Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Our clients are exclusively private families and individuals. While they come from a broad distribution of professional backgrounds, they tend to have a financial or technical education, an appreciation for planning, and high standards of client service. Most are currently in the accumulation or early retirement phase of their life cycle and looking for long term growth or conservative enhanced income investment strategies. ‘Executive of a venture backed start-up’ is the most common single occupation. Our clients will generally have an aggregate portfolio in excess of $1 million.

Our firm was founded as a response to an unmet demand. Our individual clients wanted a truly independent financial advisory team to help them invest, make important financial decisions, select financial products across all their accounts and access specialists from various firms. They wanted access to whatever firms offered the best alternatives – not just what a given firm had to offer – and give them technology that allowed clients to monitor all of their assets everywhere. Our approach is to deliver best practices in every area and to provide comprehensive, flexible client service.

We believe that investment returns are the single most important aspect of a client’s financial management. We seek to outperform through long term discipline and a commitment to established principles. We see ourselves as personal CFOs; providing our clients with guidance, support and service to manage their financial affairs, while they concentrate on strategy and enjoy the fruits of their hard work.

We take a team-based approach at Bradley & Company, so every member of the team will be involved in your account. Your primary point of contact will be your Partner (Mike Bradley or Todd Hurlbut), while your day-to-day account administration questions will be handled by associate, Melissa Kirby.

By focusing on what we can control and minimizing unnecessary risks, we believe a client obtains the best chances of a high rate of return over the long term. Accordingly, we manage discretionary investment portfolios in a broadly diversified way and, rather than trying to “beat the market”, we seek to outperform our peers by controlling costs, minimizing taxes and concentrating on a few basic fundamental and technical factors.

We’ve found that most mutual funds, separate accounts and alternative investments are not worth the management fees and risk of under-performance. While there are certainly some investment strategies that have outperformed others over time, these are long term in nature and can be implemented in ways that don’t require the expenses associated with most “active management vehicles”.

We believe that different styles work at different periods in the market cycle. It’s unwise to commit to only one investment strategy and we don’t want our clients to rely on a high rate of return to meet their needs.

To meet our clients’ goals, we draw upon the asset allocation models of several leading independent research firms to determine the balance between eleven different asset classes. Based on client interviews and a standard questionnaire, we’ll then recommend a risk profile and custom asset allocation model (based on our firm models) to a client in an Investment Policy Statement (IPS).

After we’ve agreed on the asset allocation strategy, we then evaluate your current holdings for retention and construct a portfolio from a combination of exchange traded funds, mutual funds, individual stocks, bonds, and commodities. We’ll make all efforts to retain as much of your previous portfolio as possible to minimize transactions and tax costs.

After the initial execution of a portfolio, on an ongoing basis, we’ll monitor your asset allocation and rebalance, exercising discretion on the timing of trades.

Alternative Investment Strategies can help to reduce a client’s overall portfolio risk and enhance returns. We offer a handful of alternative strategies including a technical trading program through the Everett Capital Portfolio.  This portfolio utilizes relative strength and momentum to capture price trends in the strongest market sectors with little correlation to the broader market.

Generally, no. Depending upon tax, lending or professional considerations, it may be advisable to retain certain assets. We may plan to transition out of them over time or “work around” them. If you establish that there are certain positions you want held, we will maintain and report on them in your portfolio.

For clients that wish to have specific holdings or engage in speculation, we’ll establish a separate “Special Trading Account” and assist them in executing established techniques or conduct research to help them develop their own custom investment strategies.

You may also indicate that certain stocks or bonds be included (or excluded) from your portfolio.

In all cases, you will receive notification by mail within 3-5 business days of each investment change, and you are always welcome to call and discuss the changes.

In addition to online access and regular statements that you’ll receive from Schwab Institutional, reports on your performance and holdings are provided by independent third-party Morningstar Associates.

Ongoing, regular client reviews are the core part of our portfolio management process and we seek to play a role in every aspect of a client’s financial picture. We’ll discuss your current holdings, account performance, tax situation and other sources of income to maintain your risk profile and manage trading activities. Outside of regularly scheduled conferences, clients can expect a return call within 24 hours and usually the same day.

In between client reviews, we have detailed information on a client’s asset allocation, and any financial plans and any important documents uploaded to our online Wealth Management System. We have also engaged Morningstar(r) Advisor Services to provide managed account performance and analytics online, 24 hours a day.

Clients can directly access and trade their accounts online at Schwab Institutional (or preferred custodian) and receive comprehensive statements and tax documents from Schwab directly.

In general, the frequency of communication will vary through various phases during a client’s relationship. During the earliest phases of a client relationship or periods of transition (e.g. employment negotiations, retirement, sale of company), communication can be several times a day. At other times, communication can become less frequent. At a minimum, we want to meet with a client annually to review their accounts and whether the risk of their portfolio is still appropriate.

We understand how unexpected a need for critical advice information can be, so we maintain a 24/7 approach to client service and reporting. For simple questions about your account – most analytical reports can be ordered and delivered within a few hours and clients should expect immediate access to Michael Bradley or Todd Hurlbut at critical and unexpected times and to normally be able to speak to either Partner on short notice during business hours.

We’ll help you review your company stock plan and design an optimal exercise and sales strategy. For company stock, we’ll generally establish separate segregated accounts or continue to hold the shares at their employer’s captive broker. For hedging risk or income generation, we’ll execute options strategies for clients through their preferred platform and coordinate regulatory filings with captive brokers. We are experienced with Rule 10b5-1 trading plans and Rule 144. We are familiar with all of the major monetization tools available to company executives.

We will help you locate appropriate financial institutions for your corporate cash, coordinate with your tax advisors and will recommend retirement plans for your you and your employees.

Yes. Firstly, your goals, experience, tolerance for risk, and your preferences will be the determinants of the investment strategy we recommend. As we select specific investments, we will explain to you the purpose of each one, and you will have the opportunity to modify any strategy we plan to employ.

You may engage us on either a “non-discretionary” or “discretionary” basis. Non-discretionary means that we must receive your approval on each and every investment change or trade before we make it. Discretionary means we can and may take an investment action on your behalf without getting explicit approval in advance, provided the action is consistent with the overall investment goals we’ve outlined.

We don’t separate the investment management and financial planning processes. Included in our portfolio management and client service approach is comprehensive financial planning and analysis, which includes any retirement, education or stock option planning for our clients. We use state-of-the-art financial planning software that allows us to collaborate with our clients online and use account aggregation technology to continually update your accounts, regardless of where they are held. We will coordinate with outside insurance, accounting or brokerage professionals to purchase financial products and report tax information. In some cases, additional charges may apply for certain specialized services.

We will help you select a lender or broker to secure any loans and coordinate the application process, handling any administrative details. We may charge a small fee associated with this activity.

We have three sources of revenue:

1. We charge an investment management fee based on a percentage of the value of the assets we manage for clients. We accept no commissions or other forms of compensation from investment product providers or financial institutions. The fee is quoted as an annual percentage fee, and is billed quarterly in arrears by taking the value of managed assets at the end of each calendar quarter and applying one-fourth of that annual percentage fee. For example, if the annual fee is 1%, then 1/4 of 1% is applied to each ending quarter account balance. The fee is deducted directly from the client account or accounts. This includes all planning, execution, analysis, performance reporting and coordination with tax advisors.
2. We charge project-based (as opposed to hourly) financial consulting fees to individual clients for activities unrelated to managed accounts. We will quote a service charge for estate planning, mortgage or other activities unrelated to investment management. For example, we charge generally charge $2000 to coordinate an estate plan and $1500 to coordinate a mortgage application.
3. Corporate clients can pay us for educational or financial consulting services on an hourly basis.

Yes.

No.

Yes, we can handle scheduled or unscheduled distributions and provide expense management services on an ongoing basis. This is generally included as part of our management fees, but may charge a nominal financial consulting fee, depending upon the expense and complexity of the transaction. Family office services are also available for an additional fee arrangement.

We’ll start with a prospective client by conducting a 15-20 minute phone call to answer any questions they have about our team and to get a basic overview of their situation. Before that call, we’ll generally send clients a basic “deck” – an overview of our firm’s capabilities as well as information about our model portfolios.  If we mutually decide that it makes sense, we’ll generally have an in-person meeting at our offices to discuss their current portfolio holdings and what their needs are from a planning and service perspective.

This will then be followed up with a no-obligation, analysis of your portfolio and a proposal of what actions we recommend going forward from a planning, account consolidation and investment perspective. At this point, a prospective client will decide whether they wish to proceed and we will sign an investment management agreement and draft an investment policy statement.