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.
2025 in Review
“If you’ve got a dollar and you spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread, you’ve got 71 cents left, but if you’ve got seventeen grand and you spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread, you’ve still got seventeen grand. There’s a math lesson for you.” – Steve Martin
Steve Martin’s 70’s era quip about the price of bread and wealth wasn’t far off the mark as a loaf of bread now fetches $3.99 and “seventeen grand” is now about ninety – one thousand dollars.
2025 began with “DOGE”, tariff disruptions, the continuation of the war in Ukraine, the AI boom and the magnificent seven’s dominance in the S&P 500 Index. The yield curve began the year flat with the 10-year US treasury note at 4.57% and money market rates around 4.32%.
After 12 months of fiscal uncertainty, three successive Fed Funds rate cuts, the longest government shut down in US history and a massive shift towards neo-mercantilism the US dollar is worth 10% less, the yield curve has steepened, European and Asian stock markets trounced the S&P 500 and gold and silver prices had their best year since Ronald Reagan was president. Oil, real estate and crypto currencies were not as fortunate.
2026 What’s Next?
The US budget deficit will continue to expand, the yield curve will remain steep, oil prices will remain depressed and the dollar will remain weak. The continued US policy shift from globalism towards a multi-polar world muddled by erratic tariff policies will continue to challenge capital allocation decisions throughout the industrialized world.
Peace between Ukraine, Russia, its people and their entrenched soldiers will hopefully begin before the snow-covered Donbas begins to thaw. Greenland will become more than a talking point.
Massive spending on data centers for the AI boom will continue but doubts about a return on investment will dominate market conversation.
The common denominator of booms is that they eventually result in a bust but not without leaving behind major contributions. Long after the last gasp and bust of the rail road boom of the late 19th century, the personal computer technology boom of the 1980’s, the dot com boom and the communications boom of the late 1990’s significant assets and infrastructure survived which allowed free markets to grow and adapt. For instance, after the railroad boom went bust, the American rail network continued to grow regional economies. After the tech bubble burst companies such as Microsoft, Apple and IBM continued to adapt and grow. And after the last mile of fiber optic cable was laid, Amazon, Google, Netflix and Meta continued their expansion.
A subtle difference to note regarding the current AI boom is that although AI data centers require tremendous amounts of capital to build along with an entire city’s amount of electricity and water to operate they do not need a city of people to run or maintain. And unlike railroads, fiberoptic networks and wireless networks where infrastructure can last for decades, the chips that comprise more than two thirds of a data centers cost to build only last 3-5 years before heat degradation renders them useless.
Like Cisco Systems meteoric rise from demand for its routers during the dot com boom, Nvidia has found itself the primary beneficiary of the current boom.
Looking for long term beneficiaries of the AI boom will take time. We must remember that Amazon did not begin its meteoric rise for years following the first book shipped from it’s cramped Seattle office.
Intermediate to long term rates will remain higher than recent years and the US dollar will continue to remain weak. Our fixed income target allocations are 30% T-Bills and one year CD’s, 50% intermediate term US Treasury notes and 20% extended duration US Treasuries.
Bankers Investment Counseling will continue to seek out companies which allocate their capital productively and which command strong pricing power for their goods and services. We expect our selected companies to find ways to benefit from AI.
Gold and silver prices will continue to remain strong but may experience a pause in the uptrend early in 2026 for some well-deserved profit taking. A wise man once said, “I never went broke taking a profit”.