Investment Philosophy Ours is a "Risk-Averse" investment philosophy. Though there are no guarantees, our primary goal is to participate satisfactorily in rising markets while doing all we can to avoid a substantial bear market decline from which it is so difficult to recover. When making investments, we favor a “Contrarian” approach. Stock and bond markets, like most things in life, are cyclical. We believe we can take advantage of this cyclicality by buying out-of-favor investments when they are relatively inexpensive, and selling fashionable sectors when their popularity makes them dear. Within the equity universe, we are “Growth-At-A-Reasonable-Price” investors. We look for quality companies with strong growth characteristics trading at historically low valuations. These circumstances are typically created when a company faces what we believe to be a short-term problem while Wall Street prices the stock as if permanently impaired. Our fixed-income investments also reflect our contrarian bent. We focus on high quality fixed-income securities that are trading at historically low valuation levels relative to competing debt instruments.