Strategic Wealth Partners was acquired by Kovitz Investment Group Partners, LLC ("Kovitz"), a registered investment adviser with the SEC on May 1, 2024. Strategic Wealth Partners is now a division of Kovitz and its registered investment adviser. Materials created prior to this date were created by Strategic Wealth Partners and are accurate as of the time of publishing.

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Meet your financial specialists.

David Copeland

Principal & Co-Founder

David has been helping clients with their financial affairs since 1981. He founded Strategic Wealth Partners in 2008 after serving as Senior Managing Director with Mesirow Financial for 21 years. He has also held investment positions with Merrill Lynch and commercial banking positions with Harris Bank.

David has applied his many years of investment experience to the development of the firm’s investment philosophy. He is committed to imparting and managing a consistent philosophy among the SWP team and ensuring that all client recommendations reflect this philosophy. David realizes that, by nature, calling short-term market moves can be treacherous. It is more important to focus on what types of risks can be expected.

David will go the extra mile to build custom solutions for clients that are best suited to their individual situations. His approach includes a focus on alternative investment strategies, and for more than 25 years, he has helped clients utilize alternative strategies, when appropriate, to support their investment objectives. Rather than focusing on the pure return portion of a manager’s track record, he believes clients will benefit most from strategies based on consistency. Those strategies are only discovered through due diligence and investment experience.

David is passionate about helping others succeed by continually deepening his knowledge base. He actively exchanges opinions and insights with other industry professionals. Currently, he serves on the Advisory Board for CAIS, a leading alternative investment platform for independent RIAs. He is an active participant, and has been a presenter, at the annual Focus Financial CIO meetings. He has also served on the PIMCO Advisory Board and J.P. Morgan Advisory Council. In addition to advising clients, he is President and Chairman of the Rebecca A. Copeland Fund for Social Justice.

David enjoys spending time with his wife, children, and grandchildren. In his free time, he likes to work on his golf game and travel.

Education

MBA, Northwestern University’s JL Kellogg Graduate School of Management
BBA in Finance, University of Michigan

Leadership & Community

President and Chairman, Rebecca A. Copeland Fund for Social Justice
Founding Member, CAIS Advisory Board

Industry Recognition

2024 InvestmentNews Excellence Awardee for Advisor of the Year in the category of Alternative Investments

InvestmentNews Award’s methodology includes a nomination, research, and judging process. The time frame this award covers is January 2024 – December 2024. InvestmentNews Awards did not receive a fee in exchange for nomination or rankings. Click here for a more in depth look at InvestmentNews Awards.

Office Location

Deerfield, IL

Related

Investments
Re-Examining the 40 from the Famous 60/40 Portfolio
In the 1950s, Harry Markowitz was one of the creators of Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). In summary, he was able to create an “optimal” portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds. Over time, this mix generated most of the returns of stocks with much less downside risk. This was the early introduction of the asset allocation issue that is critical to portfolio construction. However, is this still the optimal way to create a portfolio?
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Investments
Investing In Alternative Equity at SWP
Recently, I wrote about alternative credit and the rationale we use for this type of alternative asset category at Strategic Wealth Partners. Another area of alternatives we use extensively is what we term “alternative equity.” In order to discuss this topic, traditional equity investing first requires review. Why do people invest in equities to begin with? An equity investor has the opportunity to participate in the growth of a company. A company’s value is reflected in a company’s profits, growth in profits, and distributions from those profits in the form of dividends.
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Investments
Opportunities in Alternative Credit
As I mentioned in my article last summer, there are many types of alternative investments. Within this discussion, we created two categories, alternative asset classes and alternative strategies. A subset of alternative strategies is alternative (‘alt’) credit. From where we sit, there are great opportunities presently in the alt credit area. In this piece, I’ll discuss why we like this area of the capital markets. Background on Investing in Traditional Bonds When building a portfolio of bonds, investors often seek securities where interest payments are fixed, like a traditional bond, and when there is a specific date that the bond matures. A bond makes the same payment every six months, with the principal being paid at maturity. Investors often take comfort with the defined nature of bonds and especially like them when the credit quality is from an institution like the US federal government or large credit-worthy corporations.
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