Anyone have experience with this? I've listened to their radio show off and on for years and they seem to give good advice. They tout no/low load funds and how they don't work on commission but rather they charge 1.5% of the portfolio to manage it. To me they sound like they would have their clients interest at heart and wouldn't push investments just for the commission like you might see at big brokerages.

Can anyone compare these guys to what someone might see at Merril or Fidelity? I'm looking for someone to actively manage my investments.

Wife and I have 401ks, IRAs, and a small brokerage account along with 529 plans and a small custodial account for our kids.

Never heard of them.

 

Most mutual funds are down 5-10% YTD. You would have more control and better luck picking individual stocks. But in full disclosure things are sort of bad right now. My firm is having trouble finding value in the current market.

1.5% seems a bit high.

How close are you to retirement?

Until you can get into private equity (10mm+) actively managed money does not make sense. Pursue index funds (VOO from Vanguard is the cheapest).

Don't fall for the local advisor alphabet credibility schemes spewing mutual fund garbage. Chfc CFP MBA XYZ.. the only three that matter are CFA CPA and CAIA.

Why VOO compared to https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0085&FundIntExt=INT ?

 

VOO is just the S&P 500 (large cap), what you are linking to is a total market index; large, medium and small cap. If you are searching for more total market exposure, that will work but the fees are higher and historic returns aren't significantly greater, while volatility is. volatility = a measure of risk.


Keep in mind, while investing we are searching for greater risk adjusted returns. We could have higher returns at the casino than the S&P 500, however the risk is exponentially more at the casino. The goal of an index is to diversify away the firm specific risk of each individual firm. If a CEO goes to jail, CFO commits fraud, company goes tits up, bernie madoff jr. pulls a quick one etc.. you will exposed to that ever so minorly. You are however still exposed to the systematic risk of the market (greater market fluctuations on valuations, interest rates, 08's, 1929's etc..) There is no way to diversify away that risk without hedging, which creates a load on your portfolio that usually erases most of the gains you would have otherwise made. One exception to this is currency hedging, luckily we don't have to worry about this in the U.S., but it is necessary if investing in un-pegged (USD) markets like europe or asia.

That makes me LOL that they charge that for what they do if that is "their fee" and not the all in fee.

I have one degree in Finance which specialized in becoming a CFA, I also have letters behind my name. What you said is not making sense to me. I am not saying that you are wrong, but I am not following the logic. Please don't tell me the "Private Welath" arm of the bank.

1.5% AUM fee is high as giraffe snatch.
I don't have a degree in finance, just a degree in Accounting.
With a very simple understanding of the basics on how investing works there is no reason to pay any AUM fees.
Look for broad index based funds (hint: Vanguard and Fidelity) and you will find the low cost + no load mutual funds.

To me 1.5% is INSANE for most portfolios.

Let's think about that in terms of your ROI. If you are getting 10%, they are taking 15% of your gains every year. If you are seeing 6% ROI, they are taking 25% of your gains. If you see 1.5% ROI (where a chunk of my portfolio is YTD) they are taking EVERY PENNY of your gains. And they get paid in down years too....

I look closely at loads and expense ratios. Sometimes loads are worth paying. Sometimes a funds performance is high enough to justify a high expense ratio. But even my top performing funds don't have expense ratios approaching 1.5%

-shooter

Common Core Math Time

1,000,000 x 5% return = 1,050,000

1,000,000 x 1% mgmt fee = $10,000

1,000,000 - $10,000 fee = $990,000

$990,000 x 5% return  = $49,500

$49,500 / 1,000,000 = 4.95% return

That is one way to show the math. Another way is $50k - $10k = $40k. $10k/$50k = .20

Your math hides their fee by taking it out of the principle balance. My math shows it in the returns. Same end result on your portfolio balance.

-shooter

lol, I know

+1 for just putting your $ in VOO.  I paid a highly recommended money manager 3/4% to "manage" my money for years.  Over the long run he couldn't beat the S&P500 index.  He's gone , and I'm a lot better off for it!!!!

You pay people to manage risk not return.

If you are only looking at your money as a drag race and from a total return aspect and not from a risk adjusted return stand point along with standard deviation standpoint, you won't ever see value added.