History
By 1991, Dan Wiener had spent more than a decade as an investigative reporter covering Wall Street, personal finance and the mutual fund industry for publications such as Fortune Magazine and US News & World Report. During this time he became increasingly intrigued with Vanguard founder and CEO Jack Bogle, and Vanguard's low cost/index approach to investing. Inspired by the burgeoning self-publishing newsletter industry, Dan set out to write an independent newsletter that focused solely on the Vanguard fund family.
In 1991, Dan started writing The Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors at home, moonlighting from his day job at US News. As readership grew, the task of writing the newsletter combined with applying labels, licking envelopes and making numerous trips to the corner post office got to be overwhelming. The family kitchen was filling up with paper, and even with some help from his seven-year old son David, something had to give.
By late 1991, with circulation topping 1,000, help came from David Thorne, a family friend who owned a small publishing company. Dan quit his job at US News and, with Thorne's publishing guidance, the newsletter expanded to 30,000 subscriptions in two years. As the newsletter gained in popularity, and Dan's low-risk portfolio recommendations gained a following, his role as an independent Vanguard Fund expert grew. As a result, subscribers increasingly began to ask him to directly manage their Vanguard investment assets.
During this time Wiener and Thorne were joined by Dan Silver, a newly-minted MBA from the Darden school, who soon developed a plan to launch an investment advisory business. Thus in 1994, responding to the call for direct investment supervision from subscribers, Adviser Investment Management, Inc. (Adviser) was founded. Shortly after Adviser's founding, the partners sold the Vanguard newsletter business to Phillips Publishing in Maryland to focus on personalized money management.
In 1997, Jim Lowell, who was also publishing a newsletter with Phillips Publishing on Fidelity funds, called Fidelity Investor, was invited to join forces and help expand Adviser's expertise into Fidelity funds. Jim accepted the offer to become Adviser's Chief Investment Strategist. Soon, in addition to Adviser's specific strategies in Vanguard and Fidelity funds, Adviser created investment models which combined the best managers and funds from both families. Today our combined Vanguard and Fidelity investment strategy has proven to be the most popular and effective way to maximize our clients' investments.
Sticking to the original investment focus on active management rather than indexing, and the careful screening and selection of fund managers rather than a particular fund's history, Adviser reached the billion dollar milestone in late 2006. It was 12 years since Dan Wiener, Dan Silver, and David Thorne had begun managing their first client's $140,000 account. During these years, in addition to creating the Best of Both World models from Fidelity and Vanguard, Adviser has also opportunistically utilized fund selections run by teams from PRIMECAP Management, Polaris Capital Management, Wellington Management and ICON funds.
Recently, under the leadership of Jim Lowell and Dan Wiener, Adviser has developed nationally recognized leadership in the rapidly growing investment area of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Jim Lowell is an ETF columnist for Forbes magazine and a regular commentator on CBS' MarketWatch. Jim is also the author of The ETF Advisor, a newsletter dedicated to ETF investments. Adviser now includes carefully selected ETFs in most of our investment portfolios.
As recognition of their expertise in Vanguard, Fidelity and exchange-traded funds has grown, Dan Wiener and Jim Lowell have become regular commentators on national financial news outlets. Both frequently appear on CNBC, PBS' Nightly Business Report, and Bloomberg, as well as in Forbes, CBS MarketWatch, and The Wall Street Journal. Additionally, both Jim Lowell and Adviser President Dan Silver regularly appear as commentators on New England Cable News' New England Business Day.
In November 2007 Adviser Investment Management shortened its name to Adviser Investments. Though our name has changed slightly, the portfolio expertise and commitment to our clients' best interest that has allowed us to grow to 35 investment professionals serving 1,400 clients with more than $1.2 billion in assets remains the same.