James Harper McKnight

Wasatch develops a fundamental, bottom-up research method that focuses on the long-term growth potential of companies and finding market inefficiencies. The firm initially focused on investing in the stocks of companies with small market capitalizations, and over time has organically evolved into additional asset classes. They select investments for clients based solely on investment considerations, including whether the investments are suitable for the client and consistent with the client’s investment objectives and guidelines.

Functions as a College/University

Innovest Portfolio Solutions focuses on designing portfolios that provide their clients the opportunity to meet their goals while minimizing unnecessary volatility. The firm's approach to portfolio design and manager selection emphasizes forward-looking analysis. Innovest's investment philosophy and process are based on the principle that over 90% of the variability of portfolio performance is attributable to asset allocation. They believe that quantifying the downside risk of a portfolio is the best way to communicate and measure portfolio volatility and that proper benchmarking is critical in evaluating investment performance. Innovest also believes that diversification is key to capital preservation and that proper diversification can reduce investment risk. The firm strives to exploit market inefficiencies through active management, although passive management may be appropriate in certain circumstances.

Rio Asset Management specializes in international small-cap investing. The firm believes that ultimately earnings growth drives stock prices, and small companies provide the best opportunity to find rapid earnings growth. Rio’s international small-cap portfolio is a bottom up, growth oriented portfolio. The firm uses intensive, fundamental research to find the best rapidly growing small-cap stocks outside the US. The portfolio may consist of companies in both developed and developing markets. Typically, a somewhat concentrated portfolio is maintained of less than 80 companies to take advantage of the research done on each company. The portfolio is built bottom up, one company at a time. The goal is to build a portfolio of some of the world’s best small-cap growth companies, regardless of where they are located. The fund’s performance is measured against the Citigroup EMI Global ex-US Index, but the portfolio is not benchmarked closely to the index and may have significantly different characteristics than the index. Rio typically defines small-cap as market-cap less than $5 billion. The portfolio typically hold 50 to 80 stocks, and turnover averages 40%-75% per year