Ideal conditions for achieving investment success are created by the disciplined application of three major strategies of modern prudent fiduciary investing: broad diversification of risk, low management costs, and legal tax avoidance/deferral:

1. It is 5th Street Advisors’ strongly-held belief that the most important factor in successful long-term investing is asset allocation; we advocate an active rather than a passive approach to asset allocation.  In plain English, this means your portfolio will be rebalanced approximately twice yearly in order to maintain the long-term asset allocation originally specified.  Rebalancing typically occurs when a particular asset class becomes either over-weighted or under-weighted with respect to other asset classes, and is generally relatively tax neutral.
    
2. All other things being equal, it is an objective fact that the higher the fees paid for investment management, the lower the net investment yield.  Since costs are among the few controllable variables in a portfolio's returns, 5th Street Advisors builds portfolios with low cost indexed-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or index funds.  Moreover, its asset management fees are generally a fraction of what mutual fund companies and other money managers charge. 
    
3. Taxation produces by definition a direct reduction of portfolio return. Portfolios should use tax efficient instruments and be structured to avoid or defer taxation as much as possible.  ETFs and index funds are among the best instruments in the marketplace for achieving this goal.