How We Invest

Our pursuit of exceptional growth companies begins with a thorough assessment of the economic backdrop to the capital markets.  From this analysis, we identify broad economic growth trends that will provide the foundation for strong growth opportunities in specific sectors of the market.

Our stock selection approach is to screen the universe of potential candidates for only the very best companies, employing quantitative and qualitative analytical tools which select only those stocks which meet our stringent investment criteria.  To be selected, companies must have:

• Superior management;
• Exceptional growth prospects;
• Strong and improving balance sheet; and
• Reasonable valuations

In creating the portfolio, we select companies with exceptional fundamentals in sectors that have strong growth prospects.  Our funds are not constrained by market capitalization or industry group weightings.  We don’t buy and hold.  The high standards we place on our stock selections make it difficult to get into the portfolio and easy to be replaced.

Once we have our portfolio, we are active managers, always making sure our investments continue to meet or exceed expectations.  We are constantly “refreshing the barrel with new water.”  Stocks aren’t sold simply because they disappoint.  They can also get pushed out by stronger, better companies or if the stock’s valuation becomes too high and/or its growth rate starts to slow.  We keep a watchful eye.

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How We Manage

At Marquest, we know that providing solid investment returns by employing a consistent investment process is of the utmost importance to our clients.  We are a nimble and efficient firm, making our ability to manage risk proactively evident from the start of our investment process.  We manage risk at both the market and individual security level.

• Market Risk
  We only invest in the strongest sectors of the marketplace.  Being sector specific allows us to control risk and take advantage of unique opportunities.  We may overweight certain sectors and may be completely absent from others.
• Security Risk
  We constantly refresh our Funds with companies that have strong growth prospects at reasonable valuations.  We therefore replace companies that have weaker growth prospects before their fundamentals deteriorate significantly.  Each Fund holds 25 to 40 securities in order to diversify the risks to any single company.

When we determine that there are significant risks in the market, we protect our portfolios by using:

• Cash
  When necessary, we increase our cash and cash equivalent allocations in each Fund in order to reduce volatility;
• Exchange-traded-funds
  During periods of market weakness, we will sell short select ETF’s in order to limit the downside of each Fund.

All aspects of our research, from top-down economic review to bottom-up security selection, aid in our ability to determine the risk profile in the marketplace.