Podiatrists have a unique perspective on the medical products and technology they use in their practice. This knowledge might provide an unexpected benefit: the potential for above-average investment returns.

The strategy—Collaborative Investing—combines the two most important components of successful investing: product information (from the physician) and financial analysis (from the professional money manager). It’s a unique way for podiatrists and other doctors to share their expertise with a professional money manager partner in selecting high quality, long-term investments.

Many otherwise savvy investors do not understand the difference between risk and volatility. Their perception is that an investment with above-average volatility must be accompanied by above-average risk, which isn’t necessarily true. Being able to distinguish one from the other is important.

For example, like most people, you probably consider government bonds risk-free. After all, the US government has never defaulted on its debt. Buy a 10-year Treasury bond today and you are guaranteed to get your money back in 2010. No risk, no volatility, right? Wrong.

Collaborative Investing® is a style of fund management created by The Abernathy Group in 1989.

Essentially, it is uniting the knowledge base of industry experts — practitioners in specific industries with a working knowledge of products — together with the financial expertise of the money manager. To solidify this concept, one must also make the industry expert a co-investor in order to align their interests with the money managers.

This concept allows for the development of more in-depth research, which leads to better-informed investment decision and a more thorough product understanding, which in turn reduces risk.

The rather pedestrian 2.2% rise in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index in the third quarter this year was a big letdown for most investors, coming as it did after the benchmark’s 14.9% second-quarter moon shot. Hedge fund managers, however, aren’t complaining. Unlike mutual funds, hedge funds can sell stocks short, as well as buy them, so they tend to do better when the broad market wanes. Short sellers borrow shares then sell them in the hopes of making a profit by buying the share later at a lower price.

Have you experienced a situation where you lack knowledge in an area but need to judge whether an “expert” in that area is providing you with good advice? Usually the expert is knowledgeable and truly looking out for your best interests, but there is always the chance that the expert is lining their own pockets at the expense of your ignorance.

All industries go through significant changes over their lifecycle. Most often it is incremental change, but sometimes something revolutionary takes place and causes disruptive change, meaning it could literally change everything. Stem cells have the potential to destroy the pharmaceutical and medical industries as we know them today, and create a new forum of therapeutic healing and general medicine.

Over the long term, a stock’s value isn’t determined by market returns but by the company’s operating performance—how much cash it generates and how well it invests that cash in its business.

So the most important question is which company is most likely to be running successfully five, 10, or 15 years from now?

Over the past 10 years, professional ethics in the United States have taken a pounding. We’ve heard about CEOs falsifying earnings reports, research analysts hyping stocks, and major accounting firms signing off on fraudulent income statements and balance sheets. It’s fair to say that there are few professions in America that remain unblemished.

The medical profession is one of the few. Physicians have come through this period relatively unscathed. Despite several well-publicized scandals, the public continues to believe that doctors will behave ethically and look out for their patients’ interests. Medical professionals continue to set the standard for research, education, and ethical behavior.

Are they poised for a fall? Investors buy bonds for safety. Compared to the stock market, the backing of, for instance, the U.S. Treasury or a blue-chip firm when buying a bond feels like pulling into a safe port in the stormy seas. Yet bonds aren’t without risk, a fact that many investors overlook.

Financial gurus routinely tell investors to do their homework. But few money managers take that advice further than Steven Abernathy, founder and chairman of The Abernathy Group, a $150 million fund of medical and information technology stocks.