Value of Advice
October 6th, 2026

What goes into your WFT portfolio?

It’s likely been some time since we first built your investment portfolio, so for those of you who are curious about how that construction process works, I’ve included a brief summary below.

The Plan Comes First

We’ll go over our client discovery and plan design approach in a future post, which will cover other aspects of our Net Growth Process, but what I want to stress here is the importance of creating a financial plan before designing any kind of investment strategy.

Your financial plan establishes goals, priorities and timelines, and this becomes the framework for making decisions about your portfolio. It enables us to outline an investment profile and define specifications like risk tolerance, time horizon, tax considerations and liquidity needs, among others. Most importantly, your financial plan helps us to set targets for your net worth growth—this is the overall accumulation of wealth you need to reach milestones like retirement.

Asset Mix and Allocation

When considering the right investments for you, we begin with your asset mix. That is, the balance of stocks, bonds and cash in your portfolio. The proportions of these asset classes will do the lion’s share of the work when it comes to your portfolio’s risk-reward balance.

Investment Selection

Once we define your asset allocation, we can begin assessing the securities and products that will make up your investment portfolio. We identify high-quality stocks and bonds, and evaluate any mutual funds or ETFs for cost efficiency and return potential.

Portfolio Construction

At this point, we’re able to finalize the construction of your portfolio. We complete a final review to help ensure your allocation and design will support the goals laid out in your financial plan, and we connect with you to present the details.

Monitoring and Maintenance

Our ongoing protocol for your portfolio has several components: monitoring, reporting, and periodically assessing your allocation in light of current conditions and life events. We maintain a strict investment discipline to help you stay on the net growth trajectory that leads to retirement and other milestones.

This is a high-level overview of the steps we take to build a custom portfolio, but if you’re looking for more detail, please reach out and I’d be happy to walk you through it.


Jim Wilson, B.Comm., CFP®
Senior Wealth Advisor
jim.wilson@iaprivatewealth.ca | Tel. (289) 644-1476

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