You’d be worried if someone else’s key fit the lock to your front door. Wealth management is pretty similar. Personalization matters. Clients want to understand: Why do I own these assets? How much capital gains am I realizing? Can I exclude stocks I don’t want? Your investment portfolio isn’t a universal lock. It should fit your key. Better informed means better prepared.

I kept adding more features to my product. More data. More analytics. More customization. I thought I was making the product better. But clients were intimidated by all that complexity. Instead of seeing benefits, they saw more complexity in their workflow. So I changed my approach. Now my product solves one specific problem: No more manually transferring data into Excel. No more wasting hours processing statements. Prospective client statements are automatically structured. Remove the unnecessary steps. And a workflow that used to take 30 minutes can now take 2.

Rows in Excel can cost you a client. Your new client has a $3M account. How many hours will you spend manually transferring their statement? How many more analyzing it? Don’t waste your most valuable hours on manual work. Use a reliable tool to handle the transfer.

You're a financial advisor at a top investment firm. You used to spend 30 minutes manually transferring data. Now it takes 2 minutes. That's 196 minutes saved per week. 840 minutes per month. 10,220 minutes per year. Congrats, you just saved 170 hours of extra work.

Last shareholder letter from the 🐐

Top 1 life hack for making your investment business more complicated: Just use complex software with a ton of features. You’ll be surprised how much work time you’ll start wasting. To avoid that: Use software that actually reduces the time it takes to get work done.

The biggest expense most clients face isn’t an advisory fee. It’s Uncle Sam. Asset location, tax planning, and tax-efficient portfolio transitions are becoming major factors in how clients choose advisory teams. The most successful firms I’ve seen are the ones that bring financial planning, tax strategy, and investment management together under one roof.

Investment proposals shouldn’t require a finance degree to understand. Advisors need a tool that is simple to use AND simple to show clients. The advisor should be able to build a personalized proposal in minutes. The client should be able to look at it and quickly understand: What do I own today? What are you recommending? What are we changing? What are the tax implications? What does my portfolio look like after? The best investment proposal isn’t the one with the most charts and analytics. It’s the one that makes a complex investment decision feel simple.

S&P 500 P/E ratio: 19.1x Below both the 5yr and 10yr averages... near the March low. Only 1 figure above the Liberation Day low @dualityresearch

Honest question for financial advisors: Do you ever intentionally avoid showing prospects a detailed investment proposal because you don’t want to get too far into the weeds or open the door to overly detailed questions? Or do you think showing the details actually helps win the client?

Why is it so difficult to create customized investment proposals for your clients? You should be able to show a client: “What would my portfolio look like if I only want to realize $30,000 in capital gains?” “What would my portfolio look like if I want to keep BAC because my father worked there?” “What would my portfolio look like if I want to hold 2% in a Bitcoin ETF?” Every client has different preferences, tax situations, and constraints. Their investment proposal should reflect that

It’s very simple: Buy assets or get left behind

Best use case for Pack Analytics: $3M taxable portfolio. $2M in unrealized gains. $100K capital gains budget. Client wants to reduce risk, see what stocks we’d keep vs. sell, and compare the current portfolio to the proposed one. One more request: keep a 1% position in a small-cap stock he loves. Build the transition + generate the full proposal in under 2 minutes.

Advisors personalize almost everything about their practice. Why not how they measure risk? With Pack Analytics, you define what drives your risk score: beta, drawdown, stock concentration, sector concentration, correlation, and more. Your philosophy. Your risk score

How often do advisors spread capital gains over multiple years instead of realizing everything in one calendar year? If you’re still building these multi-year transition plans in Excel, you’re missing out.

Portfolio managers and analysts supporting advisors at independent RIAs are extremely underserved from an investment technology perspective. I met with two firms this week, both around $3B in AUM. One is using FactSet and feels overwhelmed by the amount of information and complexity in the platform. The other is using Morningstar Advisor Workstation and feels limited by its capabilities. There’s a huge need for something in the middle: powerful enough for real portfolio analysis, but simple enough to actually use every day.

90% of investors prefer tailored investment proposals. Yet our industry still relies heavily on standardized models, standardized risk scores and standardized proposals.

Only 27 companies in the S&P 500 are "expensive" with a forward P/E above 40x. That's the same number as the 2022 bear market and 2020 COVID crash. Yet the index just closed 1.8% from its record high. Unreal chart from @mattcerminaro.