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Managing Your Wealth To Achieve Your Goals

Navigant Advisors, LLC is an independent Registered Investment Advisory firm (RIA) located in the Sugar Land area outside of Houston. As an independent, we are free to bring professional wealth management strategies to manage the assets of our clients in a manner that is tailored to their specific situations and needs. We feel very strongly that consistent compounding of positive returns is the surest path to wealth creation. Managing risk, as measured by volatility, is paramount in our approach. We employ a variety of financial research milestones and strategy innovations, developed over the last fifty years, to help our clients achieve their goals.

Comprehensive Approach

Navigant is committed to helping our clients reach their financial objectives. We assess the entire financial picture for each client and provide sophisticated financial and retirement planning using Navi-Plan, which is widely considered to be the top planning software on the market. Being able to dramatically reduce portfolio return volatility gives our clients more confidence in their plan and their ability to meet their objectives. Navigant values each client relationship and ensures that each client stays fully informed of their objective's status.

Market Outlook (Update) - January 2009

The markets have in fact faced and are continuing to face the "very sharp overall trend downward" we have been predicting for the past few years and clearly noted in our August 2008 market outlook (included in its entirety below). The S&P 500 is down almost 39% from August highs to recent January lows. From 2007 highs to recent lows, the equity markets were down about 50%.

What now? More of the same and likely even worse eventually. Secular bear markets historically include five significant phases, which are accounted for using the Elliott Wave principle. Within each of the five significant phases there are many combinations of how markets will play out day to day or week to week. So unfortunately it does not give us a crystal ball to make a trading windfall. It does, however, provide us with the ability to reasonably assess where we are in the overall bear market, and it helps us determine what likely lies ahead.

Accordingly, we will likely be wrapping up the first major phase after one more new low within the next few months. Following that low, we should enter into a phase that should be the best bear market rally so far during this bear market. It will be long and powerful enough to convince the majority (otherwise known as the herd) that the absolute bottom in the economy and markets is behind us and greener pastures of the next great bull market lie dead ahead. We are convinced that this assessment will be dead wrong. This will in fact be the last selling opportunity investors will be given during this bear market.

Following this inevitable multi-month rally, the market will likely enter its worst phase to date; the dreaded third wave of the Kondratieff Winter. For those that thought things could not be worse than what happened during September and October of this past year, it will be a rude awakening.

Eventually we are looking for an ultimate bottom sometime between late 2010 and 2014. That is when we should be able to confidently move into markets in a more conventional manner during what should finally kick off the next great bull market.

We are highly confident in the eventual path of the market, but twists and turns along the way will surprise us just like everyone else. However, we do not put our client portfolios at the mercy of the market nor at the mercy of our overall assessment. Our clients will be prepared for whatever the markets decide to do.

Market Outlook - August 2008

As a result of extensive study and analysis of long term historical economic and market cycles, and considering today's environment in that context, we are convinced that for the foreseeable future the equity and credit markets will experience a severe reckoning period. The extreme excesses of the previous cyclical phase (credit bubble) that built up during the prior 15-20 years must now be dealt with. Equity markets will likely experience much more than the bumps (corrections) in the road that most of us have experienced during our investment lives. Markets will experience a fundamental bear market that should last for another 3-6 years.

What exactly does that mean for the stock market? Longer term, the markets will reach a very significant low that will more than likely prove to be one of the best buying opportunities we will see during our lives. Until then, the market will likely experience increased volatility and a very sharp overall trend downward causing the markets to "correct" much more than we have seen during our lives. Interspersed throughout that long term decline will be very sharp rallies, lasting weeks and months at times, that will "keep people in the game" and allow for continued selling pressure and volatility over time. As during every fundamental credit crisis period, history will remember this period as one in which markets were sharply down, but were accompanied by many bear market rallies (affectionately known as sucker's rallies). As a result, it is important to psychologically prepare and vital to financially prepare for what lies ahead. Navigant is prepared to navigate the course of our clients through the uncertainty that lies ahead.

Philosophy - Navigating the Markets

We hold a high degree of confidence in our outlook, but we do not bias our investment discipline to the downside. We just prepare for it. Navigant is committed to generating positive returns for our clients year in, year out regardless of the market environment.

While we feel we have a good grasp of the equity markets' overriding trend and eventual bottom over the longer term, we would be fooling ourselves to think we knew exactly how it will progress through this period and to that low. We also do not want to place "bets" that the markets will in fact play out this way. The best way to achieve financial and retirement objectives safely and to beat the market handily over the long term is to have a disciplined investment model that generates consistent returns and minimizes market draw downs. Therefore, we position our client's portfolios to be market neutral in the current market environment with an investment discipline that removes any biases or emotions that tend to lead to bad decisions. Our objective is to remove market dependence.

Investment Discipline

Annual returns have been solid. Our unique discipline has proven itself to thrive in any market environment. Our clients hold a broad mix of market outlooks; some much different than ours. But our clients are united in being pleased with portfolio returns and caring less about what the equity markets are doing on a daily and weekly basis.

Consistent with Modern Portfolio Theory, our portfolio management style always consists of appropriate asset allocation, diversification and rebalancing. However, we don't stop there. During what we feel is a secular bull market, we will generally invest a little more aggressively in line with the client's risk tolerance. During what we consider to be a secular bear market, we will put more emphasis on protection and being more market neutral.

Because we are confident that markets are currently in a secular bear market, our current investment model holds some positions that do better in a bullish market; others that do better in a bearish market; still others that attempt to take advantage of both directions of the market or invest outside of the conventional equity and fixed income markets. The strategy within our investment discipline that truly sets us apart is our proprietary capital preservation strategy, which we developed and began using in 2001. This strategy uses very rigid and historically tested technical triggers around sentiment extremes that helps provide protection for a large percentage of the portfolio from market turbulence. It also looks for opportune times to put that amount to work within the equity markets as triggers signal imminent short term rallies. Triggers also indicate the appropriate times to re-protect that capital once rallies play their course.

These diversified investment positions come together to formulate a unique discipline that has resulted in solid positive returns each year since 2001 regardless of market returns. Not only should our clients thrive during what we feel will be a rough market environment, they will be in prime position to fully take advantage of market bottoms with confidence. We would love an opportunity to talk to you about our investment discipline and the specific results it has produced.

How is Navigant Really Different?

There is a general perception that Advisors are created equal in what they offer their clients. We are here to change that perception and convince you, as we have our clients, that we are truly unique. Here are some of the highlights that differentiate us from others:

Investing Philosophy:

Others

The industry is extremely bullishly biased. Most Advisors have only experienced fundamental bull markets and believe that because markets go up over the very long term, then client portfolios should always be positioned in a bullish manner. Any losses that occur during "corrections" will eventually be made up for when markets turn around and eventually hit new highs.

Navigant

Our belief that market and economic cycles tend to repeat themselves convinces us there is a better way. These cycles clearly show that there are long term bull markets during which investors should be more aggressively invested and long term bear markets during which investors should aggressively protect. Our research has proven that if investors take this approach and dramatically reduce market exposure during severe market draw downs, then they will substantially beat the market over the long term. We've even shown that we can generate solid, positive returns during the bear markets with our unique investment discipline. This philosophy lessens our clients' stress and exposure to market volatility and increases their chance of having a dependable retirement plan that is not a moving target.

Sales Force vs. Personal Advisor:

Others

Most brokerage firms view their Advisors as the driving force behind their sales growth. Public brokerages are concerned foremost about meeting sales growth targets and increasing their stock prices. These sales force Advisors work foremost for their firms, who push specific products for various reasons and who provide incentives to Advisors to grow assets, fees and accounts. Much more emphasis is placed on growing their books of business rather than taking care of the clients they already have.

Navigant

We work for our clients, period. We receive no extra fees or bonuses for selling specific products or by bringing in "x" number of new clients and "x" amount of new assets. We get paid only on the assets we manage regardless of what investments make up those assets. Our incentive is to consistently grow our client's portfolios, so we in turn grow our fees. A flat percentage of an increasing value (your portfolio) is an increasing amount (our fees). Conversely, should assets under management decline, so too will our fees. In this way our incentives are aligned with those of our clients. We do not answer to our firm; we answer only to our clients.

Access to Investments:

Others

Advisors that work directly for broker dealers, are limited in their access to specific investments. Because of the way the industry is stuctured, they only have access to load fee mutual funds. They have no ability to invest their client's assets in no-load fee mutual funds. As a result, they can only consider and choose from half of the mutual fund universe. Advisors are also restricted to only buying equities for which their firm has an in house analyst following. As a result, only about 15-25% of all stocks are available to choose from for portfolio inclusion.

Navigant

Because we are independent, we have access to virtually every fund in the mutual fund universe including no-load fee mutual funds. Because of our alliance with Fidelity, all load fee funds are stripped of their up front fees. We also have no limitation on the equities from which we can choose. Being able to consider and include more funds and equities in our investment discipline has allowed us to deliver even more solid investment returns to our clients.

Fees:

Others

Sales force Advisors share the majority of their fees with their firms with many charging their clients as much as 2%-3% on assets under management. Those firms mandate how low fees can be discounted for managing client assets. At most broker dealers the standard maximum discounted fees are around 1.5% annually on assets under management.

Navigant

We charge no more than 1% on assets under management, which is at least 33% less than fees assessed by most Advisors. We feel we offer much more for much less.

Professional Wealth Management Advisors