Figuring out the best way to invest can be tricky. It’s a complicated world with many risks, but also great rewards. Being able to make educated choices is the key, and that’s why Index Fund Advisors (IFA) was created—to help everyday investors, as well as seasoned professionals, make the best investment decisions possible.
IFA is here to help you understand how to properly take financial risks, and they have the numbers to help justify their reasoning. IFA pulls wealth data analytics going back years, plus they monitor statistics, charts and investment performances to be able to provide accurate calculations to their customers.
RewardExpert was able to talk to the president and founder of IFA, Mark Hebner, to take a deeper look into the various products the company offers, as well as why potential and current investors should use the services they provide.
Who Uses IFA?
According to Hebner, “A typical client at IFA is someone who we like to refer to as intellectually curious.”
The IFA team is extremely invested in chasing the correct investments, enough so to carry it over into their personal lives, all while targeting the right consumers. “Investors who really appreciate this kind of information are often engineers, doctors, lawyers, educators and individuals from similar occupations,” continued Hebner.
“They are frequently attracted to our content and are perfectly suited for the advice that IFA offers. After better understanding our content, many of our clients start educating their relatives and friends about the benefits of this investment strategy. That is leading us to help educate a whole new generation of investors, with many younger investors getting started on their retirement planning.”
Data First
The company focuses on long-term relationships between proper risks and returns, but they have to get the data from somewhere. We asked where this comes from and why it is important to investors.
“We have constructed our own historic index data from multiple sources that allows us to characterize risk and return patterns of monthly returns for more than 20 indexes that go all the way back to 1928,” said Hebner.
“The risk is a measure of the volatility of returns over various periods. With a large sample size of market returns, you can properly visualize and quantify the historical characteristics of investments such as the highest, lowest, average and range of returns in multiple time periods. All of this can be beautifully displayed on the web in colorful and interactive charts and graphs.”
So, how do you turn this type of historical data into long-term wealth? IFA believes in passive investing. Hebner says that it gives investors a greater chance to see a return over time, particularly if they base it on previous datasets that the company has followed.
“Studies about working with a passive advisor show that the value of such advice exceeds the cost. As the saying goes, ‘it’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little.’”
Investor Education Is the Key
IFA focuses on training their staff of experts and ensuring that they keep abreast of any new trends in the field. They do this not only for the customer, but also for themselves. And that’s a great philosophy for any organization, particularly one that’s a pioneer in the market.
More to the point, IFA has found that it’s very important to pass that knowledge and experience onto their clients.
“We have observed that the misbehavior of investors contributes to significant reductions in their ability to capture returns that markets have to offer. The antidote to investment misbehavior is education. Our site helps us to work with clients in sharpening their financial skills. We think it’s important to publish our articles and video content online for everyone to view which furthers our mission of changing the way the world invests.”
If you’re interested in investing, take note that the company plans to roll out a new app with calculators, charts, videos and articles on how to invest better. This will also allow an investor to see what IFA can do right from their phone.
For more information, visit IFA’s website.