We never touch your money.
Not as a promise, and not as a policy we could quietly change. There is simply no arrangement between us that would let it happen. Your account is yours, the login is yours, and every order that is ever placed in it is placed by you.
Your account
Opened by you, at the broker or platform you choose, in your name. You hold the login. You place every order. You can close it this afternoon without telling us.
Your money sits here, and only hereUs
We research, we recommend, and we tell you exactly what we would do and why. Then you decide. That is the entire extent of what this firm does.
No line runs the other way. We hold no mandate, no trading authority and no power of attorney over your account. We cannot buy, sell, withdraw or transfer anything. If this firm disappeared overnight, your account would not notice.
What we do, and what we structurally cannot
What we do
- Research instruments and recommend specific ones, in writing
- Tell you the size, the order type and the timing we would use
- Review the portfolio against the objective on an agreed schedule
- Tell you when we think you should do nothing, which is often
What we cannot do
- Buy or sell anything in your account
- Withdraw or transfer money, to us or to anyone else
- Log in to your account, or hold your credentials
- Open or close the account — only you can do either
- Stop you ignoring every word we say
The last one is not a joke. Advice you disagree with should be argued about, not followed out of politeness, and a recommendation you cannot defend yourself is one you will abandon in the first bad month.
Which broker or platform
You choose it and you own the relationship. We have opinions about cost, and no financial interest in which one you pick.
Where you already have an account we can work with, there is usually no reason to move anything. Where a move would save you real money we say so, show the arithmetic, and leave the decision with you. We receive nothing from any platform for sending you to it, and our written policy on third-party payments covers this.
If you would rather we never saw your holdings at all, read-only access is optional too. Some clients simply send us a positions list. The advice is the same.
Asked next, every time
- So I have to place all the trades myself?
- Yes, and it is a feature rather than an inconvenience. It is the reason nothing can happen to your portfolio that you did not personally decide to do. We are usually on the phone the first time.
- What if this firm stops operating?
- Nothing happens to your money. It was never with us. You would stop receiving advice, which is the only thing you were receiving in the first place.
- What if I want to stop?
- You stop. There is no lock-up, no exit penalty and no notice period on the account, because we have no hold over it. Any notice period for the advice itself is in the agreement you sign, in plain terms, before you sign it.
- Can you at least see my account?
- Only if you give us read-only access, and only because it makes the advice better. It is optional, it is revocable by you at any moment, and read-only means exactly that.
The other half of the argument is the money.
How we are paid, what we take when a period goes badly, and every term of the fee including the one that runs in our favour. All published.