client behavior

Our Exorbitant Privilege

© Can Stock Photo / yanc

Financial firm founder Barry Ritholz says that the vast majority of people in the investment business spend most of their time chasing new business. Finding clients or trades consumes most days and a lot of nights—it is their main job.

Dialing the phone, putting on seminars, networking, joining boards, sending spam email…there are a lot of ways to meet people.

That Ritholz Wealth Management needs to do none of these things is what he calls “our exorbitant privilege.” We feel the same way.

My vision when I was forty was to find and retain a circle of clients who, if I took care of them, would take care of me. I did NOT want to wake up at sixty, needing to run up and down the highways to find a deal to pay my bills. The vision became reality.

You know our business objective is to strive to grow your buckets, and have them serve you as you need. The interesting paradox is that we have grown since we stopped looking for new business.

We frequently mention how important you are to the process. You saved the money to begin with, you share our philosophy of investing, you do the right thing even when it is difficult to do so. Clients may not be retaining nearly as much money if they routinely sold out in panic or insisted on buying into fads.

Now we have a better way to express our appreciation for you. It is our exorbitant privilege to serve you as we do.

Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.

Straightforward Pricing

© Can Stock Photo / PixelsAway

We believe the investment results we manage are due in part to your sensible, effective investment behavior. You know we think you, our clients, are the best in the world.

Even though some people panic and sell out at low points, you realize this kind of behavior is optional. Many of you invest more when the market has declined. You and we share the belief that focus on the long term lets us seek to improve our long term results.

Effective the first of the year we revamped the pricing on the investment advisory accounts we manage for you in our capacity as investment advisory representatives of LPL Financial. Our object is to reward you for your role in our results.

So we put in a system of volume discounts based on account value, not original invested capital. And we instituted discounts for your persistency: costs decline after two years, and eight years, and sixteen years.

Here in the third month of the quarter, we are busy reviewing costs. Some of you will see fee reductions for the passage of time or an increase in the value of your household assets. Changes if any will take effect next quarter.

Year by year we strive to improve the quality of our research, the capacity of our trading desk, and the responsiveness of our service to you. These things are not free: our overhead tends to rise over time. But our business has grown and our productivity rises as we figure out better ways to do things.

Here is the schedule. After the eighth and sixteenth year, an additional discount of 0.05% will apply. Clients, if you have any questions about this or anything else, please email us or call.

pricing

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.

Have We Mentioned How Wonderful You Are?

© Can Stock Photo / mikdam

The foundational theory here at 228 Main is people can gain effective perspectives and productive attitudes about investing. It doesn’t matter if you were born that way or were capable of learning, you as a group are special. We believe your behavior is one of the keys to long term investment results.

Consequently, while some colleagues live with frustration as untrained customers fall prey to counterproductive behavior—selling out low, chasing performance, jumping on fads—you and we are appreciated for our mutual faith in each other. No wonder some advisors are looking for an exit strategy, and I’m planning to work to age 92!

You do the difficult things, like going against the crowd, listening to people at the salon or barbershop or café or water cooler, and yet still stay the course. A benefit of my long commute is time to think about the business. I spent a day recently pondering this: how might we make things better for you?

If we change our pricing philosophy to reflect total household assets under our management, including results through the years, we honor your role in creating those results. And if we price new clients a little higher for an initial period, we can offer small discounts for longevity to you longer-term clients. This would better reflect our values.

This presents two issues. One, we tinkered with the schedule over the years, and sometimes failed to update existing clients to the new schedule. Two, our general philosophy has been to use a volume discount based on net invested capital, excluding changes due to investment results. We need to figure out how to implement changes in a way that makes sense to you. We have no intention of chasing anyone down and asking them for more money. Our growth allows us to offer breaks where they have been earned (after all, it is ultimately you to whom we owe that growth!) without needing to claw back money from any clients.

Clients, you have heard us express admiration for the very special group to which you belong. We talk about the mutual benefits of our shared perspectives on investing. We have said in as many ways as we know how that your behavior is large factor in investment outcomes. The one thing we have not done is align the economics of our shop with those noble sentiments.

We are committed to doing so. We will be communicating the results of our work in the near future. If you have any questions about this or any other pertinent topic, email us or call.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results.

All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.