A Good Time To Diversify

Index Universe – Kenneth Smith has been spending a lot of time lately trying to make sure that market volatility doesn’t send investors into a tailspin.

As a result, the chief investment officer at Seattle-based Empirical Wealth Management says that the high net worth and institutional clients he works with aren’t ready to panic yet.

But he credits such realistic expectations not only to this year’s educational push, he explains that he has been sounding a similar theme when markets were running strong from 2003 through late last year. The difference, he says, was not to chase short-term performance of soaring asset classes.

Now, conditions are different. But the veteran advisor and portfolio manager says keeping a level head and remaining unemotional in seemingly bearish times is as important as ever. Through good times and bad, he and his co-managers at Empirical emphasize that they’ve stuck to the same process of monitoring asset class correlations and global market capitalization trends.

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