Individual Investing

We use Charles Schwab & Company, Inc. or TD Ameritrade for custodians of your accounts. The custodian holds your assets for you, execute trades and cash movement as directed or authorized by the client. We provide you with monthly or quarterly account statements. We will assist you with filling out the necessary account paperwork (which can often be signed electronically). If the account is already with a bank or other brokerage firm, we may just need you to provide a recent statement. If you are rolling over a 401k, we will assist you with the paperwork required by your current 401k administrator to move the funds after confirming that any transfers will be tax-efficient.

When we first meet with you, either in person or over the phone, we will review your current financial situation, your goals and priorities, and your risk tolerances. These are very client-specific discussions, and your investment portfolio will be greatly dependent upon these factors. In general, we believe in a diversified portfolio using both inexpensive index funds and ETF's, actively managed mutual funds and individual bonds and stocks. While we use a similar group of investments selected after exhaustive research by our investment committee, the makeup of your portfolio is crafted for you based on your needs and comfort-level. We constantly keep in mind the impact of trade fees and tax liabilities. Therefore, we prefer to keep trading to a minimum.

Our fees are very reasonable, outlined in our investment management agreement, and withdrawn directly from your accounts. Our basic fee structure for all individuals is an annual fee of 1% on the market value of the account up to $500,000. Any assets over $500,000 are billed at 0.5% annually. The invoices are paid quarterly. You will receive a copy of your bill each quarter by mail or digitally.

We will send you a graphical report of performance each quarter that shows you your portfolio's growth in both percentages and in dollars. The report includes a commentary and performance numbers for the current quarter as well as other recent and longer-term periods. In addition, you will receive a quarterly client newsletter near the end of each quarter that discusses current market activity and provides some educational content. Of course, we encourage you to contact us with questions, and we will check in with you routinely to see what comments or concerns you have. Also, your custodian provides you with electronic daily acess to your account and will send you a monthly or quarterly statement (either in paper form or electronically).

We may do absolutely nothing. The market rises and falls constantly, sometimes significantly; we call it "volatility." With the birth of the internet came 24/7 market coverage and a serious increase in volatility. While some of these market changes are economically driven, too many of them are emotionally driven. We encourage you to leave your emotions out of it and trust us to handle your investments for you by thinking long-term. If you simply cannot handle market volatility, we will address that with you when setting up your portfolio. However, we WILL NOT sell out of investments simply because the market is down. We may, however, move current assets to another sector in your portfolio that we think will recover better than where they are. For instance, investors who panicked in 2008 and 2009 sold stocks and moved to cash or bonds. They took "realized losses." However, the stock market rallied for five years afterwards, which means those investors never got that money back. The investors who stuck it out after 2009 saw their stock portfolios recover over time. Historically, it's best to persevere during periods of poor market performance. Please call us to talk about it if you have any questions.

We have teamed with Charles Schwab & Company, Inc. to offer Robo Advising services to investors who prefer to have less support. While we are still available to speak with you, you will be answering a questionnaire on Schwab's website to help you create a portfolio. These portfolios have much more limited investment options than we can offer you as a more traditional client, and we will still charge you a reduced fee for our services. You can click on the link below to get started. The entire process is electronic. The system will ask you for our code. It is QXHK.

^{*Financial planning is offered at no additional charge for clients with a current Investment Management Agreement, but estate planning documents and tax preparation are separately billed.}