The painful truth is that most investors invest in a very suboptimal manner, chasing market and fund performance, being too cautious or too aggressive, or responding to the emotional pressures in rising and falling markets, with the tendency to buy at the top and sell at the bottom.

Hopefully we can show you that it is possible to be a good investor, once you look at the evidence and work out what you need to be focusing on. You will also see that the evidence-based approach that we have built provides you with the best chance of achieving your financial and lifestyle goals.

When we sat down as a team at Cooper Parry to decide how to structure robust investment portfolios for our clients, we immediately agreed that our investment process could only be based on the simple premise of ‘what does the theory and empirical evidence tell us that we should be focusing on for our clients.’

That simple ideal revealed an enormous amount about how to invest well and the mistakes to avoid. What we have ended up with is a process based on a combination of Nobel Prize winning financial theory, substantial empirical evidence and most importantly, an objective, common sense approach to making investment decisions.

Perhaps surprisingly what we do sits well away from conventional industry practice; not to be different, but because all the evidence, historic performance and theory points to this being the best way to do it.

The greatest irony, in what seems like such a sophisticated and complex business, is that simpler truly is better. Good investing is about doing a few simple things exceptionally well, as you will see.

  ‘To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual insights, or inside information. What’s needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding the framework.’