Updates to Our Investment Strategy

Evolving Our Investment Approach: New Tools, Same Philosophy

As we officially launch TriHelix, we wanted to touch on a few updates to our investment strategy. Our core philosophy hasn't changed: we believe in active management of passive portfolios using academically supported strategies. What has changed are the tools we can now bring to bear for our clients. We've made several enhancements to our investment lineup that expand the ways we can pursue diversification and long-term success for your portfolios.

What Hasn't Changed

While we've added these new tools, our fundamental strategy remains the same:

• Academic, evidence-based principles

• Disciplined portfolio construction

• Focus on diversification, risk management, and long-term outcomes

These enhancements simply allow us to apply that strategy with even greater precision and breadth.

Introducing Dimensional Funds

We are excited to incorporate Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) funds into our strategies. Dimensional has a 40+ year track record of translating academic research into real-world investment solutions. Their funds are built on decades of work from financial economists like Eugene Fama and Kenneth French, who demonstrated that markets don't just reward investors for broad market exposure — there are systematic drivers of higher returns over time.

Dimensional’ s strategies focus on tilting portfolios toward two of these well-documented factors:

• Smaller companies (the "size" effect): Historically, smaller-cap stocks have outperformed larger-cap stocks over long periods. While they can be more volatile in the short term, the additional risk has been rewarded with higher expected returns which can be crucial to helping you transition from doctor to retiree.

• More profitable companies (the "profitability" effect): Firms with higher relative profitability tend to deliver stronger returns than less profitable peers, even after accounting for size and other risks. Dimensional prioritizes these companies to capture that premium.

By emphasizing these characteristics within broadly diversified, low-cost funds, Dimensional provides us with a more precise way to implement our evidence-based investment philosophy. Importantly, this isn't speculation — it's an approach grounded in decades of peer-reviewed academic research and real-world results.

Adding Gold as a Fixed Income Diversifier

In today's markets, bonds don't always provide the diversification benefits they once did. To address this, we've added gold to the fixed income sleeve of our portfolios. Gold has historically served as a better diversifier than bonds in certain environments, offering potential protection against inflation and market volatility.

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Crypto as an Option

We recognize that some clients are interested in gaining exposure to digital assets, particularly younger clients who may be residents or starting out as attending physicians. While crypto remains a volatile and evolving asset class, we now offer it as an optional component of client portfolios. Our role is to ensure that any allocation is sized appropriately within the context of a well-diversified strategy.

While many in the crypto community have pointed to crypto as a diversifier, it has not been terribly successful in that regard, so we are not adding it with that in mind. Instead, we look at it as an opportunity to gain exposure to the asset class with the highest returns and highest volatility in the market. We will not be inserting it into balanced or conservative portfolios, but it will be an option for those clients who are comfortable adding volatility to their long-term portfolios.

Next Steps for Your Retirement Portfolio

Our mission is to continually refine and expand the ways we serve you, without losing sight of the principles that matter most. Dimensional funds, gold, and crypto are new tools in our toolkit — but the foundation of your portfolio is still built on discipline, diversification, and evidence-based investing.

If you'd like to learn more about how these changes might affect your portfolio, feel free to schedule a meeting using this link.