OUR MISSION

OUR VALUES

Sellwood operates according to a set of values that is different from many of our industry peers.

Partnership

We treat our clients as partners. As fiduciaries, we manage clients’ assets as if they were our own. We are transparent with our thinking and proactive with our recommendations. We uphold a high level of client service and believe that all of our clients, regardless of their size, deserve our very best. We focus on creating value for clients, not extracting it from them. We structure our advisory fees, which are never hidden and always accompanied by an invoice, to be only a fraction of the value we expect to add to clients. After all, clients should benefit more from their portfolios than their investment advisors and managers do.

We also treat our employees as partners. We owe our clients a stable firm and a consistent advisory team, and we believe that when we treat our people like the professionals they are, they serve our clients best.

Independence

We are beholden only to our clients, our values, and our regulators. When we say we have no conflicts of interest, we mean it — because we believe advice worth taking is only possible when conflicts of interest are eliminated, not merely disclosed. We never write anything in fine print. We are paid only by our clients and offer no proprietary investment products or add-on services that would pollute the advice we deliver to clients. We have no outside ownership, commitments, or pressures. Independence offers us the freedom to think creatively about solving client investment problems.

Quality, Not Scale

Achieving “scale” as a business is not our objective. Quality is. Truly customized and thoughtful advice, delivered at high levels of client service, by definition cannot scale. There is a finite limit to the number of clients we can serve without diluting what makes our advisory offering unique. We would rather serve fewer clients better than more clients in a watered-down way. We recognize that our service offering is an optimal match only for a narrow segment of the marketplace of clients, and we only seek to serve those clients. Other firms can appropriately focus on the rest.

Inclusion

Just as diversification improves portfolios, diversity makes Sellwood a stronger firm and a better partner for our clients. We strive to have a culture of inclusion, infused into everything we do, and to have a hiring process and culture that are inclusionary and non-biased. Our industry is not as inclusive of people of color, LGBTQ people, women, and underrepresented communities as it should be. Our culture of inclusion seeks to ensure that both Sellwood and our clients benefit from the diversity of perspective that comes from diversity of talent. 

OUR INVESTMENT PHILOSOPHY

We operate according to an investment philosophy that is grounded in experience and research as outlined in the following seven points.

  • We create customized investment portfolios that prudently maximize return.
  • Risk management is paramount. And risk is more than just volatility of returns.
  • We advise our clients to diversify and maintain a long-term focus to realize a sustainable advantage that leads to higher returns.
  • Valuations matter. Expected returns for investments depend directly on the prices paid for them.
  •  Experience shows us that markets are reasonably efficient and that active management should be pursued only where it is likely to be rewarded. Active management is always a source of risk, but only sometimes a source of excess return.
  • Fees matter. We believe that careful attention to portfolio fees is a sustainable long-term advantage for an investor. That’s why we minimize client fees and always report client returns net of fees.
  • We approach markets and investing with humility. Egos hinder investment results.

OUR ADVISORY PHILOSOPHY

Our team has advised a broad range of institutional investors, including some of the largest portfolios in the country. This deep experience informs the following advisory philosophy.

  • Every client is unique in its values, return objectives, tolerance for risk, and circumstances faced. We evaluate each client’s individual needs before designing and implementing an investment strategy.
  • Every client deserves our very best. We will not sacrifice the needs of one client to serve another.
  • Investment advice should be provided by an experienced advisor in the context of a long-term relationship.
  • Ethics are paramount in all we do. We will not compromise our ethics for any reason.
  • Client relationships are of the highest importance. Every investment strategy will be tested. Client trust in the strategy and our advice is imperative to the long-term success of the investment plan.
  • We value transparency, avoid jargon, and seek to fully educate our clients about their investment programs. We know that the most successful clients are those who fully understand their investment strategy.
  • We present our opinions directly and clearly and are accountable for them.
  • We are a team. Only with a close and collaborative culture can we fully capitalize on the exchange of ideas and the rigor of peer vetting that leads to consistency in our recommendations and efficiency in their execution.
  • The continuity and stability of our team is a critical core business value. We take care to ensure that our team’s morale is high, that ideas are heard, and that key professionals participate in the success of our business. Our ownership is distributed broadly throughout the firm. We prize very low turnover of our investment team.
  • The continuity and stability of our client base is equally important. We believe that the rewards associated with long-term investing accrue only in the context of long-term relationships. We value a stable base of clients with minimal client turnover.

OUR HISTORY

Sellwood Investment Partners is a boutique firm based in Portland, Oregon.

We are an independent, SEC-registered investment advisory firm focused on serving foundations, endowments, nonprofits, retirement plans, and select high-net-worth individuals.

We founded Sellwood because we believe that a stable firm and long-term relationships between clients and experienced investment professionals are the necessary preconditions for superior long-term investment results. Our close-knit team has enjoyed remarkable stability since our firm’s founding in 2012.

Sellwood is 100% owned by current employees.

We have no outside investors, former shareholders, proprietary products, or debt. Nor do we have a parent company, affiliates, related organizations, or other lines of business. This independence is a choice. Affiliations always create conflicts adverse to client interests, so avoiding them allows us the freedom to fully focus on helping clients thrive. Our investment recommendations and decisions are always based on our own research and never based on conflicts or profit motives.

Client turnover is the ultimate measure of satisfaction.

And by that standard, we are the most stable firm in our industry. Our average client has worked with us for more than a decade, and our client retention rate exceeds 99%.