We could not be more different from brokers, who primarily derive their compensation from commissions made by selling financial products. Generally, most of them operate under an incentive system that encourages their spending all their time selling, as that is the activity that generates revenues for the broker and his firm. Unlike investment managers or analysts, brokers are not paid to spend time doing research or conducting financial analysis. Do you want your investment advisor spending his time doing financial analysis to ferret out promising investments on your behalf and for your benefit or do you prefer to have him pitch financial products to you all day long?
Brokers are fed ideas by their Wall Street research departments whose potential and actual conflicts of interest have finally been exposed in the past few years. When a brokerage company’s research department is beholden to the institutions that generate millions of dollars in investment banking fees, where do you think its loyalties lie? Can its opinions on the companies that are its institutional clients be truly objective?
We do not earn any commissions or sell any financial products--period. Our only compensation for managing assets is a management fee that is based on the value of your assets. We endeavor to grow your assets over time in a prudent fashion consistent with your investment parameters--the same goal that you have for your own assets. Our interests are aligned. We owe our loyalties only to you, the client; we have no affiliation with any other organization or investment banking business with any company.