Investment Strategy

The Investment Strategy team continuously assesses the global investing landscape and develops resulting investment conclusions. They make it a priority to communicate their investment outlook and interpretation of events, keeping you and your clients informed through a range of internal and external communications on a frequent basis. The team also offers strategic and tactical asset allocation models detailing portfolio mixes across six different return-risk profiles that you can implement in your clients' portfolios. The team has built models for tax-exempt and taxable investors and for qualified purchasers that include or exclude alternatives. In addition, the team manages turnkey solutions, which include asset allocation strategies and model portfolios that seek to capture the best thinking of the group.

Financial ID

Through our innovative and practical application of behavioral finance, we've created a proprietary tool – the Stifel Financial ID – to help you build a detailed picture of your clients' risk attitudes and decision-making preferences. It measures six key indicators that reveal how your clients think and feel about investing so that you can help them make better investment decisions, ultimately stay the course, and avoid common investor pitfalls. Advisors can use this high-resolution picture as a starting point for designing an optimal, personalized investment portfolio for their clients.

Portfolio Solutions

The Portfolio Solutions team works with financial advisors on larger, more complex relationships that require additional expertise and, often, considerable time to formulate customized strategies for the client's unique circumstances. They can serve as an extension of you and your team to enhance the client experience by assembling unique insights from across the Stifel organization, as well as offering assistance with proposal generation, customized portfolio construction, portfolio rebalancing, investment manager analysis, and client meetings.

Alternative Investments

We offer a deep, high-conviction roster of alternative investments, backed by rigorous due diligence and ongoing monitoring. Stifel's offerings include:

• Hedge Funds – Our investment strategies consist of equity long-/short-, event-driven, relative value, global macro, and managed futures.
• Private Assets – We employ a number of strategies, including real estate, direct lending, distressed credit, secondaries, and buyouts.
• Long-Only LPs – Stifel is the investment adviser to a series of private investment funds called the Cardinal Advisor Series Funds.

Structured Investments

Our Structured Investments team builds customized investments for a variety of strategic investment objectives, such as leveraged upside, enhanced yield, or capital preservation. We can design structured investments around a market theme, the firm's strategic view, or your client's personal view. We offer solutions to help your clients gain exposure to markets, asset classes, and investment strategies that are not otherwise easily accessible to the investor, as well as provide greater portfolio diversification. Our team works with best-in-class issuers to obtain best execution, pricing, and access to diverse strategic and tactical ideas. Strategic alignment, open architecture, tailored investment strategies, portfolio allocation, and focus on the client are the hallmarks of our approach.

Asset Management

Comprised of several affiliated stand-alone asset managers, Stifel's Asset Management Division provides investment management and services to individual and institutional clients over a breadth of asset classes. Our asset management affiliates benefit from being part of a world-class financial institution with tremendous resources while maintaining the independence that allows each manager to focus on its proven strengths. Together as a group, with common leadership and business vision, we provide the next generation of investment management that can be catered to address any client need.

Corporate Executive Services

Our Corporate Executive Services team can help you navigate the complex rules and regulations pertaining to your clients' company shares and stock options. Our expertise includes designing and implementing 10b5-1 plans, advising on the sale of control and restricted stock, lending on control stock, and financing stock options.

Diversification and asset allocation do not ensure a profit or protect against loss. Rebalancing may have tax consequences, which you should discuss with your tax advisor. Alternative investments involve a high degree of risk, often engage in leveraging and other speculative investment practices that may increase the risk of investment loss, can be highly illiquid, are not required to provide periodic pricing or valuation information to investors, may involve complex tax structures and delays in distributing tax information, are not subject to the same regulatory requirements as more traditional investments, and often charge high fees, which may erode performance. An investment is appropriate only for investors who have the capacity to absorb a loss of some or all of their investment. Structured investments can be an integral part of a well-diversified portfolio and an important complement to traditional investments. Recommendations of structured investments are subject to alignment of the client’s investing needs with the specific features offered and the client’s ability and willingness to bear the liquidity and issuer-default risks that may be associated with a particular investment.