We use our education, experience and investment judgment, combined with our understanding of relevant economic, competitive and risk factors, to evaluate a large variety of raw information.   We develop our own estimates of current and projected future values of various investments in order to build investment portfolios designed to pursue our clients' investment objectives.  Simply put, our own research powers our investment decisions, and economics and investment analysis power our research. 

In investing, that which everyone knows is seldom worth knowing, because common knowledge is usually built into each investment's current price.  Because we seek to pursue superior investment results, we focus on our independent research and analysis of economic and investment factors. 

In producing our detailed research, we consider a wide variety of economic and financial factors such as:

• Industry and company growth characteristics
• Competitive positions and barriers to competition
• Quality of management
• Stock price relative to important financial metrics, such as per-share earnings, cash flow, dividends, book value, replacement value, etc.
• Balance sheet analysis (e.g., liquidity, leverage, nature of assets and liabilities)
• Income statement analysis (e.g., operating and net profit margins, tax rates, etc.)
• Flow-of-funds analysis--a detailed review of the company's sources and uses of cash
• Insider holdings and changes thereto

It is sometimes said that managers who place more emphasis on corporate earnings growth are “growth” managers, while those who place more emphasis on a company's existing assets are “value” managers.  Although this distinction may be popular, we feel that a meaningful categorization of money managers isn't that easy.  In practice, not only are there other common investment approaches (e.g., “contrarian” and “momentum” styles), but there are considerable practical differences among those managers who emphasize earnings growth and among those who emphasize asset values.  J. V. Bruni and Company might appropriately be described as pursuing “growth at a reasonable price,” because while we recognize the importance of long-term growth in corporate earnings, we are rarely willing to pay high prices (e.g., p/e ratios) for such growth.  Simply put, we tend to look for under-recognized companies in order to acquire our growth prospects at attractive prices. 

Our strategy is simple:  We pursue superior investment performance in support of each client’s investment objectives through singularly independent and intensive research and analysis.