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Individual
- Summit Series Program
- Fixed Income Program
- Managed Mutual Fund Program
- ETF Program – Endowment Series
- Managed Stock Program – Gradient 50
SUMMIT SERIES PROGRAM
The Gradient Summit Series portfolios are uniquely designed to meet long-term client investment goals in today's ever changing markets. Our featured portfolios:
The Covered Call Portfolio uses ETFs as the underlying investment vehicle, and then we actively manage a monthly covered call program to increase portfolio cash flow.
Writing covered calls is a proven strategy for generating monthly cash flow on securities that you own and is similar to collecting "rent" on your securities while you are waiting for them to appreciate in value. This sell-only covered call strategy provides the buyer with the right to buy your security at an agreed-upon higher price.
By selling covered calls, the portfolio receives immediate cash flow which reduces risk and generates immediate income. This extra cash flow is often used to supplement income, pay life insurance premiums or to start a college fund. This conservative strategy has been consistent in delivering returns of eight to 10 precent as an enhancement to dividends and capital appreciation.
The Covered Call Portfolio compliments an existing fixed income strategy while focusing on ultra-conservative risk adjusted returns. Some ETFs in the portfolio are short the market which provides a natural hedge against the market's movements and, therfore, reduces overall risk and provides downside protection.
The use of our ETF selections ensures a well diversified portfolio. The Covered Call Portfoliio is the perfect solution for a client looking for an income producing portfolio with the upside potential. Our proprietary strategy gives you a unique level of protection and performance.
Global Tactical Portfolio: A 360 View of the Market
The investment objective of the Global Tactical Portfolio is to maximize total return in up markets while protecting principal in down markets through active asset allocation and superior security selection. The Global Tactical Portfolio is a powerful solution for the client looking for experienced investment professionals using their collective market knowledge to navigate the turbulent markets to deliver a portfolio that participates in up markets and protects in down markets. Our goal is to deliver positive results in any market environment.
The Global Tactical Portfolio combines three proven investment approaches; behavioral finance, technical analysis, and fundamental analysis into one actively managed portfolio. This proprietary portfolio holds our best investment ideas from Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), mutual funds, individual stocks, and cash to create a well diversified portfolio. This dynamic asset allocation decision will combine behavioral, technical, and fundamental analysis to achieve an optimal allocation based on current market conditions.
TrenDesign Portfolio: Quantitative. Systematic. Repeatable.
The five TrenDesign portfolios span the risk spectrum utilizing Mutual Funds and Exchange Traded Funds to actively capture the latest trends in the leading sectors and asset classes. The foundation of our quantitative approach relies on relative strength, while adjusting for a fund’s unique volatility. We start with the universe of ETFs and Mutual Funds, each fund is ranked twice per month based on a proprietary scoring method mainly utilizing Standard Deviation (risk). Positions are held until a specific fund’s quantitative rank falls below a proprietary threshold. Once a fund falls below that threshold, it is immediately replaced with the highest ranking fund. The scoring algorithm is strongly weighted to capture relative strength over different periods of time. Holdings are systematically added and sold twice a month, if necessary, allowing the model to continually adjust to changes in the market.
What makes TrenDesign different?
- We have a systematic, quantitative approach to buying and selling funds in your portfolio
- We look at the entire universe of Mutual Funds and ETFs, not individual families or sectors
- We divide those funds into quartiles based on volatility
- Twice a month we rank those funds based on the latest market data and using our proprietary scoring method to ensure you own the strongest funds available
- If a fund in the portfolio falls below our thresholds, it is replaced, no questions asked
FIXED INCOME PROGRAM
Fixed income assets are often misunderstood, but at Gradient Investments, we understand the complexities of investing in bonds. Our fixed income portfolios are carefully designed for long-term investors seeking current income through a diversified approach.
The main goal of the fixed income program is to provide investors with current income and relative price stability by building diversified portfolios across all fixed income sectors. Our investment strategy uses a bottom-up fundamental research approach to identify solid fixed income investment opportunities producing a reliable income stream.
Our two fixed income portfolios, Total Return and Income Focus, use a combination of top performing mutual funds and ETFs to provide the diversification necessary within the fixed income universe. The Total Return Portfolio will have a higher quality, lower yield, and more price stability as compared to the Income Focus Portfolio, which places a greater emphasis on corporate bonds and mortgage-backed securities.
We are also positioned to provide custom fixed income solutions to meet each client’s individual needs. This opportunity is available to high net-worth individuals, foundations, endowments or corporate clients.
MANAGED MUTUAL FUND PROGRAM
Gradient Investments’ mutual fund portfolios are built with the end result in mind. We know that two emotions drive stock market activity: fear and greed. Based on those two simple emotions, we strive to be contrarians at market extremes.
Our investment strategy is comprised mainly of fundamental analysis. Our team evaluates investment securities from both top-down and bottom-up perspectives. Our portfolios are designed to deliver a diverse portfolio comprised of many different asset classes. The focus is to deliver higher risk adjusted returns than the broad market. Our analysis allows us to identify top performing mutual fund managers that deliver consistently strong performance with slightly less overall volatility than the broad market.
Once we have identified a pool of fund managers and funds, we evaluate each fund and fund complex individually to determine whether it meets our criteria.
Once the securities are identified to meet the criteria of a particular investment model, we build the allocations to find the optimal blend that maximizes return and minimizes portfolio risk and volatility.
We maintain active analysis which allows us to reduce or shift sector or asset class exposure according to market performance. This allows Gradient Investments’ chief investment officer the opportunity to reduce some of the downside exposure in a prolonged bear market.
- Gradient Mutual Fund A
- Gradient Mutual Fund B
- Gradient Mutual Fund C
- Gradient Mutual Fund D
- Gradient Mutual Fund E
ETF PROGRAM – ENDOWMENT SERIES
The most successful investors are not who you think they are! If you ask people who the most successful investors are, you’ll get responses like Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, John Neff formerly of Vanguard’s Windsor Fund or George Soros, the famous hedge fund operator. However, some of the most successful investors from a risk/reward perspective are the large university endowment funds. This group includes universities with endowments larger than $1 billion such as Yale University and Harvard University.
Large endowment funds consistently beat the market on a risk-adjusted basis because they diversify away from traditional asset classes, like stocks and bonds, and into lesser known asset classes, such as currency, private equity, commodities, and absolute return strategies. These lesser known asset classes have the capability to deliver profits over a business cycle. Endowments invest across many different asset classes, and with the explosion of low-cost ETFs, these same opportunities are now available to individual investors.
It is now possible for the individual to invest like an endowment fund. Five diversified portfolios are available based on your personal Risk Tolerance Analysis. Using low-cost ETFs, it is now possible to employ diversification techniques that were recently only available to hedge funds and endowment funds. Each portfolio is constructed for maximum diversification and safety.
Our active analysis of ETFs is consistent with our active mutual fund analysis which will deliver consistently strong performance with slightly less overall volatility than the broad market. The advantages of ETFs are low expenses, tax efficiency, trading flexibility, diversification, transparency, and a diversified approach to a sector or asset class.
MANAGED STOCK PROGRAM – GRADIENT 50
Every client portfolio in the Gradient 50 Managed Stock Program holds approximately 50 high-quality, dividend-paying stocks. Each portfolio also holds a percentage of its assets in fixed income assets through mutual funds or ETFs invested in investment-grade bonds. The percentage of assets placed in investment-grade bonds is determined by you and your advisor through Gradient Investments’ Risk Tolerance Analysis. Gradient 50 portfolios will have between 0 to 80 percent invested in high-quality, investment-grade bonds.
Our selection of the 50 high-quality dividend stocks in each portfolio is based on statistical models validated by Zacks Investment Research, Inc.
First, we take the universe of stocks and identify the companies with the highest upward revisions to earnings over multiple time periods. From there, we select stocks paying attractive dividends with a conservative dividend payout percentage. Dividend-paying stocks are often less volatile than their non dividend-paying peers. At the same time, we only select those companies who can afford to pay a healthy dividend.
This is a powerful combination because, in essence, we are only looking at the top companies whose future earnings per share are expected to keep growing.
