John started his journey in the financial services industry in June of 2001 and was registered as an investment professional in November of 2001 where he worked as a fixed income analyst with McDonald Investments. After this experience, John looked to expand his knowledge base and moved to Register and Akers in 2004 for a year to work as an equity research analyst and then moved in 2005 to YieldQuest to accept a position as a mutual fund portfolio manager where he was a part of a team managing both equity and fixed income portfolios. Following the stress of the financial crisis, John left mutual fund management and started to work as an ‘advisor’s advisor’ working with other registered financial advisors who would outsource their investment management and asset allocation decisions to him and his team.  John moved the team to IFS Securities in the fall of 2015 where he transitioned from working solely with institutional investors and started his work with individual investors and become a registered investment advisor role as a fiduciary and took a position as Director of Research and Chief Market Strategist for the firm. In the fall of 2019, John moved to Cantella and Company to focus solely on the RIA aspect of business where his passion lay to build his practice the firm until Cantella announced they were planning to drop Raymond James as a custodian for clients. The real allegiance was to Raymond James which has served him and his clients with an exemplary record and not Cantella, and he joined Kingswood Wealth Advisors in 2022 to continue his custodial relationship with Raymond James and take advantage of the fantastic team at Kingswood where he hopes to remain for the duration of his career.

Most importantly, John enjoys what he does, educating and helping clients navigate the markets through various economic cycles. His philosophy for the markets is based on ‘TCV’ which if you are an Elvis fan you might think back to ‘TCB’ (taking care of business) but it stands for Tactical, Contrarian, Value. Tactical means looking for the low hanging fruit in the market, whether that is in stocks, bonds, or commodities. Contrarian means we are open to look at opportunities others think are boring and sometimes these are turnaround stories but most importantly avoiding the herd mentality that seems to grip Wall Street in both good times and bad. Everybody knows to ‘buy low and sell high’ but few do it. Finally, at the core of his investment approach is a value bias learning lessons from Warren Buffett and other legendary value investors. Valuation matters, and as Warren likes to say you only know who is swimming naked when the tide goes out, meaning that people might be involved in risky behavior that ultimately exposes itself because they aren’t looking at valuation and the core business fundamentals.

John lives in Atlanta and is happily married and has one child getting ready for college and in his spare time enjoys watching football, baseball and playing the guitar and piano to relax and unwind. John Bliss was born in November 1975.

John graduated from the University of Georgia in 2000 with a Bachelor of Arts in Finance from the Terry School of Business. He holds several licenses, including the Series 65 (Feb 25, 2016), Series 63 (Nov 26, 2001), SIE (Oct 1, 2018), Series 86 (May 9, 2005), Series 87 (Feb 22, 2005), Series 7 (Nov 6, 2001), and Series 24 (Jun 26, 2006).