PROVIDING VALUED CLIENTS WITH OUR PERSPECTIVE AND PROCESS SINCE OUR FOUNDING

Don Bowker founded Bankers in 1968 as an independent fee only investment advisor serving clients from the company’s office in Oxnard California. For over 20 years Bankers was the sole investment advisor to the Trust Department at Bank of A. Levy in Oxnard. Mr. Bowker retired from the company in 1992.

Phil Caruso became the company’s president in 1992 continuing our traditional old-fashioned management discipline until his passing in 2022.

Andy Killion joined the company in 2019 with years of experience working as an advisor for two national firms with branches in Ventura County.

OUR MANAGEMENT PROCESS BEGINS WITH A CONVERSATION THAT LASTS FOR YEARS

  • Define your investment objective, determine your time horizon, risk tolerance and liquidity needs
  • Assess how your current portfolio is aligned with your investment objective, tax and risk profile
  • Articulate your portfolio’s risk/reward metric (what risk is your capital taking for the reward it is producing and at what expense?)
  • Allocate your portfolio based upon our conversation, assessment and analysis
  • Repeat the entire process and re-balance your portfolio at regular intervals

OUR SELECTED COMPANY LIST

Our selected companies earn their place on our list and tend to stay there for years. Common attributes of our selected companies include: high barrier to entry, sturdy and growing earnings, strong pricing power, recurring revenue, low relative price volatility, macro-economic tailwinds and management with successful track records.

BANKERS MARKET VIEW FALL 2025
Macro View– Our pre-election deep dive into empirical data from the Carter-Reagan and
Biden-Trump transitions suggested higher budget deficits, higher interest rates, lower oil prices, a lower US dollar, higher alternative asset values and higher equity index values in 2025. We are batting 833 but the game “ain’t over til it’s over”. Continued geopolitical instability, US government shut down, uncertainty over tariff policies, the growing US budget deficit and the advent of AI will continue to bring volatility to capital markets.

Fixed Income-The government shut down has closed-down data flows to economists making accurate forecasts unlikely, so we remain cautious on the yield curve with our fixed income model allocating 30% in T-Bills and one year CD’s, 50% in intermediate term US Treasury notes and 20% in extended duration US Treasuries.

Equities-Earnings season is just beginning. We continue to pursue and own companies that allocate their capital productively and which command strong pricing power for their goods and services. We are currently focusing our attention on companies which are leveraging AI technology to increase profitability and relevance in the 21st century.

Alternative Assets-We continue to see strength in gold and silver prices. Cryptocurrencies seem to be a part of this “risk trade” as well but we remain cautious with this newly forming asset class due to zero barrier to entry and lack of regulatory oversite. “Drill Baby Drill” continues to be detractor for higher oil prices. We maintain one publicly traded undeveloped land company on our selected company list as it is trading at or below its book value and the last time we checked, they aren’t making anymore land.