Our Three Guiding Principles

Andrews Lucia Wealth Management is a Registered Investment Advisor firm to individuals, businesses, trusts, partnerships, not-for-profit organizations and retirement plans. Based in the San Francisco Bay area, we are committed to offering clients outstanding service, sophisticated, knowledgeable advice aided by technological solutions and special attention to ethical business practices.

Investing time to build a relationship is time well spent.

At Andrews Lucia Wealth Management (ALWM), our process is about knowing YOU. We are a fee-only investment management firm, so our interests are firmly aligned with yours. We take the time and have the process that allows us to truly understand who you are. You’re not just an account on our books, our work ensures an ability to oversee all the moving parts as well as the common goal to create a strategy that is unique to you. That kind of strategy can only be mapped by someone who is tuned to your personality, your needs, your current and future expectations. A partner who knows and most importantly, can anticipate your most challenging obstacles and helps you pursue your long term goals.

Use Modern Portfolio Theory to efficiently manage client wealth
Investors fall into two basic categories: active investors or evidence-based investors. Active investors believe in trying to time the market and pick winning stocks. Evidence-based investors believe in capturing the returns markets provide and doing so in a low-cost, tax-efficient manner.

While few (if any) would argue that markets are perfectly efficient, we believe that markets are largely efficient. We believe there is no feasible way to determine which stocks will rise, nor is there a way to identify managers who can. Instead, we believe that the most prudent way to build client portfolios is to tailor the portfolio to match the investor’s ability, willingness and need to take risk. We also believe in constructing these portfolios in the most low-cost and tax-efficient manners possible.

Our approach to investing is based on academic research. We subscribe to Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), which has four basic concepts:

• Markets process information so rapidly when determining security prices that it is extremely difficult to gain a competitive edge by exploiting market anomalies.
• Over time, riskier assets provide higher expected returns as compensation to investors for accepting greater risk.
• Adding high-risk, low-correlating asset classes to a portfolio can actually reduce volatility and increase expected rates of return.
• Evidence-based asset class fund portfolios can be designed with the expectation of delivering over time the highest expected returns for a chosen level of risk.

MPT also shows us diversification within and across asset classes is of utmost importance. Investing can be risky enough. Taking additional risk by placing assets in just a few investments is not a prudent way to achieving financial goals (especially since undiversified risk has not resulted in superior expected returns). We build portfolios that diversify within and across asset classes to lower the risk of portfolios while maintaining similar (or even the same) expected returns.

Achieve success by exceeding our clients goals and expectations
We believe our approach fosters a relationship grounded in fiduciary obligation, and incorporates the best academic evidence on how markets can be used to pursue financial independence. We combine that with an uncompromising commitment to provide world-class client service and meet every client’s highly individualized wealth management needs.

We believe an investment portfolio should directly reflect the investor’s primary economic objectives – that’s the simple principle on which ALWM was founded and continues to do business today. Through fee-only investment management, we specialize in long-term investment strategies and dynamic portfolio design that helps our clients not only earn wealth … but keep it, too.