Back to Top

This is How We Fly

 

Simple
Complexity has always been a tool for the financial services industry to obscure its high fees. But we are not like them. We are determined to simplify, increase transparency, and offer the lowest fees, wherever and whenever possible.

Aligned
We think about the risk and reward of your investments as if they were our own, which is easy for us. Our savings are invested in the same AlphaGlider strategies in which your savings are invested.

 

Transparent
Our only source of revenue is our advisory fee. We don't receive revenue under the table from the funds and brokerage houses we use, nor do we pay or receive referral fees. We value transparency in everything we do.

 

Meet your custodian.

 
We work with an independent custodian that shares our passion for service, security, and value for money — Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (“Schwab”).1
 

Account Types
We will help you set up your investment accounts and to transfer your funds into them. AlphaGlider supports taxable, traditional IRA, Roth IRA, SEP-IRA, SIMPLE IRA, Individual 401(k), health savings account (HSA), trust, guardian, and limited partnership accounts at Schwab. If you maintain at least one of the aforementioned accounts, we can also manage 529 education savings plans that are custodied at the highly rated my529. We have a $150,000 household minimum.

 

Independent Communication
Schwab provides you with monthly statements, tax forms, and online access to your accounts.

Safety
It's your account at Schwab, held in your name, but we have the ability to trade this account, and to deduct our investment advisory fee from it.

Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). Securities in your account are protected up to $500,000. For details, please see www.sipc.org.

We choose our investments carefully, with our clients' best interests in mind.

 

AlphaGlider predominately uses exchange-traded funds (ETFs)2 to provide exposure to our desired mix of investments, due to their general advantage in costs, tax efficiency, and ease of trading. However, there are certain circumstances where we use low cost, no load mutual funds, such as when a particular fund is only available in mutual fund form, or in 529 Education Savings Plan accounts where we have access to extremely low cost institutional class mutual funds. Below are some of the criteria that we use in our fund selection process:

  • fund management fee (i.e. expense ratio)

  • trading commissions

  • index/underlying holdings

  • tracking error to index

  • liquidity

  • bid-ask spread

  • premium/discount to NAV

  • tax efficiency/portfolio turnover

 

Sit back while we do the heavy lifting.

When your funds arrive, we put them to work in your chosen strategy. If you have both taxable and tax-advantaged (e.g. IRA) accounts with us, we are careful to place securities with higher expected dividends and capital gains in your tax-advantaged accounts first — a process we call tax sensitive asset location.

Actively Managed
The market is dynamic, and so are our strategies. We continuously monitor changes in asset class fundamentals and valuations, and adjust our investment strategies accordingly in an attempt to deliver you strong risk-adjusted returns. Since we have discretion to trade our account, we immediately adjust the positions in your portfolio when we change the composition of our strategies.

 

Regularly Rebalanced
We continuously monitor your portfolio and rebalance3 it whenever its mix of assets strays too far from its target. Vanguard research (pg. 13) has shown that annual rebalancing can add up to 35bps (0.35%) of additional return each year to a 60% equity/40% bond portfolio versus the same portfolio that is allowed to drift (i.e. not rebalanced).

Always know what your investments are doing.

 

Our Thinking
We keep you continuously apprised of our investment thinking and changes to your portfolio with our writings and social media posts.

Follow us:

 

Your Data
Find detailed and timely analytics and performance data for your portfolio on AlphaGlider Planning (mobile apps available in footer). You can also follow your portfolio on Schwab's client portal and mobile apps.

We send you a detailed and personalized investment statement every quarter.

 
 
"That's been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains."


— Steve Jobs
 
 

 

Notes & Disclosures

1This website has been independently produced by AlphaGlider. AlphaGlider is independent of, and has no affiliation with, Schwab or any of its affiliates. Schwab is a registered broker-dealer and member SIPC. Schwab has not created, supplied, licensed, endorsed, or otherwise sanctioned these materials nor has Schwab independently verified any of the information in them. AlphaGlider provides you with investment advice, while Schwab maintains custody of your assets in a brokerage account and will effect transactions for your account on our instruction.

2Mutual funds and exchange-traded funds are sold by prospectus. Please consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses carefully before investing. The prospectus, which contains this and other information about the investment company, can be obtained directly from the Fund Company or your financial professional. Be sure to read the prospectus carefully before deciding whether to invest.

3Rebalancing can entail transaction costs and tax consequences that should be considered when determining a rebalancing strategy.