Don’t let unavoidable risks keep you out of the market

Control the ones you can and let time and compounding work their magic.

The greatest avoidable risk to an investment portfolio is often

The Investor

Impatience, overconfidence and the urge to act can widen the gap between the returns markets provide and the returns investors actually realize. Managers who try to predict future events are frequently wrong, and occasional success is difficult to repeat. We prefer a more disciplined approach: objective selection, low costs and patience.

Low Risk Portfolios

We seek to reduce business risk by limiting stock investments to established S&P 500 companies with attractive profit margins and long records of predictable cash flow. These characteristics cannot eliminate market declines, but they help us identify companies we believe are better prepared to endure them and compound value over time.

Pre-determined Risk Levels

Each client’s account is mapped for future cash needs and invested in Treasury bonds that mature when the cash is needed. Only dollars in excess of that need are invested in stocks.

We Work to Minimize Your Expenses

We generally use Charles Schwab as the independent custodian for client accounts and to execute portfolio transactions. We keep expenses low by using commission-free trading where available and limiting turnover through long-term ownership. Advisory and custodial costs are disclosed in their respective agreements and, depending on account size, typically range from 0.30% to 0.50% per year.

Objectivity and Patience — Building Each Portfolio One Client at a Time

Patience is an investment advantage

Every trade introduces another decision, another opportunity for error and, potentially, another cost. Holding carefully selected companies for the long term allows their underlying results—not short-term market predictions—to drive portfolio returns. The evidence below illustrates why lower turnover matters.

Historical holding-period return comparison

Using History to Evaluate an Investment

History cannot tell us exactly what will happen next. It can, however, show us how an investment has behaved under many different conditions—including recessions, inflation, changing interest rates and market declines.

When evaluating a prospective investment, we look beyond its average return. We consider the range of outcomes, the severity and duration of past losses, the time required to recover and whether an investor could reasonably remain committed through difficult periods. The objective is not to select whichever investment performed best in the past. It is to understand the risks involved and determine whether the investment is suitable for the investor’s needs, time horizon and capacity for patience.

Use our complimentary Investment Tool to explore other market histories.

Gleanings

Sandpiper Capital’s Quarterly Economic and Market Commentary

October 2026

“Our recent experience with Treasury rates hitting new highs, while a clear sign of excessive demand, has not yet been reflected in Financial Conditions. Markets are more than willing (currently) to continue to finance expansion. It will be interesting to see if the August high of 8317 on the S&P holds but for now, still all green lights.”

July 2026

“For all of those different eight stock portfolios slowly accumulated, the worst fifteen-year return was 10% per year, the best was 14% and the average was 12%. That’s a lot of predictability for buy and forget.”

April 2026

“If you can invest 25% of your income, you might hope to retire in twelve years.”

January 2026

“In convulsive times, the clarity is not going to come from the markets. It will come from a disciplined, clear-headed, well thought-out plan of action.”

October 2025

“I think it’s no coincidence that this is a strategy guaranteed to keep the maximum number of investment professionals employed per portfolio”

July 2025

“The growing political influence of mega-cap corporations — some generating more annual cash flow than entire industrialized nations collect in tax revenue — suggests that preventing equity market declines may now be viewed as a de facto policy objective”

April 2025

“Stepping back and letting good companies do what they do best while allowing them time to succeed sure seems better than worrying about the markets.”

January 2025

“Celebrity managers who made magazine covers and had feature articles about their past performance have seen their flagship funds get trounced as their future performance came to pass.”

October 2024

“Managing money is a constant exercise in humility. Recent market history, like many other periods before it, has proved vexingly difficult to anticipate and to plan for.”

July 2024

“If history is precedent, then the 15% per year that the S&P composite made for the ten years ending 2021 might well be followed by a -1% for the period ending in 2031.”

April 2024

“Currently the market is up while sales growth is down. That worries me.”

January 2024

“The conclusion of researchers is that simple rules applied diligently will outperform expert judgement routinely and they have a lot of evidence to back that up.”

October 2023

“It will take some time to get the results that the Fed wants, but inevitably we are headed for even lower spending growth and interest rates.”

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Sandpiper Capital

Thomas Lukic Senior Portfolio Manager Sandpiper Capital

Thomas Lukic – Senior Portfolio Manager, CFA

 

Thomas Lukic Biography

Founding partner and managing member, Tom is a Chartered Financial Analyst as well as a Portfolio Manager. He has had primary investment responsibility for assets totaling in excess of $500 million for individuals, non-profits, and corporations.

Beginning his career with A.G. Edwards, he served as an outside advisor to a Virginia Bank Trust Department, a VP with the Asset Management division of a regional bank and as a partner in a regional independent Investment Advisory firm. His community activities have included serving in various volunteer capacities over two decades with United Way Of South Hampton Roads, most recently as 2012 Board Chair and serving as a founding member of Amnesty International’s Hampton Roads chapter.

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Norfolk, Virginia 23510

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