securities markets.
We believe that an Asset Allocation approach is the most reliable and consistent way to earn competitive investment returns and manage risk levels to the comfort point of every investor. Asset Allocation is the practice of dividing investments among a variety of securities categories. There are lots of categories, and we encourage diversification into a wide variety because they tend to have different characteristics. When some of them may be performing poorly, others may be performing well. This makes for a smoother ride.
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Read more: Inside Our Portfolio
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Nuts and Bolts of Investing |
The first steps we take are all about communication: initial "getting to know each other" conversations, review of your NI Social Questionnaire (which give both you and your advisor additional clarity about your priorities), and deeper follow-up discussions about you and your needs.
Don't be surprised if we ask some probing questions about you. It's really important that we learn as much as we can about your goals, hopes and fears, work and family situation, traumatic experiences with money when you were a little kid...you might tell us things that even your best friends don't know about you! All this is important information that we use to design an investment strategy that is right for you.
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Read more: Nuts and Bolts of Investing
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Beach Lover's Guide to Asset Allocation |
Because every investor is unique, we take an individualized approach to each client. At the same time, we've learned that investors tend to arrange themselves in clumps along a risk spectrum ranging from ultra-cautious to super-aggressive. We have designed 5 model portfolios that correspond to these risk levels. (See Inside NI Portfolios to learn how we do this). These model portfolios are the starting point for our financial advisors to create customized portfolios for every client.
Each of our models utilizes Asset Allocation to assure that we provide a broad range of diversification, and therefore maximum safety at each level of risk tolerance. Asset Allocation is the practice of dividing investments among a variety of securities categories including various types of bonds and stocks. In general, higher risk portfolios will be weighted toward more investment in the volatile stock market, while lower risk portfolios are oriented more toward savings and bonds that do not fluctuate in value much if at all. Still, all portfolios include a healthy mix of assets to assure proper diversification.
This can sound a bit dry, so when we wrote Investing with Your Values we came up with a playful way to visualize the choices:
The Beach Lover's Guide to Asset Allocation
Picture yourself at a beautiful sandy beach on a warm, sunny day. The surf is up. The gentle beach represents conservative bond investments. The lively surf represents volatile stock investments.
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Read more: Beach Lover's Guide to Asset Allocation
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Giving Back
We donate 1% of our sales to environmental organizations, including:
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The Heart Rating
How do you measure if an investment is socially responsible? Consult our Heart Rating.
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Our Approach
