Woburn, MA—December 1, 2025— Auour Investments announced today it has been named to the celebrated PSN Top Guns List of best performing separate accounts, managed accounts, and managed ETF strategies for Q3 2025. The highly anticipated list, published by Zephyr, remains one of the most important references for investors and asset managers.

“Q3 2025 delivered strong broad-based market gains, creating opportunities for skilled active managers,” says PSN Product Manager Nick Williams. “PSN Top Guns managers excelled by capitalizing on the market’s broadening rally and navigating the Fed’s policy pivot effectively. Their ability to position strategically across asset classes while maintaining discipline during this positive environment demonstrates the distinct value of active management in SMAs. As markets responded favorably to accommodative monetary policy and resilient fundamentals, these managers proved their worth by not just participating in the rally, but by strategically positioning to capture opportunities across the expanding opportunity set.”

Auour Investments manages a suite of ETF-based dynamic strategies. The Instinct Family of Downside Protection Strategies by Auour utilizes the Auour Regime Model (ARM), a proprietary risk detection algorithm that aims to be proactive in a changing risk environment. The strategies can provide tactical and core functionality within a client’s investment needs, aiming to mitigate losses in down markets while capturing most of the market’s positive returns.

“Our first responsibility is always to safeguard and grow our clients’ capital. The past three years haven’t just been volatile—they’ve been transformational. Inflation, rising interest rates, war, and global realignment have reshaped the investment landscape. These Top Gun recognitions are a powerful testament to our team’s ability to remain steady through the storm and stay true to our risk-managed philosophy.”

Through a combination PSN’s proprietary performance screens, the PSN Top Guns awards products in six proprietary categories in over 75 universes based on continued performance over time.

Auour’s Ultra Low Duration strategy earned PSN Top Guns 1 Quarter, 1 Year, and 3 Year awards, meaning our Ultra Low Duration had one of the top ten returns for the quarter, the prior year, and the prior three years in Less than 1 Year Mat Universe.

Auour’s Global Fixed Income strategy had one of the top ten returns for the one-year, and three-year periods in its respective strategy.

Auour’s Global Fixed Income strategy earned a PSN Top Guns 4-Star award, meaning our Global Fixed Income strategy had an r-squared of 0.80 or greater relative to the style benchmark for the recent five-year period. Moreover, the strategy’s returns exceeded the style benchmark for the three latest three-year rolling periods. The top ten returns for the latest three-year period then become the 4 Star Top Guns.

Auour’s Global Fixed Income strategy earned a PSN Top Guns 5-Star award, meaning our Global Fixed Income strategy had an r-squared of 0.80 or greater relative to the style benchmark for the recent five-year period. Moreover, the strategy’s returns exceeded the style benchmark for the three latest three-year rolling periods. Products are then selected that have a standard deviation for the five-year period equal to or less than the median standard deviation for the peer group. The top ten returns for the latest three-year period, then become the 5 Star Top Guns.

Auour’s Global Fixed Income strategy earned a PSN Top Guns 6-Star award, meaning our Global Fixed Income strategy had an r-squared of 0.80 or greater relative to the style benchmark for the recent five-year period. Moreover, the strategy’s returns exceeded the style benchmark for the three latest three-year rolling periods. Products are then selected that have a standard deviation for the five-year period equal or less than the median standard deviation for the peer group. The top ten information ratios for the latest five-year period then become the 6 Star Top Guns.

Auour has been recognized as an innovator in Regime-Based Investing, the foundation of the investment philosophy applied to all strategies. By detecting changes within the market’s risk appetite, Auour aims to produce better outcomes for institutional and individual investors.

The complete list of PSN Top Guns and an overview of the methodology can be located at https://psn.fi.informais.com/PSNTopGuns/topguns_zephyr.asp

About Auour Investments

Auour Investments (pronounced ‘our’), an SEC-registered investment adviser, offers individuals, institutions, and financial advisors a range of investment strategies delivered through ETF-based portfolio construction techniques. Auour’s mission is to maximize Transparency, Trust, and Total Return by applying over six decades of collective experience within leading financial institutions. To learn more about Auour’s innovative approach to market risk detection, please go to http://www.auour.com. Auour has not compensated PSN in monetary form for these awards.

About PSN

For more than four decades, PSN has been a top resource for investment professionals. Asset managers rely on Zephyr’s PSN to effectively reach institutional and retail investors. Over 2,800 firms, 285 universes, and more than 21,000 products comprise the PSN SMA database showing asset breakdowns, compliance, key personnel, ownership diversity, ESG, business objectives and strategy, style, fees, GIC sectors, fixed income ranges and full holdings. Unique to PSN is its robust historical database of over 40 Years of Data Including Net and Gross-of-Fee Returns. PSN Mid-Year Outlook provides insight and trends about the SMA industry. You can view in online here.

Visit PSN online to learn more.

Woburn, MA — November 13, 2025 — Auour Investments, a risk-intelligent investment manager known for its regime-based asset-allocation process and disciplined downside mitigation, today announced a strategic relationship with Highmoor Partners to lead the firm’s distribution efforts to the financial adviser community.

Under this arrangement, Highmoor Partners will serve as Auour’s outsourced distribution partner, expanding outreach to RIAs, broker-dealers, and advisory platforms while supporting adviser transitions into Auour’s systematic investment solutions. The relationship underscores Auour’s commitment to partnering closely with advisers seeking disciplined, research-driven portfolio frameworks designed to navigate full market cycles.

“As markets evolve and client expectations rise, advisers need more than products — they need partners,” said Joseph Hosler, Managing Principal of Auour Investments. “Highmoor’s client-first ethos, transition expertise, and deep industry knowledge make them the ideal partner to represent Auour nationwide. This relationship reflects our shared belief in delivering thoughtful, evidence-based investment guidance and high-touch support to advisers.”

Highmoor Partners delivers a boutique, high-touch advisory experience for high-net-worth clients and professional advisers, specializing in complex account transitions, differentiated investment access, and integrated advisory partnerships.

“Auour’s disciplined, risk-aware approach and commitment to adviser success set it apart,” said David Schubach, Founder of Highmoor Partners. “We are proud to represent Auour in the marketplace and to help advisers access a sophisticated, systematic investment platform built for long-term client outcomes.”

The partnership strengthens Auour’s national presence across independent wealth channels and institutional platforms and provides advisers with direct access to senior-level strategic support.

About Auour Investments
Auour Investments is a regime-based investment manager offering adaptive portfolio strategies across the risk spectrum. With a focus on downside protection, disciplined decision-making, and portfolio transparency, Auour partners with financial advisers to help them build resilient practices and deliver durable outcomes for clients.

About Highmoor Partners
Highmoor Partners delivers a boutique, high-touch advisory experience for high-net-worth clients and professional advisers. The firm provides tailored guidance for complex transitions, access to differentiated investment solutions, and integrated support through trusted professional partnerships, offering direct senior-level engagement and data-driven strategy.

Media Contact
Mac Nicholson
Director, National Sales
Auour Investments
mnicholson@auour.com

(412) 980-9013

We are living through one of those rare moments when technology doesn’t just improve—it transforms. Consumer-ready artificial intelligence arrived in late 2023 with remarkable speed and impact. In such a short time, we’ve seen AI systems pass the bar exam, diagnose rare diseases from medical images, write functional computer code in seconds, translate between languages in real-time with nuance once thought impossible, and generate photorealistic images from simple text descriptions. Students use it to learn, doctors to diagnose, engineers to design, and writers to draft. What once seemed like science fiction has become as mundane as checking email.

But we’ve been here before. The results are impressive, yet extrapolating recent growth into an unbroken trajectory risks serious misallocation of capital and a painful day of reckoning. We believe deeply in the transformative power of AI. Still, we also remember the dotcom era intimately and have studied past technological waves, when the assumption that investments could only go up and growth could only accelerate led investors to overlook an inconvenient truth: the path to Nirvana is rarely smooth. Many of the right bets were made in 1999—on the internet, on e-commerce, on digital transformation—but the timing, winners, valuation, and assumption of frictionless scale proved catastrophically wrong for many start-ups and investors.

This transition to an AI-powered economy is being built at enormous scale through some of the largest capital deployments in modern history. For example, in the first half of 2025, a Harvard study estimates that AI investments accounted for 92% of all U.S. investments, contributing 1.1% to U.S. GDP.

Behind every conversation with ChatGPT, every AI-generated image, every smart assistant response, lies an infrastructure requiring billions of dollars, millions of processors, and—increasingly—gigawatts of electrical power. The sheer magnitude of this investment is exciting to witness. Still, it also demands that we pause and ask a critical question: Will the supply being built at breakneck speed actually meet the insatiable demand investors are pricing in, or are we once again building ahead of the curve?

The Spending Boom

The world’s largest technology firms are investing at a rate once reserved for oil majors, telecommunication companies, and electric utilities. The goal is simple: feed artificial intelligence models that convert electricity into language/knowledge.

The numbers are staggering:

• Microsoft expects $50–55 billion in capital expenditures for fiscal 2025, nearly all directed to AI data centers and Nvidia hardware
• Amazon Web Services plans roughly $60 billion across 2024–2025 to expand its global cloud infrastructure
• Alphabet (Google) lifted its 2025 capex forecast to $48 billion, emphasizing AI accelerators and new data-center construction
• Meta raised its infrastructure guidance to $35–40 billion for 2025 as it retrofits older sites for dense AI racks

Collectively, these tech giants are on pace to exceed $250 billion in spending next year, which is roughly equal to the size of the entire semiconductor industry a decade ago. [Note that these figures have been increased in just the last day.]

These investments have propelled the share prices of companies tied to the AI supply chain—chipmakers, cooling system providers, and grid equipment manufacturers—by triple digits. But the deeper question remains: what is all this capital actually building?

A Quick Guide to the Numbers

To understand where this money is going and what it is empowering, here are a few terms worth knowing:

• Gigawatt (GW): A measure of continuous power equal to one billion watts—enough to light roughly ten million LED bulbs, or power about one million homes
• Token: The smallest chunk of text an AI model processes; think of it as about three-quarters of an English word or one syllable
• Training vs. Inference: Training is the one-time process of teaching a model (think: weeks of intensive computing). Inference is the everyday work—answering your questions, writing text, and analyzing data.

One more note: because we’re dealing with truly massive numbers, we’ll occasionally use scientific notation. To refresh your high school math: 10³ = 1 thousand, 10⁶ = 1 million, 10⁹ = 1 billion, and let’s jump to 10¹⁸, which equals 1 thousand quadrillion. To put the last number into perspective, the U.S. debt of $38 trillion is only 3.8% of a quadrillion.

From Power Plants to Printing Presses

When people picture data centers, they often imagine buildings filled with servers and blinking lights. In reality, they are modern power plants—not generating electricity but consuming it on an industrial scale to turn electrons into knowledge (the industry has moved from calling them data centers to now referring to them as knowledge factories).

If current projections hold, global data-center demand could exceed 100 gigawatts of continuous power by the end of this decade, more than double the industry’s current energy usage. To put that in perspective: that’s roughly the electricity used by 100 million U.S. homes running at once.

About half of that energy, some 50 GW, is expected to go toward AI inference. Inference is what happens every time a model answers a question, writes a paragraph, or generates an image. Training a model may take weeks; inference never stops. It is the daily heartbeat of the AI economy.

So let’s follow that energy and see where it leads.

The Journey from Electricity to Language

This is where we need to use scientific notation, given the size of the numbers. Your eyes may blur, but stick with it!

Starting point: Energy per token
At current efficiency levels, processing each token uses about 0.001 watt-hours of energy. That’s tiny—but remember, this happens billions of times per second across all these data centers.

Step 1: How much total energy?
Fifty gigawatts running continuously for a year gives us a massive pool of energy. The math:

• 50 billion watts × 24 hours × 365 days = about 438 billion kilowatt-hours per year
• After accounting for infrastructure losses, we’re left with roughly 470 trillion watt-hours of usable energy

Step 2: Energy to tokens
Now divide that energy by the cost per token:

• 470 trillion watt-hours ÷ 0.001 watt-hours per token = 470 quadrillion tokens per year, or 470 x10¹⁸ tokens in a year.

If your eyes are glazing over, here’s what that number means in human terms:

In words:
Since each token is about three-quarters of a word, we’re talking about roughly 350 quadrillion words per year. That’s enough to rewrite every book ever published—thousands of times over—every single year.

In conversations:
A typical back-and-forth with ChatGPT uses about 200 tokens (your question plus its answer). At this scale, we’re talking about 2.4 trillion conversations per day—or roughly 1,000 AI interactions for every person on Earth, every single day.

In newsletters:

In writing this newsletter, about 25,000 tokens were used to help investigate the data and edit the resulting newsletter. If the planned infrastructure were limited to newsletters, the capacity could generate 1 million newsletters per second.

In books:
A full-length novel contains about 80,000 words (or roughly 100,000 tokens). These data centers could theoretically generate 4.7 million books per year for every person alive today. That’s around 13 billion new books every single day—more than humanity has written in its entire history, produced daily.

In video:

The examples above result in a staggering amount of output. Video may be the one area that shows how the power assumptions may not be enough. With the assumptions above, the output is equivalent to 400,000 hours of HD video each year. A lot, but not extreme.

A note on uncertainty
The math you’ve just seen is meant to show scale, not predict the future. In the last two years, some LLMs have squeezed ~10× more tokens per watt. We assume that speed won’t continue forever—but we can’t know. New software tricks or memory designs could slash the cost of keeping conversation context; bigger models and longer prompts could raise it. Because we can’t estimate these forces with confidence, we leave them out—while acknowledging they could move the results by multiples, either way.

Investment Perspective

From an investor’s standpoint, this is a paradoxical moment. The capital intensity of AI mirrors that of the early industrial era: enormous upfront costs, multiple large players competing for dominance, and exciting thoughts of the future but with an uncertain long-term payoff. While energy and infrastructure demand are undeniably secular, suppliers’ valuations may already assume an endless boom.

History shows that every transformative technology—from railroads to fiber optics—eventually meets the limits of physics, financing, or both.

At Auour, we see this as a boom with localized bubbles. The global appetite for computation and energy is durable. But the belief that every dollar of capex will compound without friction is not.

The key distinction for investors is this: Are you betting on electricity—the real, structural demand that will persist for decades? Or are you betting on euphoria, which tends to burn brighter and fade faster?

At Auour, we don’t try to predict the exact path of progress—but we do prepare for its uneven rhythm. Our process is built to separate structural shifts from temporary enthusiasm, identifying when optimism turns to overextension and when fear gives rise to opportunity. Regime-based investing helps us navigate cycles like this one—where innovation is real, but valuations and expectations may not move in tandem. In every era of transformation, our aim remains the same: to participate intelligently in growth while protecting against the excesses that too often follow it.

To that end, we have made some adjustments to our portfolios, moving tactical cash down to 10% and reducing our exposure to the largest U.S. companies. We have been discussing the eventual need to broaden our exposure to international markets and the sectors of the economy that can benefit from advances in AI. This week, we took a step in that direction.

Woburn, MA—August 25, 2025— Auour Investments announced today it has been named to the celebrated PSN Top Guns List of best performing separate accounts, managed accounts, and managed ETF strategies for Q2 2025. The highly anticipated list, published by Zephyr, remains one of the most important references for investors and asset managers.

“Q2 2025 combined unprecedented volatility with surprising resilience, requiring managers to demonstrate conviction and agility,” says PSN Product Manager Nick Williams. “PSN Top Guns managers excelled by navigating significant market leadership shifts, maintaining discipline during turbulence while capitalizing on opportunities. Their performance highlights the distinct value of active management in SMAs as markets responded to evolving economic conditions and policy changes.”

Auour Investments manages a suite of ETF-based dynamic strategies. The Instinct Family of Downside Protection Strategies by Auour utilizes the Auour Regime Model (ARM), a proprietary risk detection algorithm that aims to be proactive in a changing risk environment. The strategies can provide tactical and core functionality within a client’s investment needs, aiming to mitigate losses in down markets while capturing most of the market’s positive returns.

“Our first responsibility is always to safeguard and grow our clients’ capital. The past three years haven’t just been volatile—they’ve been transformational. Inflation, rising interest rates, war, and global realignment have reshaped the investment landscape. These Top Gun recognitions are a powerful testament to our team’s ability to remain steady through the storm and stay true to our risk-managed philosophy.”

Through a combination PSN’s proprietary performance screens, the PSN Top Guns awards products in six proprietary categories in over 75 universes based on continued performance over time.

Auour’s Ultra Low Duration strategy earned PSN Top Guns 1 Quarter and 3 Year awards, meaning our Ultra Low Duration had one of the top ten returns for the quarter and the prior three years in Less than 1 Year Mat Universe.

Auour’s Global Fixed Income strategy had one of the top ten returns for the first quarter, one-year, and three-year periods in its respective strategy.

Auour’s Global Fixed Income strategy earned a PSN Top Guns 4-Star award, meaning our Global Fixed Income strategy had an r-squared of 0.80 or greater relative to the style benchmark for the recent five-year period. Moreover, the strategy’s returns exceeded the style benchmark for the three latest three-year rolling periods. The top ten returns for the latest three-year period then become the 4 Star Top Guns.

Auour’s Global Fixed Income strategy earned a PSN Top Guns 5-Star award, meaning our Global Fixed Income strategy had an r-squared of 0.80 or greater relative to the style benchmark for the recent five-year period. Moreover, the strategy’s returns exceeded the style benchmark for the three latest three-year rolling periods. Products are then selected that have a standard deviation for the five-year period equal to or less than the median standard deviation for the peer group. The top ten returns for the latest three-year period, then become the 5 Star Top Guns.

Auour’s Global Fixed Income strategy earned a PSN Top Guns 6-Star award, meaning our Global Fixed Income strategy had an r-squared of 0.80 or greater relative to the style benchmark for the recent five-year period. Moreover, the strategy’s returns exceeded the style benchmark for the three latest three-year rolling periods. Products are then selected that have a standard deviation for the five-year period equal or less than the median standard deviation for the peer group. The top ten information ratios for the latest five-year period then become the 6 Star Top Guns.

Auour has been recognized as an innovator in Regime-Based Investing, the foundation of the investment philosophy applied to all strategies. By detecting changes within the market’s risk appetite, Auour aims to produce better outcomes for institutional and individual investors.

The complete list of PSN Top Guns and an overview of the methodology can be located at https://psn.fi.informais.com/PSNTopGuns/topguns_zephyr.asp

About Auour Investments

Auour Investments (pronounced ‘our’), an SEC-registered investment adviser, offers individuals, institutions, and financial advisors a range of investment strategies delivered through ETF-based portfolio construction techniques. Auour’s mission is to maximize Transparency, Trust, and Total Return by applying over six decades of collective experience within leading financial institutions. To learn more about Auour’s innovative approach to market risk detection, please go to http://www.auour.com. Auour has not compensated PSN in monetary form for these awards.

About PSN

For more than four decades, PSN has been a top resource for investment professionals. Asset managers rely on Zephyr’s PSN to effectively reach institutional and retail investors. Over 2,800 firms, 285 universes, and more than 21,000 products comprise the PSN SMA database showing asset breakdowns, compliance, key personnel, ownership diversity, ESG, business objectives and strategy, style, fees, GIC sectors, fixed income ranges and full holdings. Unique to PSN is its robust historical database of over 40 Years of Data Including Net and Gross-of-Fee Returns. PSN Mid-Year Outlook provides insight and trends about the SMA industry. You can view in online here.

Visit PSN online to learn more.

The latest cautionary tale comes from YieldStreet, where thousands of investors poured billions into real estate and other private deals under the banner of diversification and access. What they received, according to recent reports, was something less appealing: mounting losses, frozen redemptions, and the slow realization that “illiquid” means exactly what it says—you can’t get out, even when you want to.

Marketing hype has a way of dressing up risk as opportunity. Diversification gets used as a shield, suggesting that simply spreading money across multiple private deals will provide the same balance and stability as a well-constructed portfolio of liquid, publicly traded assets. But diversification without liquidity can trap investors. Instead of smoothing risk, it can concentrate it, as each illiquid sleeve turns from “exclusive” to “inaccessible.”

The irony is that the best risk management isn’t found in exotic, illiquid products at all—it’s hiding in plain sight. Academic and industry research has consistently shown that lower-volatility, steadier investments often produce stronger risk-adjusted returns than their high-flying peers. Yet investors are drawn to the shiny and complex, overlooking the simple truth that patience and discipline usually outperform promises of exclusivity. In some cases, illiquid funds even create the illusion of safety by reporting smoothed-out returns—a kind of cosmetic accounting that hides the true bumps along the way.

Another overlooked element is leverage. Most illiquid investment structures—from real estate syndicates to private credit funds—rely heavily on borrowed money to amplify returns. That leverage works nicely in a low-rate world. But as the cost of borrowing climbs and willing lenders decline, it eats directly into investor returns while magnifying downside risk. Rising financing costs don’t just dent profits—they can turn a mild downturn into a serious impairment. When you combine illiquidity with leverage, you’ve built a structure that looks stable on the outside but is far more fragile than it appears.

The problem isn’t new. Wall Street has always been skilled at packaging products that appeal more to emotion than to prudence. Investors are sold on the idea of belonging—being part of a sophisticated club that has access to things “ordinary” investors can’t touch. The reality, though, is that belonging isn’t always beneficial. Sometimes it just means you’re locked inside the wrong room when the fire starts.

The lesson? A portfolio isn’t made stronger just by being more complex or less transparent. True diversification requires not just spreading investments across different opportunities but also retaining the flexibility to adapt when circumstances change. Liquidity is not a luxury; it is a risk-control tool.

At Auour, we’ve always believed that hype should be treated with suspicion, that complexity is often the enemy of resilience, and that illiquidity has to be entered into with eyes wide open. The YieldStreet story is only one of many reminders that in investing—as in life—the cost of chasing exclusivity is often higher than the price of patience.

When Zephyr announced Auour Investments as the Manager of the Decade for our Global Fixed Income strategy, the recognition was a moment of pride. Naturally, it sparked curiosity: How did a boutique firm like ours, with no analysts stationed across the globe or ex-Fed officials on speed dial, outperform industry giants like Morgan Stanley, PIMCO, Janus Henderson, and Capital Group?

The answer lies in the very DNA of our firm and the principles we’ve embraced since day one.

A Different Path

The Goliaths of the investment world operate with vast research teams, global reach, and dominance in trading volumes. They have the scale and connections to uncover every inefficiency in the pursuit of identifying “the best bond” or “the best stock.” And yet, empirical evidence tells us that this relentless search is often a losing game. Historically, the Goliaths have not consistently outperformed through their asset selection. With thousands of brilliant minds competing in the same space, inefficiencies quickly disappear, leaving little edge to be gained.

Adding to their challenges, many of these large firms rely on static asset allocation processes, hugging benchmarks to minimize the risk of deviating too far from the norm. They fear that significant deviations could harm their products or reputation. This rigidity, placing their marketing needs above client outcomes, often leaves them unable to adapt to changing market conditions, further limiting their ability to deliver consistent outperformance.

Auour doesn’t play that game. Instead, we built our processes to focus on the broader view: understanding and adapting to the risks inherent in the overall market. While others pore over individual securities, we leverage low-cost tools—exchange-traded funds (ETFs)—to outperform them through dynamic and intelligent asset allocation. Using passive ETFs reduces costs while gaining the precise exposures we need to execute our strategies effectively.

“Our dynamic approach adapts to market conditions, outperforming the Goliaths through intelligent risk management and cost-effective strategies.”

Active Navigation, Not Static Drift

Think of static asset allocation as sending a fleet of sailboats across the Atlantic, setting the sails at the start, and hoping some reach the destination unscathed. It’s a gamble on fair weather. At Auour, we approach investing like experienced navigators, constantly monitoring for storms, shifting winds, and hidden icebergs. Our active approach allows us to adjust course when conditions change, aiming for the best outcomes regardless of what the market throws our way.

Our focus on risk is not just about avoiding the obvious storms but also understanding the undercurrents that can subtly shift the market’s trajectory. We analyze factors such as credit costs and availability, momentum, valuation, and the interactions of markets across the globe to gauge how the market’s attitude toward risk evolves. By combining data-driven insights with a disciplined approach, we seek to protect against downside risks while positioning our portfolios to seize opportunities when the environment turns favorable.

This dynamic strategy—paying attention to how market attitudes towards risk shift over time—has been the cornerstone of our success. By focusing on risk, not predictions, we’ve managed to rank second in overall return and first in risk-adjusted return during our first decade. That’s no accident; it’s the result of our disciplined process and our commitment to looking at the bigger picture.

Dynamic Doesn’t Mean Tax Inefficient

One misconception about dynamic asset allocation is that it leads to tax inefficiency. At Auour, we’ve demonstrated this doesn’t have to be the case. All our products are built on the same foundation of monitoring and adjusting to risk. Though our strategies are dynamic, they are strategically dynamic, making moves only when needed and always with an eye toward tax efficiency.

“Dynamic doesn’t mean tax inefficient—our strategies minimize tax drag while maintaining the flexibility to seize market opportunities.”

Our demonstrated results speak for themselves. Despite being dynamic, our strategies have produced less tax drag^*** than the Goliaths’ comparable solutions. This approach allows us to aim for the best of both worlds: dynamic, risk-adjusted strategies that adapt to market conditions while minimizing unnecessary tax burdens for our clients.

Disclosures

Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. All investments carry the risk of principal loss. Auour Investments, an investment advisor registered with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission, did not pay for this recognition.

(*) Universe Benchmark

(**) These benchmarks or indices are derived using universes of PSN separately managed accounts, (“SMA Indices”). Any SMA Indices should not be deemed an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy shares of any products that are described herein. Index or performance returns do not reflect any management fees, transaction costs or expenses. One cannot invest directly into an index.

(***) For our purposes we have calculated tax drag based on the current federal tax rates for a family with an annual income of $400,000.

Top Guns Manager of The Decade Critria: The PSN universes were created using the information collected through the PSN investment manager questionnaire and use only gross of fee returns. PSN Top Guns investment managers must claim that they are GIPs compliant. Mutual fund and commingled fund products are not included in the universe. Products must have an r-squared of 0.80 or greater relative to the style benchmark for the latest ten year period. Moreover, products must have returns greater than the style benchmark for the latest ten-year period and also standard deviation less than the style benchmark for the latest ten-year period. At this point, the top ten performers for the latest ten-year period become the PSN Top Guns Manager of the Decade.

The content of PSN Top Guns is intended for use by qualified investment professionals. Please consult with an investment professional before making any investment decisions using content or implied content from PSN Top Guns.

All Rights Reserved. PSN Top Guns is powered by PSN. PSN is an investment manager database and is a division of Informa. No part of PSN Top Guns may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise without the prior written permission of PSN.

PSN Top Guns relies on data provided by third-party sources. Because of the possibility of unintended human or mechanical error that might occur, PSN does not guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, completeness or availability of any information and is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of such information. THERE ARE NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR USE. In no event shall PSN be liable for any indirect, special or consequential damages in connection with use of any information or derived using information based on PSN Top Guns results.

Why sounding smart may cost you more than it earns you

There’s a strange irony in investing—one that’s easy to miss if you’re not paying attention to how we listen.

Time and again, the most respected voices in the room are the ones sounding the alarm. Those discussing bubbles, recessions, breakdowns, and black swans. The voices of caution, of concern, of pessimism. They sound wise. They sound prepared. And yet, over most meaningful stretches of time, they tend to be… wrong.

On a rolling six-month basis, equity markets show positive returns roughly 75%^[1] of the time. Major drawdowns—those dreaded 10% or greater corrections—show up in only about one out of ten observations. And even when the market does stumble, history tells us it recovers, on average, within 18 months.

Those aren’t assumptions. Those are statistics. They suggest that the investor with a bias toward optimism, not unbounded enthusiasm, but informed, steady optimism, is far more often rewarded than the chronic skeptic.

So, why does the skeptic sound smarter?

There’s actually an answer for that. In a study aptly titled “Brilliant but Cruel,” participants consistently rated negative reviewers as more intelligent and insightful than positive ones—even when their commentary was no more accurate. The takeaway? We mistake pessimism for depth. We confuse complexity with wisdom. And nowhere does that dynamic play out more regularly than in the world of financial markets.

Being cautious, of course, has its place. We’d argue that risk management is one of the most underappreciated disciplines in investing, when done right. But risk management isn’t the same as pessimism. Risk management is preparation; pessimism is posturing.

Unfortunately, the market rewards the first, while the media and public attention often reward the second.

It’s not hard to see why. We’re wired to react more strongly to negative news than positive developments. And when someone paints a complex picture of potential ruin, we instinctively lean in, assuming that complexity equals insight. That’s the trick. Simple truths—such as the resilience of capital markets or the long-term benefits of staying invested—may seem too easy to be credible. But they’re still true.

Now, of course, there are exceptions—those rare moments when being deeply pessimistic and betting against the prevailing current has paid off spectacularly. Names like John Paulson or Michael Burry come to mind, who profited handsomely during the housing collapse or the 2022 rate shock. But those were not casual contrarian views. They were the result of deep, granular research paired with bold, concentrated positioning—wagers that required not just conviction, but timing, structure, and a willingness to be very wrong for a long time. For every investor who made billions going against the grain, thousands made nothing or lost far more trying. Betting on collapse is not a repeatable strategy; it’s a career-defining exception. Building wealth, in contrast, tends to be quieter, steadier, and more boringly optimistic.

Peter Lynch used to remind investors that more money has been lost preparing for corrections than in the corrections themselves. He managed Fidelity Magellan during one of the most successful runs in mutual fund history—not by making great macro calls, but by staying grounded in fundamentals and the underlying adaptability of good companies. He believed that the economy and the market weren’t some unknowable force, but the sum of individual businesses solving problems and meeting human needs.

And that’s a key point. Markets aren’t magic; they’re a reflection of value exchange. At their core, equity markets represent the collective efforts of tens of thousands of management teams adapting to new environments, overcoming obstacles, and finding new paths to profitability. When inflation spikes, they adjust pricing models. When supply chains are disrupted, companies often find new partners. When technology shifts, they invest, reinvent, and reallocate.

We often talk about “the market” as if it’s some independent, moody entity—rising and falling on whims, headlines, and sentiment. In truth, that moodiness is merely a reflection of us: the collective fear and greed of millions of participants reacting to uncertainty in real-time. But beneath that surface-level volatility lies something far more durable: the market as a reflection of value exchange and adaptability. It’s the accumulated effort of thousands of businesses meeting changing demands, reallocating capital, solving problems, and ultimately creating wealth. That’s why it recovers. That’s why it grows. Not because of stimulus or sentiment or central bank heroics—but because, under pressure, businesses adapt.

In a recent note, we made the case for being a Positive Historian—someone who studies the past not just for its challenges, but for the persistence and progress that follow. This is very much in that same spirit. Optimism isn’t a mood; it’s a discipline. It’s a framework rooted in history, supported by data, and practiced through a structured approach.

At Auour, we’ve built our philosophy around embracing that simple truth while still respecting the reality of risk. We believe markets reward long-term participation, but we also believe in building guardrails for when the environment deteriorates. Optimism and risk management are not mutually exclusive. In our view, they’re partners .And at this time, our “partners” are suggesting holding about 15% in tactical cash.

So no, we don’t traffic in doom. And yes, we accept that this might make us sound a little less clever at cocktail parties. However, we’ll opt for clarity over complexity. We’d rather be right than revered. Because in the long run, the optimist tends to end up wealthier—even if the pessimist sounds smarter along the way.

1. Auour analysis looking at U.S. and global equity markets as represented by the S&P 500 and MSCI ACWI Indices (or their predecessors). Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. All investments carry risk of absolute loss. ↑

Then, the narrative shifted. Sweeping tariff proposals targeting all trading partners sent shockwaves through global markets. Supply chains were in doubt, inflation expectations rose, and companies reliant on global inputs were predicted to face significant margin pressures. The optimism that had carried into the first three months of the year quickly turned to concern. Money began to move defensively. Risk-off sentiment returned. A well-diversified portfolio was not providing sufficient protection, increasing the level of panic.

The pendulum swung again as the administration, responding to political and economic pressure, delayed the tariffs and quickly worked out deals with several partners. Talk of targeted trade enforcement replaced broad barriers. Markets, always hypersensitive to language and intent, quickly adjusted. As we mentioned in our last communication, Strategic Uncertainty, market participants became manic by attempting to reposition after every communication from the White House.

And yet, despite shifting policy winds, market volatility, and global risks, we are poised to finish the first half of the year up nearly 9%, close to the long-term average return for an entire year.

That result may feel counterintuitive to many. But it aligns with something we’ve said for years: markets are resilient. When examining global equity markets over the past 60 years, the 6-month return has been positive more than 75% of the time. When equities experienced a material decline, they surpassed the prior highs within two years on average. Could the next time be different? Maybe. But answering that question after the damage has been done has a very low chance of being the right decision. It’s important to remember that markets adjust, absorb, and eventually recover.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy to stay invested. Quite the opposite. It’s incredibly difficult. When we communicated during the April sell-off that our risk signals suggested that the trade war looked more like Brexit than the Global Financial Crisis, it was not without concern that we were misreading the indicators. When headlines scream the end is near and every portfolio starts to reflect that attitude, even the most seasoned investor can start to second-guess themselves. And it is those times where traditional advice, such as “ride it out,” “stay the course,” “you’re diversified,” often falls flat. Because in moments of deep uncertainty, diversification can feel like it isn’t working, and waiting can feel like passivity.

That’s when many investors become negative historians—remembering only the crises, the drawdowns, the crashes, and forgetting the recoveries, the resilience, and the long upward arc of progress.

At Auour, we try to approach it differently. We consider ourselves positive historians. Not because we’re blind to risk, but because we remember all of history. Not just the gut-wrenching drawdowns, but also the recoveries that followed. The innovations that were born in tough times. The bull markets that climbed out of bear shadows.

We understand the emotional weight of uncertainty. We’ve built our entire investment process to address it so that we can be more confident in being positive historians.

This is where our downside mitigation approach plays such an important role. Our process isn’t built around guessing what will happen next. It’s built around identifying when market conditions have changed in ways that warrant caution. When the reward for taking risks has diminished. Through a series of objective indicators, we monitor for signs of systemic stress and take action only when necessary. We raise cash, reduce exposure, and seek to protect capital in the moments that we think matter most.

Just as importantly, we don’t stay in cash indefinitely. We rely on our indicators to show that conditions are improving and the storm is passing. And when it does, we redeploy confidently rather than reactively.

This approach enables us and our clients to remain optimistic participants in markets, even when sentiment turns sour.

And if you need a real-world example of how critical that can be, look no further than one of the most storied investors in modern history: Peter Lynch.

The Peter Lynch Paradox
During his tenure managing the Fidelity Magellan Fund (1977–1990), Lynch delivered an astonishing 29% average annual return, more than doubling the market’s return. But the average investor in the fund earned just 7% annually, half the market return. Why the gap? Because investors consistently pulled money out after poor performance and rushed in after good years.

The lesson? Even the best strategy can’t overcome poor investor behavior. Timing mistakes—driven by emotion—can erase the benefits of even world-class management.

We don’t bring this up to scold. We cite it because it’s deeply human. People don’t fear volatility; they fear being the last one holding the bag. And when it feels like the bag is getting heavier by the day, they step aside. But often, they step aside just before the rebound.

We believe a strong investment process—one that adapts to risk and leans on evidence rather than emotion—is the best antidote to this cycle.

Being a positive historian means staying engaged and informed. It means remembering that history includes corrections and recoveries. And it means having a framework that allows us to participate in markets thoughtfully, without surrendering to panic.

Markets will always present reasons for worry. Our job is to remember the whole record, not just the valleys, but the many summits. And to use that perspective to keep walking forward, with process, purpose, and optimism while, of course, sprinkling in a fair amount of skepticism, humility, and humor. Being a positive historian doesn’t mean being naïve. It means recognizing the challenges while refusing to be a victim of them.

As we head into the July 4th holiday, it’s worth remembering that one of the privileges of independence—personal or national—is the ability to choose how we respond to the world around us. We can choose to see only the risks and uncertainties, or we can choose to see the progress and resilience that history has consistently delivered.

At Auour, we choose to be positive historians. Not because the road is smooth, but because the journey is worth it.

Wishing you a thoughtful and optimistic Independence Day.

IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES

This report is for informational purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation or an offer to buy or sell any securities mentioned herein. This material has been prepared or is distributed solely for informational purposes only and is not a solicitation or an offer to buy any security or instrument or to participate in any trading strategy. All of the recommendations and assumptions included in this presentation are based upon current market conditions as of the date of this presentation and are subject to change. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. All investments involve risk including the loss of principal.

All material presented is compiled from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy cannot be guaranteed. Information contained in this report has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, Auour Investments LLC makes no representation as to its accuracy or completeness, except with respect to the Disclosure Section of the report. Any opinions expressed herein reflect our judgment as of the date of the materials and are subject to change without notice. The securities discussed in this report may not be suitable for all investors and are not intended as recommendations of particular securities, financial instruments or strategies to particular clients. Investors must make their own investment decisions based on their financial situations and investment objectives.

GDP = C + I + G + (X – M).

The above equation provides one way to conceptualize economic activity for a country. It makes the relationship between Consumption (C), Investment (I), Government spending (G), and the difference between exports and imports (X-M). Simple in form. Impossibly complex in function.

For decades, the U.S. economy advanced on a set of shared assumptions: cheap goods from abroad, stable institutions at home, and a government that could run persistent deficits without anyone raising too many concerns. Then came the new administration — and with it, a growing sense that none of those assumptions are sustainable anymore.

And as we have experienced over the past three months, they’re not thinking surgically — they’re going straight for the shock paddles. Each part of the economic system is being jolted: not because it’s entirely failed, but because they fear that without intervention, it soon might. Secretary of the Treasury Bessent recently called this moment one of “strategic uncertainty” — a phrase that captures the strange tension of bold action under fragile confidence.

What’s striking isn’t just the presence of significant change — it’s the simultaneity of it. Each element of the GDP equation is being pulled into the reform agenda.

A quick aside. We will spare you all any political opinions we may have, as they are meaningless when it comes to investing. Instead, we want to discuss the various puzzle pieces that we see in our attempt to see the larger picture. We should note that this discussion will not result in a change to our investment directions. Our investment process continues to be built on time-tested empirical studies that measure investor behavior and risk tolerance within the global investment ecosystem. Attempting to develop an economic forecast when there is so much uncertainty is unproductive and, in this case, manic.

Upon the changing landscape, two questions come to mind: 1) Why the urgency around government spending, and 2) Why the need to forcefully restructure trade? It appears that those two questions are at the root of many of the policies being enacted.

The answers to those questions may substantiate the need for such drastic adjustments. The answer to the first question revolves around a material change in deficit spending over the past decade. As the Deutsche Bank chart below shows, the U.S. has been running an extremely large deficit, even as the economy continues to chug along at a steady pace. The possibility is that the country may enter a precarious situation, which has led other countries to experience economic shocks as they approach a debt-to-GDP ratio of 150%. Is the U.S. comparable to those other countries that hit that turbulence? No, but do we want to test it?

The answer to the second question appears to be the growing concern amongst both political parties that the U.S. needs to reduce its dependence on China. The new administration has added color to this discussion, believing that the era of the globe having a single global power is over, and we are back to a multipolar global environment. With the fall of the USSR, the world saw the U.S. fill the vacuum. Over the past two decades, China has grown to a size comparable to that of the U.S. in terms of economic strength and global reach. Right or wrong, the new administration sees a need to adjust decades-long policies to a new reality.

As stated earlier, the path being chosen touches and tests every component of the equation. Although the U.S. consumer is in strong shape, consumption is entering uncertain territory. For years, Americans have benefited from a global trade system that prioritized cost efficiency, even if it meant geopolitical dependency. It led to two decades of pricing disinflation. That changed somewhat under the prior administration as concerns about global warming led some to shift from the focus on faster, better, and cheaper to faster, better, cheaper, and less harmful. The new administration wants to refocus attention on faster, better, cheaper, and more strategic solutions. With the drive for new tariffs and supply chain reshuffling now on the table, it isn’t easy to imagine an environment where goods pricing does not need to adjust to a higher norm. That may serve strategic goals, but it also tests the limits of consumer tolerance in a system that has long relied on abundance at low cost.

Investment plans are also undergoing significant realignment. New policies and trade negotiations are driving new investments into the U.S. for sectors such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and domestic energy production — areas viewed as essential not just for growth, but also for sovereignty. This is likely to have a positive impact, although there is uncertainty surrounding the timeframe. For example, we recently read “Apple in China” by Patrick McGee, which highlights the impact that corporate investment can have on a country. He highlights that Apple’s move to China for manufacturing at the turn of the century resulted in Apple training over 28 million Chinese in leading-edge manufacturing practices. Interestingly, he draws an analogy to the Marshall Plan following World War II, which helped rebuild Europe. Using that as a measuring stick, Apple’s investment in China was equivalent to the size of two Marshall Plans focused entirely on one country.

Government spending is undergoing philosophical triage. The deficit is growing, the national debt is flashing warning lights, and the last of the major credit agencies just downgraded U.S. sovereign debt from AAA. So, while the dollar remains dominant for now, there’s less breathing room than there used to be, especially if pundits are correct about the fear of China’s growing global footprint. Few will question the inefficiency in federal programs, but the current actions are likely to lead to the cutting of muscle, not just fat. With government spending accounting for around a third of the economy (larger for specific sectors), a significant adjustment in spending will likely have ripple effects for some time as public and private institutions adjust to a new environment.

And then there’s trade — the (X–M) term that used to live quietly at the end of the equation but is now center stage. Reshoring and “friend-shoring” have replaced globalization as policy priorities. The U.S.-China relationship has shifted from pragmatic interdependence to strategic decoupling. The “Red Curtain” that seems to be rising now is more complicated than the Iron Curtain ever was: it’s not just ideology, it’s supply chains, pricing power, capital flows, and trust.

As engineers, we understand that every equation comes with error bars for each component, which help to frame the potential variation in calculations. Those have grown over the year, suggesting that we are in a period of greater uncertainty. The economy isn’t falling apart, but it is being reassembled while it continues to operate. Markets, naturally, are struggling to translate intent into likely outcomes. Earnings forecasts for 2025 came down in the early part of the year but have remained surprisingly firm, high single digits for the S&P 500 — but there’s a growing sense that conviction in any direction could be dangerous. Forecasting in an environment where the inputs are still shifting is like trying to steer with a compass during a magnetic storm.

In moments like these, it’s easy to mistake uncertainty for collapse. But there’s another reading, too — one rooted in generational cycles. The Fourth Turning, by Strauss and Howe, describes a recurring pattern of societal reset, in which old institutions falter and new norms are forged under pressure. These periods are messy, but they are also necessary. Reform doesn’t happen in spring. It starts in winter, when the ground is frozen, and the future looks hard.

There’s no guarantee that the current policy direction will succeed. Still, the underlying goals — rebuilding institutional credibility, reshaping critical dependencies, and revitalizing productive capacity — respond to concerns that are broadly acknowledged, even if the strategies provoke debate. This isn’t about choosing optimism or pessimism. It’s about humility. About recognizing that we are mid-transition, and that clarity, like a harvest, doesn’t arrive the moment seeds are planted.

So we stay alert. Strategic uncertainty doesn’t call for bold predictions; it demands humility and vigilance. We ground our approach in signals that have proven their worth through past periods of economic and political unrest, resisting the urge to chase headlines or cling to tidy narratives. We remain skeptical of certainty, and cautious of promises—whether they suggest smooth sailing or inevitable collapse. Because in times like these, it’s not the volatility that breaks portfolios. It’s overconfidence in a single path forward.

Boston, MA—May 20, 2025— Auour Investments announced today it has been named to the celebrated PSN Top Guns List of best performing separate accounts, managed accounts, and managed ETF strategies for Q1 2025.  The highly anticipated list, published by Zephyr, remains one of the most important references for investors and asset managers.

“Q1 2025 presented a fascinating market narrative marked by significant rotation and global shifts. Success demanded adaptability, deep market understanding, and strategic positioning,” says PSN Product Manager Nick Williams. “PSN Top Guns managers demonstrated exceptional skill in navigating these complex dynamics, where value sectors outperformed growth, international markets showed strength, and policy shifts created both challenges and opportunities. Their expertise in reading and responding to these evolving market conditions continues to showcase the enduring value of active management in separately managed accounts.”

Auour Investments manages a suite of ETF-based dynamic strategies. The Instinct Family of Downside Protection Strategies by Auour utilizes the Auour Regime Model (ARM), a proprietary risk detection algorithm that aims to be proactive in a changing risk environment. The strategies can provide tactical and core functionality within a client’s investment needs, aiming to mitigate losses in down markets while capturing most of the market’s positive returns.

“Our first responsibility is always to safeguard and grow our clients’ capital. The past three years haven’t just been volatile—they’ve been transformational. Inflation, rising interest rates, war, and global realignment have reshaped the investment landscape. These Top Gun recognitions are a powerful testament to our team’s ability to remain steady through the storm and stay true to our risk-managed philosophy.” – Joseph Hosler, managing principal.

Through a combination of PSN’s proprietary performance screens, the PSN Top Guns awards products in six proprietary categories in over 75 universes based on continued performance over time.

Auour’s Ultra Low Duration strategy had one of the top ten returns for the three-year period in its respective strategy.

Auour’s Global Equity strategy had one of the top ten returns for the three-year period in its respective strategy.

Auour’s Global Fixed Income strategy had one of the top ten returns for the first quarter, one-year, and three-year periods in its respective strategy.

Auour’s Global Fixed Income strategy earned a PSN Top Guns 4-Star award, meaning our Global Fixed Income strategy had an r-squared of 0.80 or greater relative to the style benchmark for the recent five-year period. Moreover, the strategy’s returns exceeded the style benchmark for the three latest three-year rolling periods. The top ten returns for the latest three-year period then become the 4 Star Top Guns.

Auour’s Global Fixed Income strategy earned a PSN Top Guns 5-Star award, meaning our Global Fixed Income strategy had an r-squared of 0.80 or greater relative to the style benchmark for the recent five-year period. Moreover, the strategy’s returns exceeded the style benchmark for the three latest three-year rolling periods. Products are then selected that have a standard deviation for the five-year period equal to or less than the median standard deviation for the peer group. The top ten returns for the latest three-year period, then become the 5 Star Top Guns.

Auour’s Global Fixed Income strategy earned a PSN Top Guns 6-Star award, meaning our Global Fixed Income strategy had an r-squared of 0.80 or greater relative to the style benchmark for the recent five-year period. Moreover, the strategy’s returns exceeded the style benchmark for the three latest three-year rolling periods. Products are then selected that have a standard deviation for the five-year period equal or less than the median standard deviation for the peer group. The top ten information ratios for the latest five-year period then become the 6 Star Top Guns.

Auour has been recognized as an innovator in Regime-Based Investing, the foundation of the investment philosophy applied to all strategies. By detecting changes within the market’s risk appetite, Auour aims to produce better outcomes for institutional and individual investors.

The complete list of PSN Top Guns and an overview of the methodology can be located at https://psn.fi.informais.com/.  

About Auour Investments

Auour Investments (pronounced ‘our’), an SEC-registered investment adviser, offers individuals, institutions, and financial advisors a range of investment strategies delivered through ETF-based portfolio construction techniques. Auour’s mission is to maximize Transparency, Trust, and Total Return by applying over six decades of collective experience within leading financial institutions. To learn more about Auour’s innovative approach to market risk detection, please go to http://www.auour.com.

About PSN

For nearly four decades, PSN has been a top resource for investment professionals. Asset managers rely on Zephyr’s PSN to effectively reach institutional and retail investors. Over 2,800 firms, 285 universes, and more than 21,000 products comprise the PSN SMA database showing asset breakdowns, compliance, key personnel, ownership diversity, ESG, business objectives and strategy, style, fees, GIC sectors, fixed income ranges and full holdings. Unique to PSN is its robust historical database of nearly 40 Years of Data Including Net and Gross-of-Fee Returns. PSN Mid-Year Outlook provides insight and trends about the SMA industry. You can view in online here.

Visit PSN online to learn more.

Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. All investments carry the risk of the loss of principal. No compensation was provided to win this award, and Auour’s only involvement is in distributing the awards provided to the firm.