Investment Themes

Heirloom identifies attractive investment themes based on long-term, low-risk, secular trends such as major demographic changes, long-term economic realities and obvious political and social shifts. We have expertise investing across all sectors and asset classes globally, which gives us a much larger universe from which to identify the most attractive opportunities.

Academic research, helpfully summarized by McKinsey & Company, has indicated that >90% of portfolio return comes from macro-exposure and only ~5% comes from individual security selection. In other words, focusing on how one’s portfolio is allocated on a big-picture or top-down basis is significantly more important than attempting to pick the best stock or manager within a certain allocation. However, most family offices (and indeed many institutions) spend the majority of their time and resources on security selection and very little on allocation.

Heirloom has been shifting its clients’ portfolios away from traditional asset classes and towards greater diversification and lower correlation for 2-3 years in search of more attractive and lower-risk alternatives. These include the following:

Heirloom’s Current Top Themes