Evidence-Based Investment Management
Backed by Nobel Prize-Winning Research
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Markets work. Fees matter. Taxes drag on returns more than most investors realize. Our investment approach is built on decades of academic research and integrated with your tax strategy from day one.
% of Active Managers Who Beat Their Benchmark
20-YEAR PERIOD% of Active Managers Who Beat Their Benchmark
10-YEAR PERIOD
What the Research Actually Shows About Beating the Market
Every year, the vast majority of actively managed funds underperform their benchmark after fees. This is not a bad year or a bad manager, it is a structural reality documented across decades and markets. When millions of buyers and sellers are continuously setting prices with all available information, it is extraordinarily difficult to consistently exploit mispricings.
Rather than attempting to predict the future or outguess the market, we draw information about expected returns from the market itself. We build broadly diversified portfolios that emphasize dimensions of return identified through decades of peer-reviewed financial research, and we focus relentlessly on what we can control: costs, taxes, diversification, and behavior.
October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks.
The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.
What Investment Management at Canter Wealth Includes
What Drives Returns and How We Pursue Them
Academic research has identified specific characteristics that have historically been associated with higher expected returns over long periods. We structure portfolios to systematically emphasize these dimensions while managing the trade-offs that arise in execution.
This approach, developed and refined over decades by researchers including Nobel laureates in economics, forms the foundation of our investment philosophy. It is the same framework used by some of the world's most sophisticated institutional investors.
How We Put the Research to Work for You
Portfolio Construction
We build globally diversified portfolios tailored to your time horizon, income needs, and risk tolerance. Diversification is not just holding many stocks. It is thoughtful allocation across asset classes, geographies, and return dimensions to reduce concentration risk without sacrificing expected return.
Asset Location
Not all accounts are taxed equally. We place tax-inefficient investments — bonds, REITs, high-dividend funds — in tax-deferred accounts, and tax-efficient investments in taxable accounts. This improves your after-tax return without changing your investment risk. For investors in higher tax brackets, thoughtful asset location can make a meaningful difference in after-tax outcomes.
Tax-Loss Harvesting
We monitor your portfolio throughout the year for opportunities to sell positions at a loss and offset realized gains reducing your taxable gain for the year while maintaining your market exposure. Tax-loss harvesting opportunities arise throughout the year, not just in December, which is why we monitor portfolios continuously rather than seasonally.
Tax-Lot Optimization
When we sell investments, we are specific about which shares we sell. By identifying the lots with the highest cost basis first, we minimize the taxable gain on every transaction. Over years of investing, this precision can compound into meaningful avoided taxes.
Rebalancing
Markets move, and over time, a portfolio that started balanced can drift into something more aggressive or more conservative than you intended. We rebalance systematically to keep your portfolio aligned with where you are in life and what you are trying to accomplish, not just where markets have taken it. Every trade we make to rebalance is evaluated for its tax impact first because getting back to your target allocation should not come at an unnecessary cost.
Low-Cost Funds
Investment costs are one of the few variables entirely within your control. We use low-cost, institutional-quality funds, including funds from Dimensional Fund Advisors, to minimize the impact that expenses have on your long-term returns.
Behavioral Coaching
One of the most significant ways an advisor adds value is helping clients stay invested during periods of market stress. Selling during a downturn and missing the recovery is one of the most common and costly investment mistakes. We help you maintain discipline when it is hardest to do so.
Sustainable Options
For clients who want their investments to reflect their values, we offer portfolio options that incorporate environmental, social, and governance considerations without sacrificing diversification or expected return.
Our investment approach identifies simplicity in the complexity of capital markets.
Frequently Asked Questions About Investment Management
Evidence-based investing means building portfolios based on decades of peer-reviewed academic research rather than predictions, market timing, or stock picking. It emphasizes characteristics that have historically been associated with higher expected returns such as value, size, and profitability — while keeping costs low and maintaining broad diversification.