THE NEWA PHILOSOPHY

We are guided by two basic beliefs.

The first belief is that achieving your goals, not besting the market or your neighbor’s rate of return, is the ultimate standard of success. The market isn’t a homogenous place, after all, and it isn’t something we care to “beat”—not as an end in itself. How you invest should reflect your unique situation and aspirations.

The second belief is that, in order to succeed, you must invest in a process for setting goals and implementing them that includes reading and intelligently responding to market conditions and life circumstances rather than reacting to them on the one hand or ignoring them on the other.

Ignoring them would mean staking your financial future on the promise of one prediction or product, despite new information that signifies danger or a better opportunity. We have witnessed too many individuals stake their wealth on what looked like certainties (e.g. housing prices, tech stock valuations, interest rates) only to have reality defy their expectations. We plan instead on the basis of rigorously informed probabilities. And our process—which has been tested, refined, and validated over countless market cycles—is built around an expectation of the unexpected.

Reacting to market conditions or life circumstances would mean jumping from one ship to the next with every turning tide, hoping to escape temporary losses and catch temporary gains. But we’ve been in business long enough to know that the smartest move in most environments, no matter how tumultuous they may seem short-term, is to stay the course—so long as your initial planning process was based on the sound application of timeless principles to relevant information. Only occasionally, when emergencies or lasting changes could significantly alter your long-term trajectory, should principled adjustments be made.

This is why we think of planning, implementation, and management in terms of helping you: 1) Chart the course to your brighter future; 2) Set sail with clarity and confidence; 3) Navigate by making milestones and principled course adjustments.