American Investment Services Inc

American Investment Services (AIS) is an SEC-registered, fee-only investment adviser that provides discretionary portfolio management and financial planning to individuals, high net worth clients, charitable organizations, and institutions. Its advisory offerings include a Professional Asset Management (PAM) program, a rules-based High-Yield Dow (HYD) strategy, and access to Dimensional Fund Advisors’ Unified Managed Accounts (UMAs); AIS also publishes a quarterly Investment Guide (the “IG”).

AIS’s investment approach is structured and passive, grounded in Modern Portfolio Theory and implemented primarily through low-cost mutual funds and ETFs (including Vanguard, DFA, State Street, and BlackRock iShares), with targeted allocations to bonds, REITs, utilities, gold-related ETFs, and factor tilts where appropriate. Portfolios are developed from an initial financial plan, monitored and rebalanced periodically, and may incorporate legacy holdings or plan assets; when appropriate AIS uses DFA’s UMA platform and makes available DFA products that are generally distributed only through DFA-approved advisors.

Several aspects of AIS distinguish it from many peers: with roughly $1.3 billion in regulatory AUM and six advisors, its AUM per advisor exceeds $200 million, a level uncommon among similar team firms. AIS is a wholly owned subsidiary of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) and manages AIER-related trust assets while also providing the quarterly Investment Guide and a proprietary HYD model (a dividend-yield–based “four for 18-month” rules approach), and participates in DFA’s UMA program, which requires custody at certain major custodians.