KEY PRINCIPLES

HOW WE DELIVER

CastleMoore Inc. helps investors manage their life savings. We are not stock brokers or mutual fund salesmen. We are discretionary investment managers specialising in "buy low, sell high" strategies instead of "buy and hold" strategies like the other guys.

Our competition is the stock brokerage industry, the mutual fund industry and the "value" or "growth" money managers like, RBC Private Counsel, BMO Harris Private Banking, TD Asset Management or CIBC Wood Gundy Consulting. Why has CastleMoore chosen to do battle in the Valley of Goliath?

At CastleMoore we manage our clients' investments through a methodical and disciplined set of systems that virtually removes any individual bias and emotion from the investment process. What we do works. We rely heavily on loss avoidance techniques based firstly on supply and demand analysis of an investment class; and secondly, on the traditional approach.

Accordingly, our clients are investors that pay particular attention to asset prices and have little tolerance for investment losses.  Our clients have similarly strong expectations of getting their money's worth, and appreciate CastleMoore's all-inclusive and comprehensive fee schedule.  If we are required, because of volatile markets, to be more active within our client accounts, CastleMoore bears all the costs associated with more frequent transactions.

Our team's previous experience in large national and international brokerage firms and both small investment dealers and investment counsels provides us the ability to deliver a high quality professional portfolio management service while adding truly independent and custom-tailored advice to our clients for reasonable costs. A CastleMoore client enjoys the benefits of having focused portfolio management without the distractions that occur from also providing a "super market" of financial services. We just manage investment port folios effectively – plain and simple.

ACTIVE VS. PASSIVE STYLE

At CastleMoore we do not use the "buy and hold", techniques favoured by so many investment managers today. Our clients expect their assets to be conservatively placed in investments showing current or near term sustainable economic growth.  We pay attention to the "supply and demand" for all investment asset classes.   Accordingly, clients expect that we buy AND sell, and not just buy, for their portfolios. This approach makes the difference in our results and separates CastleMoore from the majority of brokers, mutual fund salesmen and banks.

SYSTEMATIC & DISCIPLINED

Study after study shows that most investment decisions by brokers, mutual fund salesmen or individual investors are based on emotion.  Emotional decision-making, whether in life generally or in the investment process, leads to loss and confusion.  Poor portfolio management techniques, we all know leads to loss of wealth.  At CastleMoore we rely on proven and back-tested techniques to allocate client funds across many asset classes. For most investment managers, the buy or sell decision can be difficult.   Our methodology lets us at CastleMoore sleep at night knowing that we have complete confidence in a system, a system where our emotions and our "opinions" have been removed.

INDEPENDENT ADVICE

Because all our staff has worked for large national and international investment companies we understand the importance of independent advice.  We do only one thing at CastleMoore: manage investment portfolios.   We cannot be all things to all people and so are not trying to control all aspects of your financial life – we are not a financial supermarket.  This clear focus within our daily routines not only benefits our staff, but more importantly is critical to the results our clients receive.  When you call us, we know what your call is about. 

SAFETY FIRST

We believe strongly in capital preservation. Through strict loss-avoidance techniques it is easier to improve long term portfolio growth.  Big losses are hard to recoup. In addition, if clients can reduce the size and shorten the duration of a loss they can also mitigate a more serious effect of suffering losses - a potential disruption in the confidence of their portfolio management.  One way that CastleMoore is like the large institutions is our clients are protected by the Canadian Investor Protection Fund. We also carry separate insurance through AIG Group to further protect our clients' accounts.

OPPORTUNISTIC & FLEXIBLE

Deploying our clients' (and our own) assets are a serious matter.  If we cannot find a suitable opportunity we do not invest.  Our clients understand when they work with CastleMoore we sometimes have high cash reserves positions to take advantage of declining markets.  CastleMoore's systematic and methodical approach to investing, tells us where we should be placing client assets. In short, we only invest when it's right to do so.

TAX PROBLEMS

We do not solve tax problems. We create tax liabilities... by creating profits.  We do work with our clients' tax advisors to help control the tax problems that we generate.  At CastleMoore we feel that we aren't truly doing our job unless we are raising the value of their portfolios.  Creating artificial "tax losses" is not part of our job. To us, the goals are protection and growth of investments. Exception: if any clients have special tax needs we certainly accommodate customised situations.  But our focus and our disciplines are on generating profits and preventing loss, not creating tax losses.

STRINGENT ETHICS

For most clients Compliance probably means very little – to CastleMoore it is everything.   Because we are a small firm we have been able to create from scratch, a stringent internal code of procedures. These procedures ensure that all clients are treated in a fair fashion, that they receive the proper investments for their accounts and that their accounts are carefully monitored.  Part of our success in this area is also attributable to our partnership with NDEX Systems which helps in the monitoring of all account positions and performance.  At CastleMoore, we believe that we have the best compliance process in the industry and can provide our rules to any client whenever they ask.