Leo Alapont
Financial Advisor, CFP®
Despite the current challenges for investors — high inflation, volatile capital markets, and the end of accommodative monetary policies — CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ practitioner (CFP®) Leo Alapont remains optimistic. It’s an attitude born from his own personal history, plus the knowledge and experience he’s gained working in a range of different sectors and the valuable lessons he’s learned from his financial mentors.
“I’m not afraid to listen to the older and wiser investors who have come before me,” Alapont said. “They have so much perspective to offer on the times we are living in and so many reasons to see opportunities as we look ahead to the future.”
One adage that Alapont sticks by is to never bet against the U.S.
“We can grow everything we need here,” Alapont explains. “An investor does not have to search very far to find some of the best-managed companies with some of the strongest brand names in the world right here.”
Fueled by a desire to demonstrate professionalism to his clients and a commitment to their financial success, Alapont sees the goals of his clients as being closely aligned with those of his own.
“As a parent of three children, I am no different than others: I want my children to have a better life than I have,” Alapont said. “That’s what my clients tell me they want, and we share a desire to ensure a bright future for our families.”
Family has always been a priority for Alapont. He spent the early part of his life living close to the bone in Spain before his mother picked the family up and moved them to California in search of greater opportunity. Alapont was raised with few luxuries, but going without video games, having to fight his sister for scraps at the dinner table, and seeing the sacrifices his mother made for the family reinforced many of the values that Alapont carries with him today.
“We lived in Spain at a time when globalization had not yet arrived and the economy was highly regulated,” Alapont said. “My parents had little choice in the way we lived and seeing the doors that opened to us when we moved to the U.S. demonstrated to me at a young age the value of a free market.”
After graduating from college with an economics degree, Alapont applied his knowledge to managing a global supply chain for a semiconductor firm in Silicon Valley. He saw friends get rich quickly during the “dot com” era, and watched the bubble deflate just as quickly as it had risen.
“Many of my friends who had become day traders overnight floated back down to earth and went to work their old jobs,” Alapont recalled. “It was my first valuable lesson in diversification and timing the markets and reinforced my long-held belief that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
After earning an Executive MBA, Alapont relocated to Oregon, the birthplace of his mother and home to one of his role models, the late, great long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine. After briefly selling municipal bonds to survive a tumultuous time in the stock market, Alapont turned his attention to financial planning. He became a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™(CFP®) and set about building a base of clients using every way he knew how, including going door-to-door handing out business cards. He met his wife, Danielle, started a family and eventually made the shift from serving clients through Edward Jones and U.S. Bancorp Investments, Inc., to providing guidance through his own firm.
Today, Alapont provides financial planning services as an independent advisor to clients in Oregon and throughout the world. He relishes the opportunity to work independently on behalf of his clients without having to reach sales goals or push the flavor-of-the-month on behalf of big investment firms. He also enjoys applying some of the many lessons he’s acquired after decades of investing, listening, learning, and living life honestly.
“Chasing trends and hot investment ideas for short-term gains usually ends with poor results,” Alapont said. “So even though we are not in the boom times we’ve been in before, there are still opportunities to be had. Stock markets are volatile, but they have functioned remarkably well over time and helped people reach their financial goals and be able to retire. Seeing my clients succeed is the most rewarding part of my job.”
Leo Alapont, CFP® Financial Advisor, 800 Willamette, Suite 730, Eugene, OR 97401
Phone
Securities and advisory services offered through Commonwealth Financial Network®, Member FINRA/SIPC, a Registered Investment Advisor. Fixed insurance products and services offered through CES Insurance Agency.