Frequently Asked Questions

Our fee structure is based on the assets that we manage for each customer, ranging from 1.6% to 2% per annum. All returns on the performance page are net of the highest possible fee, so depending on your fee, your net return may have been greater.

This will depend on your Strategy and the market environment. Periods of volatility may produce more trades as the systems attempt to get better clarity as to a potential change in an intermediate trend. Trades will be based on mathematics and the analysis of indicators, not any specific time frame. 

Generally, we trade Index-based ETFs. The ETFs are designed the replicate, before fund fees, the daily movements of common Equity and Bond based indices.

The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) is a nonprofit organization that protects stocks, bonds, and other securities in case a brokerage firm goes bankrupt, and assets are missing. The SIPC will cover up to $500,000 in securities, including a $250,000 limit for cash held in a brokerage account. All Fidelity brokerage accounts are covered by SIPC. This includes money market funds held in a brokerage account since they are considered securities. Learn more about SIPC coverage at http://www.sipc.org or call or call 202.371.8300.

In addition to SIPC protection, Fidelity provides its brokerage customers with additional "excess of SIPC" coverage. The excess coverage would only be used when SIPC coverage is exhausted. Like SIPC, excess protection does not cover investment losses in customer accounts due to market fluctuation. It also does not cover other claims for losses incurred while broker-dealers remain in business. For example, fraud claims would not be covered if the brokerage firm was still in operation. Total aggregate excess of SIPC coverage available through Fidelity's excess of SIPC policy is $1 billion. Within Fidelity's excess of SIPC coverage, there is no per customer dollar limit on coverage of securities, but there is a per customer limit of $1.9 million on coverage of cash awaiting investment. This is the maximum excess of SIPC protection currently available in the brokerage industry.

Both SIPC and excess of SIPC coverage is limited to securities held in brokerage positions, including mutual funds if held in your brokerage account and securities held in book entry form.

Certain assets are not eligible for SIPC protection. Among the assets typically not eligible for SIPC protection are commodity futures contracts, precious metals, as well as investment contracts (such as limited partnerships), and fixed annuity contracts that are not registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission under the Securities Act of 1933.

Fidelity Investments is a leading provider of investment management, retirement planning, portfolio guidance, brokerage, benefits outsourcing and other financial products and services to institutions, financial intermediaries, and individuals. For more information about Fidelity Investments, visit Fidelity.com.

All securities in your account will be widely traded and priced daily. Most strategies employ index-based funds that are designed to track the performance of the major market indices such as the S&P 500, the Nasdaq, and the Russell 2000. Accounts can be liquidated at any time.

Absolutely. An account will utilize only one Strategy.  Many clients start with one Strategy, and then add funds to a more aggressive or more conservative Strategy. This is a great way to create a portfolio that has maximum model diversity. 

We seek to participate in the upward trends of the stock and bond markets, while preserving or in the more aggressive strategies, build upon any gains when those inevitable and severe markets corrections occur. In seeking continual growth of your assets, we invest differently in up and down markets. 

A great interview (old but still relevant) explaining our approach can be viewed here.

There are many good investment approaches depending on your objectives. We believe if your objective is steady long-term growth, then anything you can do differently to either create more, or at least not lose significant money during major market corrections is better.  It may be true that an account using a "buy and hold" approach, if left alone, would probably work its way back up to its prior level.  But from purely a mathematical standpoint, wouldn't it be better if your account did not have to recover much of it's lost value first before it marched to new highs?

Our approach may have some degree of difficulty performing as well as it’s long-term average during periods when market prices change direction very frequently in a trendless, sideways market. This is less frequent, and these periods tend to mainly be short-lived.

There are two different meanings of the term “time the market”. One meaning may entail that someone tries to predict the frequent up and down “wiggles” in stock prices. This requires many trades, and we would agree with you, that cannot be done successfully. The other meaning may concentrate on reacting to the changes in the longer, more intermediate term trends of the markets. Those types of systems, that react to more meaningful changes in a significant trend, are successfully used today in thousands of applications. You already experience the benefit of these systems every time you fly in a plane or drive a car.

During periods of significant drops in prices, many Strategies use Inverse ETFs. Inverse ETFs are designed replicate, before internal fees, the opposite daily movements of a particular Index. They are generally held for short periods of time as the bulk of large moves down can be concentrated in a small number of trading days. 

The Strategies will not react to all minor price moves in the markets but are designed to react as quickly as appropriate to the meaningful changes in the market data. How a Strategy interprets the changes to the data, and accordingly how much the market moves in price leading up to a trade, is based primarily on the frequency of the selected models in that Strategy.  More importantly, a weekly move of even 4-5 percent has to be viewed within the context of the more intermediate trend.  The overriding goal is to avoid the severe, prolonged corrections that can cause major harm, while allowing for the normal "wiggles" in prices that occur during an extended rise. Each Strategy is designed to deliver a different return and drawdown profile. 

Some of our clients have a portion some of their investment money with another RIA firm. If you already have an existing relationship with another financial advisor that you are happy with, but you like our past results, you may consider using our firm for part of your portfolio. Diversification of money managers is a good strategy if both are performing well.

Many firms do a good job of providing a broad overall structure and plan for your financial portfolio. Investors look to us to complement their existing relationships by providing a defined specialty and focused approach, for part or all of their assets. Sometimes they desire more frequent account surveillance and a more direct, controllable relationship to the person “working the levers”.

As a fee-based Registered Investment Advisor, we have always served our clients as fiduciaries, which requires a higher legal standard of business conduct than what has historically been required of a commission-based stockbroker. We welcome the recent legislation requiring some commission-based advisors to now adhere to this higher standard, as we have always felt that this standard more closely aligns a clients’ interest with the investment firm. If you have a question about your advisors’ role, ask them to represent in writing to you whether he or she is acting as a “fiduciary”.

Our firm has Investment Representatives, a separate trading team, separate research personnel, as well as customer support personnel.

Our published minimum is $200,000; but we will consider investments as low as $50,000 under certain conditions. Our average initial client relationship is between $500,000 and $700,000.

It is important to distinguish between a full-scale financial plan and a retirement plan. We do not create extensive financial plans covering budgeting, insurance, and Estate planning.  We will provide a free retirement plan for you, that entails projections on the growth, withdrawal capability, and sustainability of your retirement assets, as well analyzing your outside sources of income such as social security. 

Many of our clients have worked with Certified Financial Planners (CFP) for specific non-investment related advice.  We would be please to direct you towards another financial professional to address a specific need.