Best Independent Research, LLC members were carefully selected from hundreds of research companies for philosophy, people, process consistency, and performance.  None offer investment banking, brokerage or trade execution services.

The main criteria for membership required that each research firm be “independent” and have no involvement with brokerage services.  There are many firms that meet these criteria, but BIR was more exclusive.  Our selection process for member paralleled the standards used by pension fund consultants in selecting money managers.  This is referred to as the four P’s: 

• People

• Philosophy

• Process

• Performance

Thomas White International

Thomas White International was founded in 1992 by Thomas White, who was previously a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley Asset Management. The firm’s research is intended for prudent investors who prefer tax efficient long-term holding periods and lower portfolio turnover. TWI’s recommendations are based on a rigorous, industry-specific valuation framework that was initially designed for Sir John Templeton and has been refined over several decades. The firm also manages the Thomas White International Fund (TWWDX) and the Thomas White American Opportunities Fund (TWAOX).

Columbine Capital Services 

Founded in 1976 by John S. Brush, Ph.D., Columbine has developed mathematical models that forecast individual stock returns based on company fundamentals and investor behavior.  The Columbine approach to stock selection capitalizes on the observed fact that companies in different economic sectors have very different characteristics and need to be judged by different standards. By employing artificial intelligence technology, Columbine is able to identify the exact combination of company characteristics that is most successful at forecasting stock performance within a particular sector. But the Columbine models are not static. Markets evolve over time; gradually changing their pattern of rewarding some company characteristics and punishing others.  Every year Columbine repeats the simulation process for all of its models using the previous ten years of company and market data. This allows the Columbine models to respond to major trends in investor behavior without being seduced into chasing fads.

Channel Trend

Channel Trend was founded in 1982 to provide stock research to a broad range of institutional and professional investment managers.  The philosophy upon which Channel Trend's research is based is the belief that what investors think about a stock, the Company's risk profile, operating and financial condition, and its prospects for the future, are all important to a stock's return. In other words, the analysis of a stock's price behavior and a company's fundamentals are both important determinants of a stock's rating.

Ford Equity Research

For more than 30 years, Ford Equity Research has been a trusted source of unbiased, independent research to professional money managers. Ford's success is driven by the precision of its systematic stock selection techniques and its professionals' accumulated knowledge of company finances and the behavior of investors. As part of this effort, Ford conducts an analysis of the quality of earnings for each company.  Ford's analysts go through the earnings releases adjusting for unusual revenue and expense items that may be distorting the true operating earnings of the company.  By incorporating rigorous data collection and analysis methods, Ford receives valuable insight into earnings trends, relative valuation, and timeliness.

Ativo Research

Headed by Ricardo Bekin, Ativo Research is a Chicago-based institution whose roots date back to 1969. Formerly Callard Research, founded by Chuck Callard, a pioneer in the concept of Cash Flow Return on Investment, the framework of these principles were originally developed by Merton Miller and Franco Modigliani.  Ativo’s goal is to publish stock recommendations that reflect economic reality rather than accounting distortions by focusing on two variables, future cash flows and discount rates. Although cash flow analysis has gained many converts and exponents in the quarter-century since Callard pioneered the practical application of these concepts, Callard’s approach remains unequaled in both elegant simplicity and empirical validation.