Portfolio Management FAQs
Explore common questions about how Optimize manages your portfolio, from withdrawals and cash management to tax efficiency and tactical strategies—helping you feel informed and in control of your investment journey.
1. What Happens to My Portfolio When I Need to Make a Withdrawal?
When you need to make a withdrawal, Optimize manages the process carefully to ensure it is done efficiently, tax-effectively, and without disrupting your long-term plan.
We start by identifying the right account type to withdraw from, prioritizing tax efficiency and aligning with your withdrawal strategy. Next, we assess which assets should be sold, often drawing from cash or lower-growth positions first to preserve your growth engines.
Withdrawals are always coordinated with your rebalancing plan, ensuring your portfolio remains aligned after the withdrawal and continues to support your goals.
2. How Does Optimize Manage Cash Positions in My Portfolio?
Optimize aims to keep your cash balances efficient and purposeful, avoiding excess cash that could reduce long-term returns. We maintain strategic cash allocations for liquidity needs, withdrawals, and rebalancing flexibility, but we minimize idle cash to ensure your portfolio remains invested according to your plan.
When inflows occur, they are deployed in alignment with your asset allocation strategy, ensuring your cash works for you while still maintaining liquidity for planned needs.
3. Can I Hold Individual Stocks or Other Investments Outside My Model Portfolio?
While Optimize portfolios are designed around disciplined model portfolios, we understand that some investors may have legacy holdings, concentrated stock positions, or other personal investments.
We can incorporate these positions into your overall planning conversations, ensuring they are considered in your diversification, risk exposure, and tax strategies.
However, our day-to-day portfolio management remains focused on the model portfolio framework, ensuring clarity and discipline remain at the core of your investment experience.
4. What Happens If I Change My Goals or Risk Comfort?
Life evolves, and your plan should evolve with it. If your goals, cash flow needs, or comfort with risk change, we encourage you to reach out to your Optimize advisor right away.
We will revisit your KYC and IPS documents, explore how your portfolio needs to adjust, and ensure that any changes are reflected thoughtfully and systematically in your investment strategy.
This process is proactive, collaborative, and designed to keep your portfolio always working in service of your current life and goals.
5. How Does Optimize Decide When to Adjust the Model Portfolios Themselves?
Optimize’s model portfolios are reviewed regularly by our investment committee. Changes to the portfolios—whether strategic shifts in asset allocation, updates to fund holdings, or adjustments to tactical overlays—are only made when our research and process indicate it is necessary for long-term positioning, not in reaction to short-term market noise.
Any changes to the model portfolios are carefully evaluated, approved by our investment committee, and communicated clearly to investors.
6. How Does Optimize’s Tactical Asset Allocation (TAA) Overlay Work?
Optimize applies Tactical Asset Allocation (TAA) as a disciplined overlay within your portfolio, using it to make modest adjustments to sector, asset class, or regional exposures when we believe the risk-return profile justifies it.
TAA is not market timing—it is a process-driven approach used within defined risk parameters, focused on risk management and seeking attractive relative opportunities across sectors or regions.
It is applied selectively and always within the context of your strategic long-term asset mix.
7. What Is the Role of Pension-Style and Alternative Investments in My Portfolio?
Optimize includes pension-style and alternative investments, such as private credit and infrastructure, to provide additional diversification, stable income streams, and lower correlation to traditional markets.
These strategies are designed to add resilience to your portfolio, helping to manage downside risk, support income needs, and reduce reliance on public equity and bond markets alone.
They are carefully integrated into your model portfolio in a way that supports both your goals and your risk profile.
8. What Is the Liquidity of My Optimize Portfolio? Can I Access My Money Anytime?
Optimize model portfolios are designed with weekly liquidity, giving you access to your funds without long lock-up periods.
When you need to make a withdrawal, we coordinate the process efficiently while ensuring your portfolio remains balanced and aligned.
While your portfolio is liquid, Optimize encourages investors to remain focused on the long-term plan, with liquidity managed strategically to support both planned withdrawals and ongoing portfolio discipline.
9. How Does Optimize Manage Tax Efficiency in My Portfolio?
Tax efficiency is a key element of portfolio management, especially for non-registered and corporate accounts.
Optimize applies tax-aware asset location strategies, ensuring tax-inefficient investments are placed in tax-sheltered accounts where possible, and growth-oriented assets are held in taxable accounts where they may benefit from preferential capital gains treatment.
We also consider tax implications when rebalancing or making withdrawals, aiming to minimize tax impact where possible.
For larger portfolios or complex situations, we work alongside your accountant or tax advisor to ensure tax planning remains coordinated with your investment strategy.