The Future of Wealth Management

By Portfolio Management Team | Nov 10, 2020 | Weekly Market Commentary

Monument Wealth Management is a special place. Monuments are profound places of reflection, celebration, erudition, and ultimately symbolize something significant and purposeful. Monuments connect the past to the future—and I joined Monument because the future of wealth management lies in independent, advice (not product) driven relationships led by fiduciaries.

For the past few years, I served as Chief Investment Officer of United Bank and worked at Wilmington Trust as a portfolio manager.  In the summer of 2019, I took a leap to start my own company, Tides Edge Capital Partners – a hedge fund trading a niche strategy focused on harnessing the power of long-term momentum in the markets. However, Mr. Market and COVID had other plans for my career.

After thoughtful and extensive diligence, I decided to join Monument Wealth Management. Here’s why…

 

Private, Independent Structure – A Constituency of One: The Client

At Monument, we are fiduciaries, meaning our clients always come first as opposed to the myriad of outside influences and distractions that I have seen throughout my career at large Wall Street firms, that slowly nudge advisors away from the things that really matter: client relationships, planning, and investments that are connected to your plan’s success.

Larger, public advisory practices often turn to product manufacturing or acquisitions to grow, pulling time away from the client. For example, if an investment strategy has a particularly strong track record, management often looks to distribute it further and mimic an index versus keeping resources in research and portfolio management.

But Monument will only succeed if our clients succeed. Our success here is not based on our ability to manufacture a product or run our business to earnings guidance like the larger, publicly traded Wall Street firms. Our company is conflict-free, not only from an advice standpoint but also from a strategy and relationship perspective.

 

Effective, High-Probability Investment Strategies — We are Investors

When I was at larger firms, despite their deeper pockets, investments were often subcontracted to outside money managers, leaving advisors to serve solely as allocators and distributors. I saw this as a major issue because, aside from the extra fees, a large part of wealth management is the ability to tailor and design bespoke portfolios to each client’s unique goals.

At Monument, we have skin in the game. Our in-house asset management team examines and selects individual securities via a straightforward, rules-based, single stock methodology. This individual stock selection is so important because it allows us to target outcomes that help you achieve your goals and respond to any changes or opportunities we see to improve performance. Personally, I love dividend stocks and look forward to sharing our research in that area in future posts.

 

Employee Owned

I have come to learn that only at an independent, employee-owned firm can both relationships and investments have the time and space to flourish. At public companies there exists a pervasive short-termism that often leads to turnover and time spent away from clients. Simply put, owner-operators serve clients, invest capital, and build a business differently than traditional employees. And it’s important to me and should be important to our clients to know that our Team is dedicated to the work we do here for our clients and the business we’re building.

 

Pulling it All Together

During my first couple weeks here at Monument, I can already see that our Team thrives off crafting solutions that are intelligent, thoughtful, and creatively conceived. I joined a firm that is built on integrity and trust, because doing what is right for clients is what will benefit our business in the long run. And when most financial advisors are too buttoned up to give it to you straight, our Team is a collective mastermind, sharing our unique, straightforward, unfiltered advice and opinion to help you achieve your goals.

So, when asking myself, “If I could build my own wealth management firm, what would it look like?” I’d point to Monument—because these critical pillars of Monument represent the future of wealth management.

As our name implies, Monument is a place for both clients and employees to celebrate building the life and business we envision for ourselves.

 

 

IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE INFORMATION

Please remember that past performance may not be indicative of future results.  Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and there can be no assurance that the future performance of any specific investment, investment strategy, or product (including the investments and/or investment strategies recommended or undertaken by Monument Capital Management, LLC [“Monument”]), or any non-investment related content, made reference to directly or indirectly in this blog will be profitable, equal any corresponding indicated historical performance level(s), be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful.  Due to various factors, including changing market conditions and/or applicable laws, the content may no longer be reflective of current opinions or positions.  Moreover, you should not assume that any discussion or information contained in this blog serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from Monument.

Please remember that if you are a Monument client, it remains your responsibility to advise Monument, in writing, if there are any changes in your personal/financial situation or investment objectives for the purpose of reviewing/evaluating/revising our previous recommendations and/or services, or if you would like to impose, add, or to modify any reasonable restrictions to our investment advisory services. To the extent that a reader has any questions regarding the applicability of any specific issue discussed above to his/her individual situation, he/she is encouraged to consult with the professional advisor of his/her choosing. Monument is neither a law firm nor a certified public accounting firm and no portion of the blog content should be construed as legal or accounting advice. A copy of Monument’s current written disclosure Brochure discussing our advisory services and fees is available for review upon request.

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