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Learn: What other HNW investors are doing.
Network: Post questions and share your experiences regarding investments, advisors, and estate issues with like minded HNWs and experts.
Measure: Evaluate your advisors, portfolio allocations, investments, and estate plans.
Find: Identify leading information sources, advisors and service providers.
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Welcome to
The Wealth Management Exchange
The Wealth Management Exchange was created to be a community site for those who, like me, are responsible for managing their family's investments and estates.
With the complexities of today's markets and legal codes, it's important that we get our investment and estate plans right. Mistakes can be very costly. While there is no shortage of people who want to advise us, how do we know whom to trust? Some advisors have their own self-interest (e.g.. commissions) ahead of ours. Others have less business experience, through fewer cycles, than many of us.
We have assembled an outstanding group of experts to inform us on leading investment and estate ideas, but this is only the beginning. This community was created to enable us to communicate with each other - to share questions, concerns, experiences and resources. If you have advisors, investments, and ideas that you recommend (or don't), please share this information. We can all do better jobs for our families and ourselves if we do work together.
How the idea began
In late 2000, I sold the information publishing company I had built for more than I ever dreamed possible. I thought that with this transaction, I would never have to worry about my finances again. I was wrong.
While my old financial worries went away, a whole new set of issues came into play:
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were my assets appropriately invested, diversified and protected?
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was I in the best private equity and hedge funds and did I have enough invested in them?
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how much should I have invested outside the U.S. to insulate me from the U.S. economy's problems and take advantage of superior growth in select emerging markets?
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did I have the right advisors and was I paying the right level of fees?
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were my will and estate appropriately set up to minimize estate taxes and ensure that my children and charities were provided for?
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what could my wife and I do to prevent our children from becoming spoiled rich kids (a malady sometimes referred to as "affluenza" where I live in Greenwich, CT)
Financial advisors of all sorts came after me saying they and their firms had all the answers and that I should entrust them to be my quarterback. I went with a few world-class firms and had them each show me what they could do: one lost over 35% of the capital I entrusted to his firm within 12 months because of his heavy concentration on high tech investments. Another put me into his firm's proprietary hedge funds and derivative products that locked me in but underperformed their indexes.
While I realize I do need advisors who are expert at various aspects of wealth management, I learned that I couldn't delegate the quarterback position to someone else. I needed to make sure I had the right set of advisors and then measure and monitor them to make sure they continue to do a good job for my family and are integrated with my overall plan.
In speaking to friends and family who are in similar financial positions, I learned that many have similar concerns and issues. And while the mega wealthy (anyone with more than me) have family offices that take care of many of these issues, those of us with $5 million to $50 million in net worth (and one can argue that people above and below this level as well) need to stay in control of our estates. We shouldn't delegate the quarterback role to anyone.
I now have taken control of my portfolio. I screen my advisors carefully, measure their risk adjusted performances , and make appropriate changes. Over the past few years, my portfolio has outperformed the market indexes by a significant margin. And it doesn't take a lot of time.
With just a few hours a month, you too can gain control of your financial and estate plans. We'll send you ideas and advice from some of the world's leading experts and provide you a community where you can ask questions and compare notes with like-minded colleagues in a confidential and secure environment.
Welcome to the Wealth Management Exchange, the place to learn and share information on wealth management issues - because we have issues too.
Thanks for participating,
Wayne Cooper
Chairman & CEO |
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The volume of investment information and advice is exploding, the global world of finance is contracting and the wealth preservation and enhancement options have never been so difficult to sort out.
Today's sophisticated investors are looking for answers but they are not content to turn to just anyone for solutions. They seek out independent sources who are both knowledgeable and capable of providing the analysis of the events shaping the investment environment. And a generalist is not enough - sophisticated investors are looking for expert advisors for each area of their estate.
For these reasons, Wealth Management Exchange has assembled a great faculty of the leading investment minds. They are financial advisors, attorneys, wealth managers, economists, professors, market experts, estate planners and others.
Below are the members of our very experienced and talented Board of Experts. We are grateful to them for their assistance in defining this website and developing it into a "must use" tool for you and your peers.
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Tom Au, CFA and financial writer. Tom is the author of "A Modern Approach to Graham and Dodd Investing." He writes on emerging markets, and real estate among other subjects. |
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Mark Balasa, CPA, CFP and, Principal, Balasa Dinverno & Foltz LLC,. Mark has written for the Journal of Retirement Planning and has been quoted in Barron's, Business Week and other major publications. |
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Ron Birnbaum is a financial consultant specializing in real estate. A founding member of the Tenant In Common Association, he hosts The Financial Consultants with Ron Birnbaum, a radio program heard each Saturday morning in the Boston area on AM 1060, WBIX. |
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Denis Brody is an Attorney and CPA with over 30 years of experience practicing in such areas of Estate Planning, Elder Law, Trusts, and Asset Protection. He is a member of the National and New York Association of Elder Law Attorneys, the NYS and Nassau County Bar Associations, and the American Association of Attorneys and Certified Public Accountants. |
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Joe Calabrese is executive vice president, Head of Private Wealth Group, Harris Private Bank. Jim also specializes in wealth transfer issues. |
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Giles Cavanagh, COO, Pusateri Consulting and Training. Giles is an expert on assessing the performance and value of financial advisors. |
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Iris Kieg is President of Iris Krieg & Associates, Inc., a Chicago-based philanthropic advisory firm: www.ikriegassoc.com |
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Joshua Frankel, second vice president, wealth management at Smith Barney. Frankel is a financial planner who specializes in asset allocation and retirement planning. |
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Scott Frush, CFA, CFP, President, Frush Financial Group, Author, Optimal Investing, Understanding Hedge Funds. Scott writes frequently about hedge funds. |
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Alyssa Grikscheit, partner, Goodwin Procter. Alyssa is an attorney who specializes in private equity on a global basis and mergers and acquisitions. |
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Christopher Lazzaro is vice president, financial advisor relations at Loomis, Sayles & Company in Boston, Massachusetts. For more information about Loomis Sayles' multisector bond strategies you may contact him directly at clazzaro@loomissayles.com. |
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Michael Lewitt. Lewitt is an investment expert and editor of The HCM Market Letter, Boca Raton, Florida |
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James Lang, Attorney, CPA, and author "Retire Secure! Pay Taxes Later" (Published by Wiley) |
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Michael Mendelsohn is president of Bridge Art Strategies Ltd., an art succession planning firm. He is a world-class art collector and with his wife, Gael, has been recognized by Arts and Antiques magazine as one of the top 100 collectors in the US. He is the author of Life is Short, Art is Long - Maximizing Estate Planning Strategies for Collectors of Art, Antiques, and Collectibles. |
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Maria Neary, CPA, CFA (mneary@gellerco.com) is managing director, Geller Family Offices, LLC, New York, a leading shared family office that provides investment and estate planning services. |
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Jon Persson, CLU, CFP (jpersson@gellerco.com) is director of financial planning at Geller Family Office Services LLC in New York, a leading shared family office. |
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Thomas A. Orecchio, CFA, CFP, CLU, ChFC, AIF, Principal, Greenbaum and Orecchio, Inc., Old Tappan, New Jersey |
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Gary Rathbun, CLU, CHFC, MSFS, President of Private Wealth Consultants, author of "Wealth Preservation for Physicians." |
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Jonathan Rikoon, Partner Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, author of "Estate Planning and Family Wealth Transfers." Jonathan Rikoon is a partner in the Trusts and Estates Group. |
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Mark Scionti, managing director, M3 Capital Advisors. Mark specializes in insurance and estate planning. |
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Robert Shiller is professor of economics at Yale University and author of "Irrational Exuberance" and "The New Financial Order: Risk in The 21s Century." He is cofounder of Case Shiller Weiss, an economics research and information firm. |
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John Slatter has written 13 books on investing, including Safe Investing, Straight Talk About Stock Investing and 11 editions of The 100 Best Stocks You Can Buy. He is also a portfolio manager for Klopp Investment Management, headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. |
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David M. Stein, Ph.D. is Managing Director, Chief Investment Officer, Parametric |
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Timothy Smith is senior vice president, Walden Asset Management. Tim is an authority on activist and social responsibility investing. |
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James Trippon, CEO, Trippon Wealth, Author "How Millionaires Stay Rich Forever". James is an authority on investing in China and Asia, in general. |
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Rajat Wadhwani, CFA. Rajat is senior vice president, Bank of America and a specialist in wealth management issues. |
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Jack Waymire, founder of Paladin Registry. Author of "Who's Watching Your Money" and specialist on selecting the best financial advisors. |
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John M. Collard, CTP, and Chairman of Strategic Management Partners, Inc. Collard specializes in rehabilitating distressed firms. |
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Todd Hartman, Associate Director, Hedge Fund Research. Todd is a specialist on hedge fund performance. |
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Charles Massimo, President and Founder of CJM Fiscal Management, a private wealth management and investment company serving the needs of HNW individuals and families. Charles has been working with affluent investors for over two decades. |
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Bruce Mendelson, Northwest Mutual, Bruce is a specialist on financing and estate planning strategies for the needs of children with special needs. |
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Andrew Szabo, managing director, Greenwich Financial Management Inc. The firm specializes in individually managed accounts, insurance, retirement and estate planning. |
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Sam Stovall. Stovall is chief investment strategist at Standard & Poor's. He is also the author of the Standard & Poor's "Guide to Sector Investing" and "Stovall's Sector Watch" column on businessweek.com. |
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