Your investments had a great 2014, or so it appears. Your portfolio went up over 15%, and now you want to go out of your way to thank your investment advisor.
Instead, you ought to be looking for a new advisor. If your portfolio went up that much last year, it means virtually all of your money was invested in U.S. stocks. In turn, that means your advisor did not focus on something that should have been of equal concern: Risk.
No doubt, U.S. stocks performed well last year -- but what if they hadn't? History has taught us that no one can accurately predict the short-term direction of the investment marketplace. No one, investment advisors included, knows exactly when the market will go up or down, or when to jump in or out.
So managed properly, your investment portfolio would include more than just U.S. equities. It would include other asset classes whose returns don't always move in the same direction, nor with the same volatility, as the overall domestic stock market. These risk-diversifying assets would include things like corporate bonds, international stocks, government bonds, and real estate.
Last year, most of these 'non-correlated' asset classes did not perform as well as the U.S. stock market, and if you had them in your portfolio, they reduced your overall return. However, those assets also substantially reduced your risk of having a horrible year, from which it could take many years to recover.
If your investment advisor had focused on risk as well as performance, then it was mathematically improbable to generate a 15% return in 2014. They deserve no thanks.
Good investment advisors, and you, should focus instead on risk-adjusted return. You may not have huge shorter-term investment gains, but more importantly, you'll likely avoid huge losses.
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