Employment History:

Published Works:

Public Speaking Experience:

Why M is an Expert:
Modern portfolio theory – what is the proper way to be invested? Where do returns come from? No one ever asks that question. Returns and risk are absolutely related.

Best Advice:
If you are under-diversified – meaning you don’t own enough industries – you don’t get compensated for that. A TV personality will have people call up and say “Am I diversified?” and they’ll own four stocks. You are in no way diversified! You want to be in many different asset classes that have different characteristics from each other.

Passionate about:

Biography Excerpt:
Paul W. Abele, AIF, CEA, CFS, was born and raised in Mountain Brook, Alabama. While most of the financial sector flounders, awaiting the end to the 2010 recession, Mr. Abele continues to navigate safely through dangerously uncharted waters, utilizing his profound knowledge of investment practices to ensure a sound financial future for his clients.

     

Cambridge Who's Who: What got you into this field?  
PAUL ABELE AIF, CEA, CFS:  My dad loved to talk economics and politics. To really be a part of his world, I had to talk about this with some knowledge. By the time I was 12, I was reading Milton Friedman. I had an absolute point of view when we would watch William Buckley on Firing Line or whatever. By that time I also knew I wanted to make a living with this, so I decided to become an investment advisor. When I was getting ready to go to college, I went to all of the different investment houses, saying, “What should I take in college? Because I want to know what to do,” which blew them away because investment firms are not about knowing anything regarding the investment markets. They only want to know if you can sell. I worked at a national brokerage house while attending college. I quickly understood how corrupt their system was. Two weeks before I graduated from college, I was hired by a regional firm. I stayed with them for three years and then I started my own firm. In the March of 1988, I partnered with a law firm where my partner was a clinical psychologist and we set out to figure out the proper way to invest. We went[about it] in a very academic way and it took me 15 years to catch on.

How has the economy affected your clients?
My clients, like the rest of the world, get scared sometimes. I have to remind them that we’ve been here before. I want them to be invested properly. That’s my job, to keep their feet to the fire. We’re not trying to guess whether we should be in this or that; we’re going to own the markets here and around the world. The free enterprise system is going to survive and so are they. There’s a lot of talk on television – scare tactics. You’ve got a lot of people who had a whole lot of their net worth in one company, which has wiped them out. That’s not investing; that’s betting. It’s time to stop having your net worth riding up and down with just a few securities. It’s time to own the United States and world economy and leave it alone.

What would you like to promote most about yourself or your business?
I am a strict adherent to modern portfolio theory. I believe in an efficient market–the lower the cost, the better. The more it costs you to deal with an advisor, the more critical your returns.