PT Portfolios

The investment industry was changed forever when the deregulation of brokerage commissions led to the creation of Discount Brokers. In addition to offering Much Lower Fees and Commissions these new firms let individual investors hold No-Load Mutual Funds from Different Fund Families and Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’S) in one Consolidated Brokerage Account.

Fund investments are Completely Liquid have Full Disclosure of their Expenses and Performance over different time periods and can be Much Less Volatile than individual stock positions. Funds make it easy to effectively Diversify retirement, trust, and custodial portfolios of any size and invest into markets and specific sectors worldwide with No Minimum Investment and Very Low Expenses. Over the years No-Load Funds and ETF’s have become by far the most popular investments for individual investors conservative, long-term portfolios.

Managing portfolios and reporting to investors is a full-time job and investment firms typically want their salespeople to Hand-Off Portfolio Management to in-house or independent Turnkey Asset Management Programs (TAMPS) and spend their time prospecting for new accounts not working for their current investors to manage individual portfolios. TAMPS add another Layer of Expenses on top of the broker/planner’s fee and since they are typically pooled accounts the investor can’t talk directly to the portfolio manager if they have questions or concerns.

Handing off portfolio management is Much Easier and Very Profitable for the Salesperson and Their Firm, but PTI has never seen anything that shows these Expensive Accounts have better net long-term returns than the following investment strategy that focuses on investments with Lower Fees, Higher Dividends and fully disclosed, long-term Performance Records. Investors considering a TAMP should request their actual performance record.

If brokers, financial planners, and insurance salespeople were not Paid Much More for selling TAMPS and didn’t have Pressure from their firm to Increase Fees every year, what would they recommend to their Family and Friends for their retirement, trust and other conservative investments? PTI believes the answer would be Diversified portfolios of carefully selected, low cost No-Load and Exchange Traded Funds.

Every fund manager believes they have the very best strategy to pick individual stocks or bonds, but there are always funds that consistently outperform their competition (see Performance Gaps). To find these select funds PTI tracks and ranks Over 2000 funds in 49 Sectors of the worldwide securities markets. Every month each fund is compared to all other stock or bond funds and graded based on the fund’s actual Performance for Investors over a number of different time periods, the fund’s Annual Operating Expense and Cash Dividend payments.

These individual grades are combined into one overall PT Grade. The grading process is not proprietary and PTI is happy to show any interested investor exactly how PT Grades are calculated and updated each month. PT Grades are fully disclosed to investors in their Monthly Updates described in the following After Investing section.

Investors who prefer managed portfolios should know How Their Investments Are Selected, How They Perform compared to their competition and Why They Are Sold.

Please review the facts in the following Performance Gaps section to see how big the differences can be for funds in the Same Market Sector over the Same Time Period.

PT Portfolios avoid the risk of owning individual stocks and offer investors a Conservative, Unbiased, Fully Disclosed, Low-Cost way to benefit from the potential long-term growth of the worldwide securities markets.

investors often own individual stocks they manage themselves. These investors shouldn’t need to have two accounts with exactly the same registration. Performance Tracking Inc. is unique from other advisory firms because both self-directed stocks and PT Portfolios can be held in the same Discount Brokerage Account.

PT Portfolios are designed to provide conservative Growth and Income over time. No advisor can predict the Short-Term Swings in the securities markets so funds that will be needed within a year should be invested in liquid, short term income funds, FDIC insured CD’s or the money market.

Growth Funds that invest into a wide range of individual companies can be much less volatile than individual stock positions, but they can be more volatile than Income Funds that invest into shorter-term bonds. Since every investor’s tolerance for fluctuations in the securities markets is different and can change over time PTI can’t appropriately diversify portfolios without input from the investor. This is why every investor receives a Monthly PT Update, for each account, in addition to their brokerage statements that show the accounts diversification, performance and the changes in key facts for each position. Please see the After Investing section.

Unlike the TAMPS sold by most brokers, insurance and financial planning firms PT Portfolios are Individually Managed so the investor can request changes in their investment allocations at any time. They can reduce market risk by requesting that at least an approximate Minimum Percent of their account be invested in Shorter-Term Bond Funds, FDIC Insured CD’s, or the Money Market. For more opportunity for growth over time they can request that Growth and Balanced Funds make up at least an approximate Minimum Percent of a portfolio.

Without any Minimum Allocation Instructions PT Portfolios will be broadly diversified between growth and income positions and managed based on changes in each fund’s combined PT Grade.