Investment Management

At Black Swan Financial, we are fee-only financial advisors. What that means is that rather than charge commissions for selling you insurance or investment products, we take a set percentage of the assets we have under management from you. This type of fee arrangement allows our goals and objectives to be aligned with yours. If your account balance goes down in a given quarter then we get paid less. It's that simple.

We chose the "assets under management" fee structure because we feel that investment management is truly one of the strengths of our company. Our investment philosophy is a bit different than many of the financial advisors you will talk to.

One of our core beliefs is that excess fees create an unnecessary burden in many accounts. We strongly believe that proper diversification and asset allocation strategies can be created without using mutual funds that cost you 1 to 1.5% (in addition to the advisor's fee). Our strategies depend primarily on the use of low cost exchange traded funds (ETFs) and a diversified holding of individual stocks. The degree to which individual stocks can be utilized is dependent upon the size of the account and the impact which transaction fees may have. Owning individual stocks may not be right for every account size.

Our central focus is always on long term asset growth but we do not believe in strictly buy-and-hold investing. We believe that there are times when the preservation of your capital should be priority number one. With that in mind, our strategy involves monitoring certain market fundamentals and taking certain "defensive" positions within our accounts as risk/reward scenarios worsen. We use several different strategies for this and would be happy to discuss them with you further if you like.

In short, we believe that you pay US to be the portfolio/investment manager for your account. You should not have to pay us AND the mutual fund managers as well. We can create a sound, diversified asset portfolio for you that is built with your future goals in mind. If market fundamentals dictate otherwise, we will take defensive measures to protect your capital. Long term asset growth is always predicated on sound strategies and emotionless investing. Let us help you take the market emotion out of the equation.

There are as many different investment styles and philosophies as there are investment managers. If you have any questions about how our style or beliefs contradict or agree with something you have heard or read, feel free to ask us to elaborate our reasoning. Our philosophy was developed from financial research from varying sources and we'd be happy to discuss it with you further.