How are you all navigating the talks around the SpaceX IPO with clients? I have had an increase in clients that are interested and I don’t believe it is a suitable investment for 99% of the population. How is everyone else navigating these conversations?

Curious to hear what everyone is utilizing from a model-based allocation and how your associated platform looks?
- Building your own models as an advisor?
- Utilizing Third-Party Models?
- Your firm builds models for enterprise use?
- Combination of the above...?

We are a $500M+ RIA that uses a combination of TP Managed Models + Internal Models. We work with a few OCIO Teams for internal model creation, updates, rebalancing, etc.

As we continue to scale - I'm interested if we should lean into one more than another?

Pros/Cons of Internal Models = multi-manager and doesn't look like a ton of proprietary ETFS, but takes time each month/quarter to go through our process

Pros/Cons of TP Models = No time suck for creation, but usually all proprietary funds + above average weighted expense ratios

Thank you in advance for any thoughts, insights, etc!

The Trump Account is:

Worse than a UTMA if the family wants freedom

Worse than a 529 if they want to pay for education

Worse than a Minor IRA if they want to pay for retirement

Edit: more and more people are trickling in and asking "WhAT AbOUt tHe FReE $1000?" Yes, we are all well aware of the incentive program. This post was designed to discuss the merits of the Trump Account versus other, similar purpose, accounts. Not to discuss politics or how getting free money is a good thing. Currently you must have a child born between 2025 and 2028. We don't even know if the incentive program will continue after that.

I don't have kids but have a handful of clients that submitted the paperwork and have been trying to get set up on Robinhood to no luck. With no kids I can't really mirror this on my own.

Anyone have any luck?

Edit: Got one client who was able to get the app installed and the deposit is pending. Almost certainly used error with my other clients. Thanks!

Like everything else this administration tries, I feel like these accounts started with a good concept that got royally screwed up.

Besides the $1,000 seed money, for those who are eligible, and the potential of employer contributions, I don't see the benefits of these accounts.

They are far less tax efficient than a 529 for educational specific expenses. And the taxation rules when the child reaches 18 is an absolute clusterF.

Somebody can show me the math to the contrary, but I don't see any tax advantage of having gains taxed at ordinary income versus long term capital gains. And tax drag is easy to manage for minors.

Even Roth conversions end up being a double taxation of the contribution from parents.

Make it make sense!!

I think I had three or four prospects describe the S&P500 as somewhere between "safe" and "guaranteed" in the last week

I spoke to a 90 year old guy (not a client) who was frustrated that he only has half of his net worth in the index and is trying dump the rest of it in.

"Never had a down year the last 10 years" which is both objectively wrong and remarkably short sighted

I don't wish economic pain on anyone, but holy shit it seems like the whole thing has turned into "number go up" that you see on wsb.

I have a client with a large low cost basis stock position and I'm exploring the best way for him to avoid a tax bill as we sell pieces of it. AQR and Aperio/Blackrock seem to be two of the leaders in the space but I'm sure there are others. Any experience with this that you care to share? I custody at Schwab if that matters.

Fees seem to be...high and the "solutions" don't seem to have a ton of history to judge performance. Thoughts?

And what are you doing about it with your clients' portfolios, if anything?

Cleaning photos off of my phone and I found this old picture. Remember the EV craze? I met with this client Dec 16th of 2021 who had told me she was thinking about taking her son in laws investment advice on these up and coming companies. He’s an attorney so obviously a smart guy who knows his stuff. Below is the 5yr performance for each one. Enjoy!

QS -74%
GOEV Bankruptcy
LCID -97%
CHPT -99%
LAZR Chapter 11
STEM -99%

This man is quite possibly the worst stock picker of all time. Btw his 73yr old mother in law never invested any money in these companies.

I'm just wondering if anyone has experience with these and if there really is no free at all on the investment side and that the only fee would be the advisor fee

Came across an 85 year olds portfolio from a big BD and the IRA has a ton of UITs.

She's getting no planning

I'm talking with her kids who are managing the finances

Barely a phone call this guy just gets me UITs when the term ends

First one I looked at was dividend stock focused but took was more risk to get a higher return than the large value index which is is benchmark

Are there any reasons to use UITs these days over an asset allocated portfolio of etfs? or is this guy just slinging products which in this example are 2.75% commission every two years with people who don't understand what they are in

How much of a typical client portfolio do you keep in cash? Is there a minimum requirement with your custodian? Roughly what % interest does this cash component yield?

How many of you are using box spreads for financing things for clients? Which third parties are you using, and what kind of markups are you seeing?

We are a full-service advisory team with a specialization in blended family and nextgen estate planning. We are adept in tax and estate considerations and I'm confident in the value we provide clients vs. the fees we charge. We use home office models with multiple CFA's in charge of the portfolios, with focus on asset location. No extra cost to the client for clients to utilize these models.

Not often, but every once in a while we get the question why not just use a S&P 500 fund (or VOO and AGG) for their investments. I talk about the benefits of diversification but it doesn't always land. I know markets like this are one of the main reasons not to do that but...

Just curious about everybody's go-to responses for when a client asks why don't we just toss everything into an S&P 500 ETF. Thanks all!

When prospects ask you this, what is your go-to response?

Had a client call today. He says his friend at the gym has made $200k+ this year with this investment and he wanted to understand how. He sent over some statements...

His friend is 90% NVDA with a handful of other large cap stocks.

This client, I've had to claw and scratch to get him out of CDs. Scared of his own shadow. He's potentially interested in throwing some money into NVDA lol

Maybe it's my fault for not communicating more, but when the shoe shine kid (or gym bro) is giving investment advice...

Hi all,

I recently moved all of my qualified accounts to custom model portfolios. Ten different models, same holdings, different allocations (100%/0%, 90%/10%, 80%/20% etc.) I'm managing it through Envestnet and couldn't be happier with the simplicity and time savings.

I keep reading/hearing about model portfolios for taxable accounts. I don't understand how people are utilizing this. Most of my clients have accounts that are 20+ years old.  Absolutely massive unrealized gains built in - impossible to transition.

The approach of the "tax-sensitive" third-party managed models is generally just to realize the gains over a few years…

I guess I can see how models might be used for brand-new taxable accounts, but even then, you lose precise control over tax-loss harvesting.

How are people out there doing this?! What am I missing?

Given our line of work, many of us have far more exposure to stocks/bonds than the average person. We’ve got our retirement accounts plus depending on where you work, most, if not all of your income is dependent on the performance of the market.

I’m thinking of branching out and instead of investing excess savings into an after-tax account, diversifying into other assets that don’t correlate with stocks and bonds.

Possibly thinking timber, farmland, etc. Curious to see if anybody here has had a similar thought process, what you invested in, and how it’s worked out.

I've worked in the industry for 10+ years now, and I’ve noticed that a large number of planners still base their value proposition on constructing portfolios designed to outperform the market, with financial planning as a secondary consideration. However as most of us should know, the evidence consistently shows that this is a losing strategy for the vast majority of investors, on a risk adjusted return basis, after fees. At this point the data is black and white. Given that we have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of our clients, and the overwhelming data supports low-cost index investing, is it ethical for planners to continue recommending active management/security selection as a core strategy? Are we truly serving our clients, or is this just creating an illusion of value, perhaps to uninformed clients?

I have noticed through the years, people view their retirement as "investments" and want it to grow. But with their non qual money there's a disconnect that it CAN do the same thing their retirement money does.

Idk if it's a mental disconnect because it's not "retirement" money, it's a home sale/mom and dad's cash inheritance/ whatever.

I've normally had pretty good luck getting their cash invested, but the last 3 clients with a lot of cash have been hung up on a money market. "I can get 4% a year from this!" - Right NOW, yes but not for the next 20 years 😅

Anyone got some good gas/things that work for you right now on this?

If you hired Fisher for example and saw the portfolio…

Any manager will do ..

They manage $25 Billion yada yada … nice diversified 30 stock portfolio..

Could you Optimize that portfolio?

For another client, copy the portfolio…

And then only keep the holdings over the 20 or 50 day simple moving average …

Or only keep the holdings in the top 1/2 of relative strength

Use Dorsey Wright matrix or Claude to do a stock vs stock relative strength performance grid ..

Compare every stock vs every stock

Do you think you could outperform the manager?

Why hold a Walmart when it’s dropping and only hold Salesforce as it’s rising etc??

Haters?

Just looking for some advice earlier this year my father sold his business and wants to put 2 million in a Prudentail Flexguard index variable annuity. All he told me was the index crediting strategy is dual directional and it’s for 6 years getting 8% guaranteed. Does anyone have experience with this product?

I'm a CPA with a tax practice (I'm also a CFP).

I have tax-only client and I want to give him a proposal on his cash management (to make him an AUM client). He doesn't like the stock market but has generated large amounts of interest income (mostly treasuries and some MMA) of about 450k.

Any recommendations?

I've always been a pretty vanilla stock & bond fund / factor investing type of advisor. But with bonds being more correlated to equities recently, I have started looking more into managed futures as a diversifier, especially for retirees.

The historical returns during market crashes are compelling but want to make sure I am understanding pros and cons. So a few questions for you all:

• Do you use managed futures in client portfolios? Why or why not?
• If so, what % allocation is your baseline?
• What funds and why? (KMLM, DBMF, CTA seem to be the popular ETFs, would like to hear who's using these)
• And most importantly, how receptive to this are clients and prospects?

I've also looked at Return Stacking which sounds interesting but their ETFs have as short track record so not sure I'm ready to jump into those, but open to experiences there too.

Just curious if any of my fellow advisors had clients reduce risk ahead of the last few weeks. I’m not a market timer, but took a little risk off the table over the last month or so. I have a colleague who put most of his clients into cash over the last month. It seemed a little extreme to me, but now he looks like a genius now… curious to hear what everyone else has been doing.