Mike Shell

President, Chief Investment Officer, and Portfolio Manager  |  Founder of Shell Capital Management, LLC | Engineer of ASYMMETRY^®

Mike Shell is the founder, president, and chief investment officer of Shell Capital Management, LLC, an independent registered investment adviser established in 2004 to serve physicians, surgeons, dentists, business owners, and families with complex financial lives. He is the creator of ASYMMETRY^®, a proprietary investment, trading, and risk-management system designed to engineer asymmetric risk/reward across changing market regimes.

Mike began designing and testing asymmetric trading systems in 2001, well before systematic, quantitative, or AI-assisted investing became mainstream. A self-taught programmer with a deep affinity for mathematics and first-principles thinking, he built his early systems out of necessity—developing his own tools to define risk, test failure modes, and scientifically evaluate mathematical expectation when off-the-shelf solutions did not exist. ASYMMETRY^® evolved from this foundation as a continuously refined decision system rather than a static strategy.

Mike’s perspective on risk was forged through firsthand experience tactically trading and managing capital across repeated market regime breaks, including the 1998 Russian debt crisis and the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, the dot-com bubble and subsequent crash, the 2007–09 global financial crisis, the COVID-19 market shock, and the evolving market environments that have followed. These periods reinforced a defining principle of ASYMMETRY^®: markets do not fail politely, and risk must be engineered before it is experienced.

ASYMMETRY^® is far from a traditional asset allocation model. It is a complete system, a decision framework to determine what to buy, when, and how much; when to cut losses short and when to take profits as conditions change. The system integrates algorithms for predefined exits, volatility-based position sizing, portfolio-level risk management for drawdown control, and increasingly AI-enabled analysis to adapt to shifting market structure, correlations, and liquidity.

As portfolio manager, Mike applies ASYMMETRY^® across global markets to construct portfolios with explicitly defined downside risk and uncapped upside potential. ASYMMETRY^® Managed Portfolios represent one implementation of this system, delivered through separately managed accounts with trade execution and custody through Goldman Sachs Custody Solutions.

Much of Shell Capital’s work intersects with moments when capital carries heightened consequences: the sale of a business, medical practice sales, partial liquidity events, concentrated equity positions, and periods of elevated taxable income. In these environments, Mike’s objective is not maximizing returns at all costs but preserving optionality, controlling drawdowns, and positioning capital prudently before and after irreversible financial transitions.

While Mike is known for hedge-fund-style tactical portfolio management, Shell Capital provides comprehensive private wealth management anchored in the same asymmetric framework. Portfolio strategy is integrated with overall wealth strategy, exit planning, retirement income planning, estate coordination, and asset protection, working closely with clients’ CPAs and attorneys to ensure alignment across the full financial picture.

Mike’s investment approach and risk-management discipline have been featured in Forbes, Investor's Business Daily (including a full front-page profile), and Pensions & Investments, which recognized him as a Top Performing Investment Manager following the 2008 financial crisis. He has also been interviewed on Trend Following Radio and Top Traders Unplugged.

Before founding Shell Capital, Mike was a registered principal and registered options principal in the Investment Management Division at Raymond James.

Mike is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran whose service was cut short by a traumatic injury. A service-connected disabled veteran, he earned his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Accounting from Tennessee Wesleyan University while working as a sheriff’s officer.

Mike is a lifelong, self-directed student of markets and decision systems. Over the last thirty years, Mike has read more than 500 books on investing, finance, risk, and behavioral decision-making and has completed advanced training in quantitative finance, derivatives, and executive education at Harvard Business School.  Mike spends most of his time doing deep research, and this ongoing study informs the continuous evolution of ASYMMETRY^® as markets, tools, and conditions change.

Mike and his wife, Christi, spent much of their adult lives in West Knoxville and the Tampa Bay area before returning to East Tennessee, where they now live on a modern farm in Athens, McMinn County, near where Mike grew up on his grandparents’ farm. Outside of his professional work, Mike values pursuits that reward preparation, discipline, and respect for risk, including sport shooting, predator hunting, and performance driving. These interests mirror the same principles that define his work in markets: control what can be controlled, define risk in advance, and execute with precision.