Values Versus Volatility

Since our founding in 1989, Coleford has developed a set of core values and principles that we use to guide our approach to wealth management and preservation. These values do not shift with time or change to accommodate different markets. They are non-negotiable and create the foundation of trust that has been essential to the delivery of lasting value and peace of mind for our clients over generations.   

 Market volatility: a fact of investing life

Graphing the long-term performance of North American equity markets is a revealing exercise. While the line on the chart moves up and down with tremendous frequency, the long-term trend is up and to the right. What that proves is that stock markets, in the short-term, are volatile and react, sometimes violently, to provocations that can be as severe as the outbreak of war or as passing as a quarterly earnings miss by a large company. It also demonstrates that time in the market is far more important than any attempt to time the market.

Your purpose is our purpose

Our client relationships begin with the development of a goal-focused plan that defines what investing success means to you. Only when we thoroughly understand your objectives and the time available to meet them do we begin investing. A well-built plan that focuses on your personal goals serves a number of purposes but ultimately acts as a bulwark against ever-present market volatility and a tendency to overreact to economic, political or social events or a short-term earnings “beat” or “miss” by a favoured company. Successful investing insulates your short-term goals from the whims of the financial markets, while simultaneously positioning you to achieve your mid- and long-term goals. To us, stewardship means a never-ending commitment to your success.

We share in your outcomes

In executing your plan, we believe the distance between you and our investment decision-makers should be zero. In other words, the stewards of your money must be directly accountable to you and have a direct economic stake in the outcomes of their decisions. Coleford’s status as an independent, 100% employee-owned business enables us to achieve this long-standing principle. The value of ownership manifests itself in the high standards of integrity and professionalism we demand of our team, and the responsive, high-performance culture that exists within our firm.

A capital preservation mindset demands a conservative and consistent approach

We believe that minimizing the risk of loss is critically important to achieving long-term financial success and building trust with our clients. Accordingly, we invest with a capital preservation mindset and use a consistent, repeatable process to take selective ownership of companies that we believe have sustainable, structural advantages.

A company’s structural advantage may include brand power, large economies of scale, unique supply chain, and/or steep barriers to entry (economic moats) by competitors and exit by customers. A fortress-type balance sheet, superior long-term returns on invested capital and a consistent commitment to shareholder value creation through dividend payments and/or share buybacks are all characteristics we seek in the companies we choose to achieve our client’s objectives.

Only when there is consensus among the investment team do we invest in a company or security under consideration. That high standard of acceptance tests our level of conviction, builds confidence in our actions and means the portfolio of structurally advantaged companies we choose for you is thoroughly vetted for investment quality and long-term value creation potential. By the same token, if the value of a company we select exceeds our expectations, or a company loses its structurally advantaged status, we do not hesitate to trim or divest our position.

We believe fixed-income investing must focus on return of not on capital

Bonds serve an important purpose in investment planning in that they can act as a readily available source of income or capital. That is assuming they are chosen with a capital preservation mindset. Coleford takes that view in selecting fixed-income securities to ensure safety of principal as well as predictable cash flows. Bonds that we select are rated A or higher and are typically issued by a sovereign government or well-established corporation. Duration risk is minimized by bond maturity selection. Appropriate fixed-income ownership avoids the need to liquidate longer-term focused equity investments to serve their short-term goals during times of market volatility. In short, our fixed-income strategy emphasizes return of capital, not return on capital.

This is a volatile time in the world of investing, but we’ve seen it before

It’s inevitable that capital markets will react, sometimes precipitously, to what economists call externalities. Already in 2026, we see the seeds of future volatility planted by the upcoming renegotiation of the Canada-US-Mexico trade agreement, war in the Middle East and a polarized electorate heading for mid-term U.S. elections. We cannot control or influence any of these events.

But as we’ve done through the first Gulf War, the dotcom era, the US-mortgage driven financial crisis and Covid-19, we can control our actions and responses by living our values, principles and beliefs honed while serving multiple generations of the same families. By helping our clients to maintain perspective through disciplined goals-based planning and a proven, trustworthy investment process, we build the mutually rewarding outcomes – including peace of mind – that we all need and deserve.

To learn more about our investment approach and the certainty it provides in an uncertain world, please speak to us.