The Behavioral Portfolio: Managing Portfolios and Investor Behavior in a Complex Economy

Investment advisors face two challenges. First, the portfolios that we offer clients leave investors vulnerable to severe economic events and emotional stress. Second, the way that we educate investors about their portfolios isn’t effective at helping them curb biases.

The Behavioral Portfolio examines the risks of both stock and bond portfolios from historically comprehensive perspective to help illustrate that, based on market history, the current approach could lead to a break-down of clients’ portfolios and our practices. It then lays out an all-seasons approach for investing that both embraces optimism and addresses contingencies of significant risk events.

Once portfolios are built according to these new parameters, portfolio communications ar shifted to pro-actively prepare investors for challenges ahead. Instead of following the crowd and shifting out of assets at unfavorable time, investors are trained to both understand the markets and to think counter-intuitively. Behavioral portfolios and communications allows investors to enjoy a higher probability of success and greater peace of mind throughout their investing lives.

Phillip Toews is the CEO and a Portfolio Manager of the Toews Funds and Toews Agility Shares ETFs. His focus is on providing access to traditional asset classes but reducing downside capture/correlation. He conceived a framework for investing that he refers to as a Behavioral Portfolio. This all-seasons approach to portfolio construction addresses the potential for extreme market duress in either equities or fixed income markets. It also helps provide a smoother glide path for investors that reduces behavioral challenges along the way.

Phillip is a co-founder of the Behavioral Investing Institute, which conducts research on investor behavior and provides guidance to advisors on curating communications to proactively address market challenges to investors.He has appeared on CNBC, Bloomberg TV/Radio, Fox Business News, and is quoted frequently in financial publications.