Separately Managed Accounts

Why It Works

 

Our investment advisory solution complements and reinforces the entire portfolio through our differentiated investment philosophy and process.

Why use separately managed accounts? We think there are the following benefits.

  • The clients have 24/7 access to the portfolio in real time, and daily transactions are notified. The number of securities held, market price, and total market value of securities are reported. In addition, security transactions are reported when they occur.
  • The clients own accounts at interactive brokers, who act as custodians and brokers. As a discretionary investment advisory, we provide advisory services exclusively, including managing portfolios and executing trades. The structure does not allow us to control the fund transfer from/to the account.
  • It is straightforward and transparent. Technically, there are no hidden fees, commissions, or charges under this structure. We use interactive brokers as
    • a) it has the best ease of control when managing the core model-based multiple accounts
    • b) it has a very low transaction cost in terms of trading commissions
    • c) it has one of the best global market access with competitive and little trading commissions
    • d) it has a global multi-country presence, reducing the cost of managing accounts of clients with international activity and the complexity for the professionals who work internationally as expatriates.
  • We are an independent investment advisor with no affiliated brokers or financial service groups. We also act as fund distributors and receive sales commissions from the fund. This creates complicated and mixed interests for the advisor, resulting in non-transparent commissions and complicated fees. The use of SMA and our policy not to use ETFs or externally managed funds guarantee it never happens.
  • The client has full control over the account except for investment judgment and trades, and fund transfers are at the client’s discretion. Because we only invest in public equity across market capitalizations, liquidity availability is very high for clients. However, we give our best judgment on the timing of liquidation because the extreme market condition often leads to losing a sense of composure and untimely liquidation, which ironically explains why we see extreme market price behavior. Additionally, interactive brokers offer a frictionless borrowing option at a very low interest rate, which enables the clients to obtain emergency cash needs without selling securities and considering tax impact (in case the account is taxable account)

 

Our Perspective

We have extensive experience managing SMAs under guidelines for institutional clients in the US, Europe, and the Asia Pacific. The structure we offer will be able to provide high enough quality, which we have confirmed from our years of experience with interactive brokers as our platform of choice.