Hiring someone to manage your investment portfolio may sound like a service only the wealthy need — or can afford. But investment management is about making the most of your money: No matter how much you have in your portfolio, it’s important to ensure every dollar is optimized. An investment manager can help you do that.
Investment management definition
Investment management is the creation and overall care of an investment portfolio. Investment management often includes suggesting an investment strategy, buying and selling investments and managing the portfolio’s asset allocation. Investment management can be done on your own or with an advisor’s help.
Investment management, portfolio management and asset management are all terms that refer to services that provide oversight of a client’s investments. Investment management isn’t just about managing the specific assets in a client’s portfolio, it includes ensuring the portfolio continues to align with the client’s goals, risk tolerance and financial priorities.
What does an investment manager do?
An investment manager is a person or company that manages an investment portfolio on behalf of a client. Investment managers come up with an investment strategy to meet a client’s goals, then use that strategy to decide how to divide the client’s portfolio among different types of investments, such as stocks and bonds. The manager buys and sells those investments for the client as needed, and monitors the portfolio’s overall performance.
Some investment managers are also financial planners, providing holistic financial advice on topics like cash-flow management, taxes, insurance and estate planning. Others work with high-net-worth clients to address their financial planning and investment management needs, as well as coordinate the services of other professionals, such as lawyers and accountants. This is often referred to as wealth management. Wealth management offers more areas of expertise, such as estate and tax planning, accounting services and retirement planning in addition to investment management. If you need a hand choosing investments for your IRA, investment management could be helpful. Wealth management would probably be overkill.