Key People
Shell Capital Management is led by two principals who together deliver institutional investment management and personal financial planning to a deliberately small number of client relationships.
Mike Shell
Founder · 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.
Mike’s perspective on risk was forged through firsthand experience trading across repeated market regime breaks — the 1998 Russian debt crisis, the dot-com crash, the 2007–09 global financial crisis, and the COVID-19 shock. These periods reinforced a defining principle of ASYMMETRY®: markets do not fail politely, and risk must be engineered before it is experienced.
As portfolio manager, Mike applies ASYMMETRY® across global markets to construct portfolios with explicitly defined downside risk and uncapped upside potential — 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: business sales, medical practice transactions, concentrated equity positions, and periods of elevated taxable income. The objective is not maximizing returns at all costs but preserving optionality and positioning capital prudently before and after irreversible transitions.
Before founding Shell Capital, Mike was a Registered Principal in the Investment Management Division at Raymond James. He completed advanced training at Harvard Business School and has read more than 500 books on investing, finance, risk, and behavioral decision-making over thirty years.
Christi Shell
Three Decades of ExperienceChristi Shell is managing director of Shell Capital Management, LLC, and serves as the firm’s wealth manager for client families. With more than three decades of experience, she works directly with retirees, physicians, business owners, and families with complex financial lives to oversee and coordinate their entire wealth picture.
Christi is the overall wealth advisor for planning and advisory decisions, ensuring that portfolio strategy, tax considerations, estate planning, philanthropy, and family objectives remain aligned as circumstances evolve. She is known for bringing structure and clarity to complex situations and for leading collaboration with attorneys, accountants, trustees, and other specialists.
Areas of FocusChristi earned a bachelor’s degree from Tusculum University and completed the Wealth Management Theory & Practice executive program at the Yale School of Management. She holds a Certificate in Alternative Investments from the CAIA Association and the designations of Certified Wealth Strategist®, Accredited Asset Management Specialist®, Behavioral Financial Advisor™, and Certified ETF Advisor®.
Prior to joining Shell Capital, Christi spent more than two decades in senior leadership roles in banking and financial services, including Vice President at Regions Financial for over six years and senior leadership at First Tennessee Bank for more than thirteen years.
