Home | Process

Investment Disciplines

Our number one priority is to keep your clients out of trouble.

Outcomes Delivered by Discipline

Since 1988, Ocean Park’s goals have been to help retirees and other conservative investors limit downside risk and grow their wealth. Through the years, Ocean Park has remained committed to a truly tactical, quantitative, rules-based investment approach with the objectives of limiting downside risk and producing returns that a conservative investor would deem satisfying. Using decades of strategic research and our rules-based disciplines, we strive to help advisors and their clients meet their investment goals.

Our Disciplined Process

When to Buy – Quantitative, Rules-based

Our truly tactical rules-based investment disciplines only buy when our decision rules show an uptrend has begun or is in progress. We don’t just look at share prices, but use exponential moving averages to help drive our decisions.

We buy only when our decision rules show an uptrend has begun or is in progress.
Once a given asset class | sector begins an uptrend that is adequate to generate a “Buy” signal under our proprietary discipline, we analyze all mutual funds and ETFs in that asset class | sector to determine which to buy.
“Buy” signals are quantitative – and the discipline is the contrary of our trailing stops for “Sell” signals.

We use an extra moving average for a Buy, because we want more evidence that a new uptrend may have started for us to put money into risk, than to take money out of risk (Sell signal).

What to Buy – The Most Complex Question

As part of our risk-mitigation discipline, we give preference to asset classes/sectors with low volatility. Our trailing stop bands will be tighter thus when the trend reverses from up to down, we give back less.
When there are multiple asset classes/sectors in uptrend, preference is given to those that are not highly correlated to each other, or the overall portfolio.

When to Sell – Quantitative, Rules-based

We treat a Sell signal as a mandate (we sell to prevent any possibility of further damage to the account). A “Sell” signal occurs when the price rises below the recent high of the lower band.

We monitor and review our trailing-stop-loss discipline daily for every holding.
When the price of a holding declines below the trailing-stop (lower band), we sell, and move temporarily to cash.
Our trailing-stops are completely quantitative and are proportionate to the historic volatility of each asset class/sector.
Our stop-loss discipline limits the impact of any sustained decline on the overall portfolio.

More About Buy & Sell Signals

Each holding has its own Trailing Stop under it, and our investment team reviews every holding every day.

When we Sell, the sale is based on each individual position, not the overall asset class.