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Method, in five stages.

Nothing here is proprietary and none of it is secret. A process you can read in advance is the point: you should know what the next few weeks look like before you agree to any of them.

The sequence

  1. 01

    First call

    Thirty minutes, no charge, nothing to prepare. You describe the situation; we tell you honestly whether this is work we should be doing for you, including when the answer is no and including whether we can act for someone resident where you live.

    30 min
  2. 02

    Position

    We look at what you already hold, what it costs and what it is exposed to, then agree in writing what this money is for and how far it could fall before you would sell.

    1–2 weeks
  3. 03

    Recommendation

    Named instruments, sizes and the reasoning behind each, with an entry schedule and the rule for what happens in a falling market. You react to a draft before anything is final.

    2–3 weeks
  4. 04

    You execute

    You place the trades from your own account. We are on the phone while you do it if that helps, but the orders are yours and so is the account.

    Your pace
  5. 05

    Review

    Scheduled reviews against the objective, with drift thresholds agreed in advance. Our share is calculated on the gain above the highest figure the portfolio has previously reached, so a recovery costs you nothing.

    Ongoing

How a recommendation gets made

Principles
  1. 01

    The objective decides, not the market

    Every recommendation traces back to something the written objective says. Where it cannot, it does not get made, which rules out most of what makes investing stressful.

  2. 02

    Cost is a design constraint

    Every basis point of cost is certain; every basis point of return is not. Costs are therefore designed for at the start rather than apologised for at review.

  3. 03

    Diversification before conviction

    We hold views. We do not let a view become a concentration, because the cost of being wrong about a concentrated position is not symmetrical with the benefit of being right.

  4. 04

    Act on thresholds, not on calendars

    We suggest rebalancing when an allocation drifts past a band agreed in advance. Not because a quarter ended, and not because something happened in the news.

  5. 05

    Say what we do not know

    Assumptions are written down so you can argue with them. A projection presented without its assumptions is a decoration, and nobody can tell you where markets go next.

The two pages that matter most

  • Where your money sits

    Your account, your broker, your name. What we do, and the long list of things we structurally cannot.

  • Fees

    The share, every term including the one that runs against you, what we charge when it goes the other way, and every cost that is not ours.