Investing

How First Merchants Investment Management can help you

The preservation and continued growth of your assets are important to your future, and successful wealth management begins with establishing a financial blueprint. Your wealth advisor, along with your portfolio manager and trust advisor will work with you to outline short and long term goals and define your risk tolerance; doing so will allow us to tailor the mix of assets to meet your goals. Regular reviews will take place to keep investments aligned with your objectives and to address any changes that occur along the way.

Our Investment Management Process

Equity

• We have a long-term, value-oriented approach to selecting the common stock.
• Our screening process utilizes a combination of external research from brokerage firms, investment banks, and independent research firms as well as internal proprietary research.
• Equity guidance list is composed of approximately 100 individual equities from the universe of the Russell 1000.
• We regularly review our guidance list for equities that should be added or removed.

Fixed Income

• We focus on debt issued by companies on our equity guidance list as well as close competitors to reduce credit risk.
• We treat the fixed income share of your portfolio as a source of current income while also serving to reduce overall portfolio market price volatility.

Mutual Funds & ETFs

• Provide direct exposure to mid caps, small caps, international equities, commercial real estate, and other subclasses to ensure proper allocation and diversification.
• To screen, we examine the relative actual and absolute performance and consider the managers’ experience and fees.
• We utilize an open architecture approach which allows us to select the best fund managers available.
• Our approved lists of mutual funds and ETFs contain nearly 90 funds.
  
  

Our Investment Portfolio Management Process

Establish values and financial goals

We give you the personal attention necessary to identify your long-term goals and objectives.

Analyze information and create a custom portfolio

Utilizing our carefully researched investment approved lists, we tailor and carefully construct portfolios to meet client needs and objectives. We craft an Investment Policy Statement (IPS) based on these needs to guide our portfolio management process.

Implement strategies and manage portfolio

Your portfolio manager will tactically implement your strategy given current market conditions. He or she will continue to actively manage your portfolio including rebalancing ensure proper asset allocation with an eye towards minimizing taxes.

Monitor and review

We continually review and monitor the portfolio to ensure we are in accordance with the IPS and in line with your changing goals. We meet with clients at least annually to review strategy and performance, and adjust for any life changes. Our periodic meetings give us the chance to discuss with you any changes that might dictate a change to portfolio strategy.

For more information, we invite you to review our monthly market updates.