Privacy Policy

Investment Advisors are required by law to inform their clients of their policies regarding privacy of client information. We are bound by professional standards of confidentiality that are even more stringent than those required by law. This privacy policy statement (“PPS”) is given to clients at the initial signing of the client contract and mailed or emailed once annually.

TYPES OF NONPUBLIC PERSONAL INFORMATION (“NPI”) WE COLLECT

We collect NPI about you that is either provided to us by you or obtained by us with your authorization. This can include but is not limited to your Tax ID Number, Banking Information and Financial Account Numbers and/or Balances, Sources of Income, or other Information. When you are no longer a client, we may continue to share your NPI only as described herein.

PARTIES TO WHOM WE MAY DISCLOSE INFORMATION

As a policy, SWM does not share your NPI with any non-essential vendor, third party, affiliate, or non-affiliate other than parties “as permitted by law” and that SWM may need to share NPI with to service your account(s); those include, but are not limited to, affiliates, non-affiliates, and vendors that process your transactions and maintain your account(s), custodian interactions, and to respond to court orders and legal investigations. Even in those cases, any affiliates, non-affiliates or vendors are bound by strict non-disclosure agreements or there are other legal safeguards that protect your NPI from further disclosure.

PROTECTING THE CONFIDENTIALITY OF CURRENT & FORMER CLIENT’S INFORMATION

To protect your NPI from unauthorized access and use, we use physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal law, including computer safeguards, secured files and a secured building. To mitigate a possible breach of NPI SWM will make every effort to use systems and storage facilities, including computer systems and back-up locations, that are deemed to be secure. SWM will also restrict access to your NPI and account information to those employees who need to know that information to provide products or services to you.

As a result of this limited sharing, all of which is “permitted by law,” there is no option to opt-out of our information sharing protocol

“A very low-cost index fund is going to beat a majority of professionally-managed money. The gross performance [of actively managed money] may be reasonably decent, but fees will eat up a significant percentage of the returns.”

Warren Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway

2007 Shareholders Meeting

“All the time and effort that people devote to picking the right fund, the hot hand, the great manager, have in most cases led to no advantage.”

Peter Lynch, former Fidelity Magellan Fund Manager

Beating the Street, 1993

"The industry as a whole cannot outperform the market because they are the market, and long-term statistics revealing negative returns for the class of active managers confirms it. Yet, what a price investors are willing to pay!"

Bill Gross, PIMCO Co-founder

Former Manager of World's Largest Bond Fund