Felipe Toews of Toews Asset Management - The Behavioral Portfolio Book

Today on the podcast, Rusty and Robyn are joined by Felipe Toews, Chief Executive Officer of the Toews Corporation and a Portfolio Manager of Toews Asset Management.  Felipe Toews is Chief Executive Officer of the Toews Corporation and a Portfolio Manager of Toews Asset Management. His management strategies focus on creating “investor friendly” products designed to meet investors’ economic and behavioral needs. Phillip is the founder of the Behavioral Investing Institute, an organization devoted to helping advisors manage investor behavior through market challenges. 

Key Takeaways

• [03:00] - Felipe’s professional background and what led him to found Toews Asset Management.
• [07:45] - What inspired Felipe to create Cornelius and Prudence in his new book The Behavioral Portfolio?
• [10:13] - A preview of Scene 1 from Felipe’s new book, The Behavioral Portfolio.
• [10:56] - What should Cornelius have done differently in the prior scene to align Prudence’s expectations?
• [13:27] - How could Cornelius have prevented Prudence’s panic selling?
• [17:10] - Why do investors like Prudence make the decision to shift advisory firms and how can advisors prevent client attrition?
• [20:56] - From a Behavioral Finance perspective, what could have helped Cornelius manage Prudence’s expectations a bit better?
• [22:00] - What happens to an investor’s mind during a significant downturn and why do financial advisors sometimes struggle to keep them invested?
• [23:25] - What tips does Felipe have for advisors on how they can communicate in such a way that really reinsures their clients?
• [25:13] - What are the most common, and detrimental, behavioral biases that Felipe sees in investors and how can advisors counteract them?
• [30:43] - If Cornelius would have implemented a behavioral portfolio from the start, how might have this story been different?

Quotes

[07:45] - “Most of us who have studied Behavioral Finance learn that there’s thinking about something that happened historically, and then there’s having it told in a way that helps you understand or kind of relive the moment. Right, so it’s talking about the story with dialogue in a way that helps you understand it…Seeing the way many advisors and their investors shifted their thinking around portfolios from the top of the market in 07’ to the bottom in 09’ and then throughout the rise of that. I wanted to tell that story, so that advisors could sort of re-understand, for those that lived through it, how challenging actually managing investor behavior and making good decisions around that big downturn was.” ~ Felipe Toews

[11:13] - “What Behavioral Coaching…has gotten wrong from the beginning, is it starts with the assumption that the historical accident of the 60/40 portfolio, a portfolio which does not…in all cases meet the economic and psychological needs of portfolios, is what you need to start with and coach around. So what you actually need to do is start around what the portfolio is and how it works…Then the other thing too is that advisors…like to kind of gloss over the worst things that markets can do.” ~ Felipe Toews

Links

• Felipe Toews on LinkedIn
• Toews Asset Management
• “Sweet Disposition” by The Temper Tramp
• Ask Vinh (Instagram)
• The Behavioral Portfolio by Philip Toews

Connect with Us

• Meet Rusty Vanneman, Orion’s Chi