Why Bastion?

Bastion Fiduciary is a fee-only SEC-registered investment adviser built on three C’s: culture, community and character.

Culture

We were founded by veteran military officers and believe in disciplined processes, humility, a strong work ethic, personal integrity and a sense of humor.  We take pride in solving problems – and aspire to help our clients think a little more clearly about their personal finances and investing for the long-term. We also provide an unusual level of transparency in everything we do – while protecting your privacy and keeping your data secure.

Community

Our focus is long-term investment success.  That goal requires successful investing strategies – and patience. We treat our clients as friends and partners, and feel a deep responsibility to treat our clients fairly. We educate our clients frequently about what we are doing with their money, and why. We do this via regularly scheduled meetings, ad hoc check-ins, and annual in-person gatherings in the Florida Keys. 

Character

In the finance world, the term “character” is synonymous with “fiduciary”.  As a fee-only, fiduciary firm, we have a moral and legal obligation to put our clients’ interests first.  This shows up in a number of ways, including in how we are paid: as a small percentage of the assets clients invest with us, or, in the case of financial planning work, on an hourly basis. We will also soon be introducing a subscription model of payment for some planning and advisory services.  No matter what you might use us for, however, as a fee-only firm, we will never earn fees from commissions, loads, sales charges, payouts, kickback or any other silly fees.

In other words – we are stewards, not salesmen. 

We are also known for having skin in the game: investing our own money in the same strategies as our clients.

Our Investing Philosophy:

As an investor, the responsibility of finding the right approach to investing long-term is significant. It’s easy to be mistaken – and messing it up could end badly for you and the people you most care about.

Patience and a long time horizon are essential to getting the most out of your investments. And to invest for the long-term, your portfolio needs to be built to withstand hard times. They are inevitable – whether recession, hurricane, debt crisis, war, interest rate hike or global pandemic – we’ve seen them all.  Trying to proactively avoid the tough times only makes investing harder – because you miss the days with the biggest gains, and because don’t just build the resilience you need for the next challenge.  So if you are going to go through tough times…then you need a rigorous system to help you get through the hard times.

In investing, that system is called value investing.

As Warren Buffett said, it’s simple…but not easy.

We view value investing as the pursuit of investment truth in a complicated market.  And that truth is cash – the only irreducible constant in the investing universe.  The advantage a value investing approach holds over all other styles is a rigorous and safe methodology in the pursuit of growth.  Other investing strategies are rigorous – and others are safe – but none combine those two factors with an emphasis on the most predictive elements of long-term investing success in individual companies: free cash flow and returns on invested capital.

A value investing philosophy also helps avoid the single biggest destroyer of wealth in investing – and, incidentally, the one you’ll never hear about from Wall Street banks or on Reddit:

“Valuation risk” – or buying shares in overvalued companies, at or near the peak of a cycle.

Our portfolio managers are value investors, with deep expertise in different sectors, who also share a common competitive advantage:  our time horizon.

Thinking long-term is a humble edge, boring and unremarkable most of the time, and requires a high degree of resilience and conviction – to resist being swayed by the crowd. Nonetheless, it’s worth it – because that’s where the outperformance is: on the other side of uncertainty, and further out than most of the crowd is bothering to look.

Find out more about our value investing strategies here.

The Benefits of Active Management at a Lower Total Cost:

By combining a disciplined value approach to individual stock selection with the benefits of low cost, diverse index ETFs, Bastion combines the best of both active and passive investment strategies – to the long-term benefit of our clients.

We provide “core and explore” investing strategies – through separately managed accounts, proprietary model portfolios and, soon, our first Exchange Traded Fund (ETF).

The “core” of most client accounts consists of a personalized combination of diverse, low cost index funds.

We “explore” in individual stocks that we know well, run by management teams we trust – consistent with a disciplined fundamental value investing philosophy.

The end goal? Long-term outperformance, at lower cost.

Bastion offers investors direct access to our high-conviction strategies through a Spoke Fund® model portfolio – where the portfolio manager invests his or her own money right alongside clients, in the very same strategy. That alignment is the whole point: no separation between what we recommend and what we own. A Spoke Fund® model portfolio is transparent and low-cost, so you always know exactly what you hold, what you’re paying for, and that we’re in it with you.

The Importance of Financial Planning:

We also provide personal financial planning services to clients who would like more structure and clarity in their overall finances.

Having a personal financial plan is a proactive way to secure your financial health and help build long-term wealth, making it a vital tool for everyone, regardless of income level or life stage.

A financial plan can be crucial – and can add more value to your future beyond the returns on your portfolio.

From goal setting to debt management to retirement planning to tax optimization and legacy planning, financial plans are critical to provide confidence that you are on track to meet your goals – and that you’re prepared for unexpected challenges, too.

We provide financial planning services a number of ways – from focused, deep dive custom plans to more basic plans available via subscription.

View Our Services