Investing with Shell Capital
We are a family business fully invested in families, starting with our own. We eat our own cooking. What we've learned over the decades is partly from advising others, but we've also learned from our own family and lifestyle. We enjoy working with like-minded people, so as Mike Shell says, "we're as retired as we'll ever be." That's the level of commitment you'll get from us. We are fully committed and believe we are very good at what we do, or at least we give it our all. We're also fiduciaries, legally required to act in your best interest at all times.
We invest with you, side by side.
We've been doing this a long time, so we know how important your most precious asset is. Our mission is to help simplify your financial life and make the onboarding process as efficient as possible. Through a personalized process, you'll have the attention and service you need to successfully achieve your goals. We'll guide you through any emotional barriers to help you make informed decisions and become a more effective decision-maker.
We want to make sure our asset management services align well with your unique needs and goals. Through our process, we will determine the next steps for you to accomplish your investment objectives.
What You Can Expect From Our Straightforward Process to Invest With Us
Whether you’ve learned about us through this website, social media, or by referral, we’re glad you’re here. The first step is to contact us by clicking on "Invest with Us", and sending us your message. From there, our first mission is to learn about you to determine if we would make a good fit for one another.
Either by phone, web meeting, or email, we'll take some time to get to know you and your financial situation to gain a better understanding of what you’re interested in. From your current resources to your future goals, we will address a variety of topics to determine if we would make a good fit for one another. Most of the time, we do this over a series of emails, but we are flexible if you prefer a phone call or Zoom meeting.
Our focus is on asking questions to discover who you are and your goals. We discuss your investment objectives and expectations of risk and reward to see if they match our Asymmetry® | Managed Portfolios.
We'll review the types of accounts you currently have and how they are titled. Most of the time, new clients send us a copy of their investment portfolio statements. Based on this discovery, we get a clear vision of how the relationship will work moving forward.
While we are reviewing your financial statements for your investment accounts, we will provide you with our regulatory documents and new account agreements.
We send you electronically documents that disclose all the details, including our investment management fee, our independent custodian (Goldman Sachs) new account forms, etc.
1. ASYMMETRY® Managed Portfolios SEC Form ADV is a regulatory disclosure about our investment strategies, management fees, and risks.
2. Confidential Client Questionnaire: This is our formal document of your investment objectives for risk and return and is used to determine how your funds are invested. You can also disclose any sectors, stocks, or funds you wish to exclude from your portfolio and your preferred tax management program for realized gains and losses.
3. Privacy Policy: Simply put, we call this "private wealth management" for a reason; we do not share client information with anyone except as required by regulators and, of course, our independent custodian, Goldman Sachs.
4. An Investment Management Agreement with Shell Capital Management, which outlines how you give the firm authorization to make trade decisions in your account titled in your own name at Goldman Sachs Custody Solutions. To invest with us, you must sign and return this agreement.
5. Goldman Sachs Custody Solutions Account Opening: Goldman Sachs has been our preferred independent custodian and broker for executing trades for more than a decade. Through Shell Capital, we open an account titled in your name that you control at Goldman Sachs, independent of Shell Capital. We are not otherwise affiliated with Goldman Sachs, so we are independent of each other aside from our contractual agreement for custody and brokerage execution. No member of Shell Capital is a representative of Goldman Sachs or licensed as a broker, as we are a fiduciary fee-only (no commissions) registered investment advisor.
For you, Goldman Sachs provides safekeeping of your investment portfolio, monthly statements of account, online account access to transparently see all the details, tax records, and the best execution of our trades. No member of Shell Capital ever has custody of or access to client funds. We are only given authorization to open your account and place trades for the investment portfolio we manage for you.
Goldman Sachs also calculates our investment management fee, and their fees are taken from our single management "wrap" fee.
For us, Goldman Sachs provides a sophisticated and efficient portfolio management system and portfolio accounting, including fee accounting. We have used the portfolio management system combined with our own systems for over a decade to make efficient portfolio trading decisions at the portfolio level. i.e., the portfolio manager enters trades to buy and sell at the managed portfolio, and every client account assigned to the portfolio receives the exact same position, at the exact same price, at the exact same time.
We give you the choice of opening your account online via a link we provide, or providing your information for us to open it for you. Either way, you'll sign online, and have the option of doing it all online.
After your accounts are opened and your money is transferred in from another investment account or your bank, the portfolio manager decides which managed portfolios to invest your account in. Clients give the firm discretion to both trade the account and determine which managed portfolio to invest in. However, we require informed consent, so we will have already learned your investment objectives for risk and return, as well as any constraints or exclusions you want. Our managed portfolios are typically unconstrained, go anywhere, to find potentially profitable trends. So, it's up to you to define in writing any constraints or positions to be excluded. I.e., an executive of a publicly traded company may exclude her company's stock from the account so we don't buy it. Or, you may be disagreeable about certain sectors or companies, such as alcohol, tobacco, or countries. Or, you may have significant exposure to a company or sector through other investments and prefer to diversify away by disallowing those positions.
The bottom line is that we allow for reasonable exclusions and a level of customization, and that's the advantage of a separately managed portfolio.
From there, we move on to any overall wealth management issues we've surfaced that need to be addressed. Sometimes financial planning is done at the same time as establishing accounts. For example, we'll want to ensure proper titling of your accounts for asset protection and estate planning.
Ready to get started?