Longboat resident nominated for Portfolio Manager of The Year

Just because she lives by the beach now doesn’t mean Catherine Avery is taking it easy. 

After years of working on Wall Street, Avery of Catherine Avery Investment Management works hard on Longboat to make sure her clients are educated about their investments and are reaping the rewards.

Avery was recently nominated for Investment News Women's Portfolio Manager of The Year. This award recognizes a female portfolio manager who works with investor clients and has shown excellence over the past 12 months. It is a part of Investment News’ Women to Watch issue. 

Avery has been interviewed on Bloomberg several times about topics relating to inflation and her predictions on the investment market.

“As you're thinking about going into retirement, you need a stream of income,” said Avery. “One of the things as people get older, you spend a lot more money trying to stay healthier and younger so you can enjoy your life. Unfortunately, even after the great financial crisis, when inflation basically went down to zero, medical costs, hospitalizations, drug prices were still accelerating at really high rates. These are the things that you consume more as you get older. So you need to have some component of your portfolio that's going to help you stay ahead of inflation and provide a bit of predictability and  income stream.”

CAIM focuses on strengthening and protecting its clients' long-term investment goals by creating dividend yielding portfolios with volatility. Avery emphasized CAIM’s ultra-personal strategy to be able to educate their clients and keep them engaged in their investments. Its clientele mainly focuses on conservative investors, baby boomers and women. 

“After coming out of the big Wall Street firms, I saw the need for helping women with their investments,” said Avery. “I noticed that women were not getting what they needed from a lot of the big Wall Street firms. So I wanted to be able to offer them something in my firm. We get a lot of women who are divorced, widowed, single, working, some of them are married. I can't actually say that there's a specific type of woman but women who want to take a little bit more control of their money themselves, too. And sometimes they want to have something different from what the husband has, which is great.”

Avery is originally from Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from New York University in 1985 with a bachelor's degree in finance. She has more than 30 years of portfolio management experience. Before starting her own investment firm, Avery was vice president of Morgan Stanley Investment Management for nine years.

In 2007, Avery started CAIM in Connecticut. When most of her loyal investors started to move to the west coast of Florida, she thought it would be the perfect time to embrace her love for the beach and follow them. Avery moved CAIM to the area in 2021. CAIM’s office is located in Mediterranean Plaza on the Key but her clientele lives all over the west coast of Florida.

Over her many years of working in the industry, Avery said she has loved every part of her job and wouldn’t choose any other career.

“I love the fact that we can get really into the nitty gritty in our research and analysis and selecting the stocks that go into the portfolio,” said Avery. “I really love being able to work with the clients because I get to see the fruits of what I've done. It's great that you have good performance in the portfolios and seeing it actually make a difference in client's lives.”

Avery was recognized on Nov. 6 as an excellence awardee in the InvestmentNews 2023 Women to Watch Portfolio Manager of the Year category.