A Message from the Chief Investment Officer

Dear Yeske Buie Community,

Earning the trust to play the role of Chief Investment Officer at Yeske Buie is the greatest honor of my professional life (and in the spirit of transparency, the only greater honor in my life is being trusted with the livelihood of my family).

As CIO, I’m in charge of the portfolio. It’s a simple sentence, and yet the depth of the responsibility belies that simplicity. What does it mean to be in charge of the portfolio? Several realms of responsibilities come to mind, and I’ll speak to each from two perspectives. Why? I believe the role requires an appreciation for duality.

Yeske Buie is a wealth management firm – that means we do the financial planning and the asset management for our Clients. The investments fuel the financial plan, but they don’t drive it. The numbers matter, but only within the context of our Clients’ values. And as CIO, I get to be a numbers person that has to be good with words so I can communicate with our team and our Clients in a manner they can understand – if I’m not doing that, I’m failing the people to whom I’m accountable.

With that framing, I’ll invite you to step into my office, where I’ll try to make the broad-ranging responsibilities of my role more digestible (naturally, in bullet-point format):

• The Quantifiable Bits

• • I’m responsible for every dollar we invest on behalf of our Clients, translating to $950M across 1,400 accounts, invested in 10 variations of our portfolio model.
  • The number I choose to focus on, however, is 350, which represents the number of families our firm serves. Their account balances are a financial representation of their goals, dreams, and legacies. I am humbled by that trust, which inspires me to be at my best each day.

• The Qualitative Pieces

• • I get to write regular posts for our biweekly digest, and I also have the privilege of writing ad hoc pieces when things go awry in financial markets and the economy (dubbed internally as “valium-grams” for their intended calming effect). I also am fortunate to co-host a number of our webinars, during which we review market and economic activity and share our perspective about what our Clients can be focusing on as they look forward.
  • Like I said, I’m a words guy that has to be good with numbers 😉. I may think in chart-form, but if I can’t explain the concepts clearly, all the chart-making efforts are wasted. And it is a privilege to be counted on to deliver the messaging our people need so that they can navigate the chaos the world serves up on a regular basis.

• The Required Diligence

• • We regularly review our financial market and allocation assumptions to ensure that Client portfolios are positioned to best benefit from what markets have to offer. Furthermore, we are constantly reviewing academic research to ensure we’re Learning Big so we can Think Big when we’re contemplating our Clients’ portfolios.
  • Aside from being a financial planner and investor, I get to be a bit of a mad scientist – doing research, conducting experiments, testing theories and arriving at conclusions that serve our Clients’ goals. And I’m fortunate to share this responsibility with the Investments Committee to ensure we are applying our team’s institutional knowledge and best thinking in service of our Clients’ needs.

• The Strategic Decisions

• • We don’t do all the aforementioned work just for the fun of it (and it is fun) – ultimately, we are compelled to act; our evidence-based philosophy must be implemented. The confidence to act in alignment with our philosophy and values comes from the doing of the work.
  • At the end of the day, the decisions regarding the portfolio’s direction are my call. When we were discussing that as a partnership group, the first call I made as CIO was to inform my partners that I would never act without consulting them, with my goal being to reach consensus before moving forward. That methodology is at the heart of my strategic approach to this role: we do better when we act together.

• The Force-Multiplying Efficiencies

• • Finally, we leverage technology in everything we do for our Clients, and that’s absolutely the case with all that goes in to the work we do with investments. Whether we’re mining Morningstar’s or Dimensional’s or YCharts’ databases, or using iRebal to review all of our Clients’ accounts in mere minutes, our tools enable us to perform at our standard: nothing less than excellence is acceptable.
  • Time is a fascinating concept to consider, and we must make the most of it if we’re going to meet the fiduciary standard of care to which we are bound. To be old enough to be “experienced” and yet young enough to not yet be “old” (or even forty) is fun; what’s funny is that I’m aged enough to remember the old tech we used to use (and it seems ancient and was definitely significantly slower). I’m intrigued to learn what the future holds regarding new developments in our field, as we can always be doing more, better.

I would be remiss if I didn’t dedicate a portion of this message to Dr. Dave Yeske, our Managing Director and my primary mentor in this particular field. Dave is a mountain of a man. The standard he set for portfolio management felt, at times during my journey, unscalable. Learning from him, first by watching, then by training, then by questioning, then by debating, and now by conversing, has been and continues to be an absolute delight. I will continually strive to emulate his ability to think broadly and critically, and I will never not be floored by the wealth of knowledge he’s obtained and shared over the course of his career. He is many things, and above all, at least in my mind, he’s a damn good teacher.

Likewise, and in the spirit of duality, I can’t not recognize Elissa Buie, our CEO and my primary mentor as a financial planner. I spent the first decade of my career shadowing her, learning how to serve Clients to our standard, and, most importantly, how to communicate with our Clients effectively. Elissa is gifted in many ways, and her greatest gift may be her ability to be concise and memorable. Her guidance (and constant editing of my grammar) must be credited in my development on the road to becoming CIO.

As I said at the top, I am inspired to do this work because I get to do it for your families, and for mine. My wife, Maegan, my son, Noah, and my daughter, Rian, are the guiding lights in my life. They are my heroes and my absolute favorite people. In addition to their love, the other sources of fuel in my life are

• My spiritual practices (prayer, fasting, yoga, and meditation),
• My fitness regimen (my Peloton is addicted to me, don’t get it confused),
• My connection to art (music saved my life and helps me connect with a vast array of peoples, and movies have always been instructive and/or motivational), and
• My relationship with fashion (clothes don’t make the person and shoes don’t make you run faster or jump higher, but in my view, self-expression is key to self-actualization).

I’ll close with this: you can invest in financial instruments, and, while the returns can be incredible, at the end of the (trading) day they are indeed finite; you can also invest in people, and, while the returns may not be immediately observable, they are absolutely infinite.

The money matters, and the people matter so much more. I’m grateful to do the work I get to do for and with my people, including you.

Sincerely,