Our Mission Statement…

To make and protect money for clients while building a sustainable business honestly, ethically and justly.

More than a mission statement, this phrase represents a shared philosophy for the operation of WSP Pty Ltd, and it’s associated businesses. To understand the full implications of this single sentence, it is necessary to look at each idea within it. The links below lead you to discussion pages on each component of the mission statement.

• To make money
• To protect money
• For clients
• While building a sustainable business
• Honestly
• Ethically
• Justly

 

To make money

It is not possible to guarantee to make money. No-one can guarantee that they will do so. The world of finances and money is simply too fluid, chaotic and unpredictable – even if there are strands of logic and cause/effect that can be traced and identified. An honest appraisal of this fact will help clarify just what or what is not achievable and from that, it should be possible to construct a better adviser/client relationship.

Money can be made in some places some of the time but each dollar of money earned through investment income or capital growth or entitlement, will carry an associated level of risk.

The balance of return and risk is not fixed – it is a moving variable that alters with the ebbs and flows of a wide range of inputs such as interest rates, legislation, economic growth, taxation, global money flows, currency, debt and equity returns and premiums. Financial analysis would look at potential outcomes in a range of ways:

The fact that money has been made or is currently being made is in no way a guarantee that intentional current or past actions of the individual were part of the cause/effect equation when compared with the impact of unexpected or uncontrollable inputs. In other words, the actual return obtained from a given investment at any given point in time, will often be an outcome of ‘luck’. This doesn’t mean that an investor should set out to operate a portfolio based entirely on luck but rather suggests that there are limitations to the level of control an investor or their advisers will have over returns.

Understanding the limitations of investment control is essential to any clear understanding of the risks associated with an investment, and is therefore elemental in directing appropriate and prudent adviser conduct. However, when even the best-resourced, highest-paid, and most authoritative researchers, commentators and advisers can turn out to be wrong, there is an inevitable mismatch between expectations and outcomes. While risk profile analysis can assist in better matching expectations and positions with likely outcomes, there remains a variability that cannot be fully accounted for. Hence the task of “making money” in an uncertain world.

Making money then, is more than simply investing and hoping for the best. It is a process of balancing competing actions against the range of potential outcomes, while being cognisant of the potential for “black swan” events – which by definition will tend to be outside the realm of expectations, and therefore highly susceptible to invisibility in day-to-day investigations. There are many sources of information on risk and returns, and one of the better ones is the retail information website of The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (“ASIC”), which can be found here.