Discover The Appleton Group LLC

The Appleton Group is an independent Registered Investment Advisor offering objective and unbiased wealth management, research and investment advisory services. We are compensated solely for the investment management, research and fiduciary services we provide to our clients, and are in no way compensated by commissions of any kind. As a mid-sized privately held firm, we work to help individuals, families, foundations, and corporations build and manage more predictable, consistent and profitable portfolios over time.

Perhaps one of the most exciting aspects of our firm is the care we’ve taken and the planning we’ve done to successfully serve the institutional marketplace. First, we’ve maintained a commitment to being a highly focused firm, offering a select number of wealth management offerings and clearly identifying areas in which we can add the most value. We’ve invested in our firm’s infrastructure to offer significant scalability, with our current asset capacity in excess of $1.6 billion (as of 12/31/2013). We remain a completely independent firm, ensuring that our wealth management discipline can be repeatedly delivered without conflicts of interest and always with the best interest of investors in mind. We have a culture of compliance that works to anticipate issues ahead of time, and that works closely with regulators and the compliance industry to stay ahead of our competition.

Our staff is experienced and knowledgeable, and we stand ready to serve you.

The Appleton Group LLC’s mission is to serve the private client, institutional and corporate retirement plan communities by offering independent and objective wealth management solutions that prepare for both cooperative and uncooperative market environments. We work daily to produce investor returns that efficiently balance the rewards of investing with the risks of investing. We maintain a culture of compliance, working to anticipate issues before they arise so as to meet the needs of investors and advisors while being fairly compensated for our work.

We Believe…

… in the value of portfolio efficiency, working to adequately reward investors over time while managing the risk of significant market declines;
… in the value of being proactive, anticipating risks and working daily to manage those risks;
… in the value of full diversification as a technique to produce returns that are more consistent and beneficial to the investor;
… in the importance of focusing on the core competency of wealth management alone;
… in creating a culture of compliance in which conflicts of interest are eliminated and in which portfolio performance is reported fairly;
… in the value of transparency, working to create realistic and achievable expectations based on a complete and thorough performance history;
… in the importance of professional relationships with independent third-parties, including regulators, independent auditors, outside counsel, custodians, information technology partners, and advisors.

The Appleton Group Wealth Management Discipline™ is designed to address an investor’s desire to achieve useful, predictable and meaningful portfolio returns over time with only as much investment risk as is absolutely necessary along the way. It targets net portfolio returns over time that are considered generally necessary for an individual investor to maintain distributions in retirement, for endowments/pensions to meet spending goals in perpetuity, and for pre-retirees to achieve measurable progress toward saving goals.

The Appleton Group Wealth Management Discipline combines three fundamental aspects to successful portfolio management: 1) What to own, 2) How much to own, and 3) When to own. It addresses the importance of investing in both “at-risk assets” and “no-risk assets,” and the importance of adjusting an investor’s exposure to each in response to changing market conditions.

Implementation of The Appleton Group Wealth Management Discipline is designed to be systematic in nature, objective, and most importantly is designed to produce performance characteristics that are predictable and repeatable during various market environments. The discipline seeks to efficiently balance investment risk with investment reward, systematically exposing investors to more “at-risk assets” during periods of sustained market advances, and in turn to more “risk-free assets” during periods of sustained market declines. It seeks to limit portfolio losses during market environments that are unsupportive of at-risk assets, and seeks to achieve significant market correlation during environments that are supportive of at-risk assets.

Although The Appleton Group Wealth Management Discipline prioritizes risk and return management over tax efficiency, our experience has also helped high net-worth and high income investors successfully manage today’s complex tax code.

The Appleton Group Wealth Management Discipline has a measurable performance history through all three market environments (rising markets, falling markets and stagnant markets). This performance history is rigorously documented, and includes all necessary metrics for advisors and investors to objectively evaluate the benefits and limitations of the discipline. Such metrics include mean return (net performance), beta (risk), alpha (value added by manager), standard deviation (predictability), and R-squared (market dependence needed for returns).

Appleton Group’s commitment to our community runs deep. Our firm is an avid supporter of a wide variety of local and state non-profits, including the following:

St. Elizabeth Hospital Community Foundation
Theda Clark Medical Center Foundation
Appleton Medical Center Foundation
Fox Valley Symphony
White Heron Chorale
Trout Museum of Art
Lawrence Academy of Music
Lawrence University – Conservatory of Music
Appleton North High School Theater Department
Fox Valley Christian Academy
NAMI – Fox Valley Fox Valley
Women’s Fund American Cancer Society
The Building for Kids