Our Business Principles

Over the years Dad has often shared our thoughts on investing with you through our monthly letters. I am hoping to continue that tradition as Dad eases in to handing off some of his responsibilities so he can begin spending more time outside of the office, as my Mom has been gently and regularly encouraging him to do. He will still write a letter here or there, but you will also see letters from me and Libby throughout the year.

Our hope has been that these letters help give you an understanding of how and why we take the actions we do on your behalf in your portfolios. For those of you who may have missed some older letters and are interested, you can always find our past letters on our website at andersongriggs.com. You will also find replays of our WRHI Radio Intelligent Investing shows there as well, which are worth a listen.  

Whether we are discussing the current state of the markets or the advantages or disadvantages of a particular investment approach, you may notice that our biases in favor of value investing shine through. We believe that it is important to determine an intrinsic value of a company before committing funds to that company. This is a unique approach in the investing world today. Many financial advisers seem to think this is not worth the trouble, and instead choose to simply sell investment products to customers from a list selected by their firm.

Our overall approach at Anderson Griggs is grounded in and guided by our Business Principles. We have shared these with you in the past, but like to revisit them every once in a while, and we thought the start of 2020 would be a great time to do so. We hope this helps you understand how we operate our business in order to serve our commitment to you as clients.

Our Business Principles

We are an investment management firm, created to continue “ad infinitum,” promoting growth and happiness to generation after generation of clients, associates and owners.
We take great joy in serving you and your families. We love that we often work with multiple generations within the same family. Obviously, we are a family business, and our hope is that the Anderson family will continue to serve you and your family for generations to come. We are committed to managing your portfolios in a manner designed for each of you individually, in order to meet the diverse needs and goals that each of you have for your savings and investments.

We must recognize that all clients have rights, and upon our recognition of these rights and our desire to satisfy them, rests our chance to succeed.
You always have the right to discuss your goals, needs, or concerns with us at any time, and we encourage you to do so. You also have the right to tell us you no longer want us to manage your portfolio, at any time and with no repercussions. We strive to meet your needs at all times and hope that you will contact us with any concerns. 

Therefore, every business decision we make must be dependent on its relevance to the question, “Is this beneficial to our clients?” who provide us with the means and purpose to continue as a firm.
Our primary concern is managing your portfolio to meet your needs. Anderson Griggs Investments is a Registered Investment Adviser, which means we must act as fiduciaries for our clients. This means that legally we must place your interest above our own at all times. We must also disclose any conflicts of interest we have as well as all costs involved in the investment process.

To succeed then, we as owners and associates accept that any reward is directly dependent on the skill, dedication and well-being of all who contribute to our clients’ success.
We measure the success of our firm by the success and retention of our clients. The rate of return our clients earn and keep over time measures our skill as portfolio managers and investment analysts. How long our clients remain our clients measures whether our service and abilities are producing the results you are expecting.

In recognition of this dependency our duty as a firm is to provide our clients with highly skilled and well-compensated associates and owners who are actively involved in the day-to-day duties of the firm.
Compensation is usually the largest expense for an investment firm, including our firm. We keep our salaries low relative to our competition locally, preferring to share firm profits, which in most years has been the great equalizer. We believe this is in the best interest of you, our clients, as it rewards us in the good years and limits our income in those bad years that come along every so often.

Being a skilled and competent investment manager requires more than a simple license obtained by passing an exam. While we do have the required licenses, we also believe that much time is needed to gain the experience necessary to make sound investing judgments on your behalf. Dad has over 40 years of experience in this, and he has been passing his wisdom on to me for the past 14 years. Libby has also been the beneficiary of that experience since she joined us 6 years ago.

We also believe in the value of continuing education. Libby took it upon herself to take courses to obtain the CFP® certification, and follows through with the continuing education requirements for her certification every year. I am currently working towards an MBA from Winthrop University in order to further serve our business and our clients. We all spend many hours each week immersing ourselves in the investing world, educating ourselves on the markets, companies, and philosophies necessary to make decisions for your portfolios.

These duties to our clients, associates and owners recognize the requirements to operate our business profitably for the future without the constraints of maximizing short-term results.
In order to continue serving our clients, we must remain profitable as a business. Rather than focusing on short term results, we work towards long term profitability. Our current minimum family account value is $100,000, as our ability to properly manage a portfolio of less would make remaining profitable net of cost difficult.

I hope that our sharing of our Business Principles has given you some insight into how we work for you in our day to day operations. I hope they also demonstrate how important each of you are to us. Please be in touch at any time with any concerns.

Until next time,

Justin T. Anderson