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FOLIO Institutional question re: cash

bearnaked

2 months

bearnaked

Hi John,

Thank you for your reply.

1) I understand that Folio sweeps ALL cash into a money market vehicle. When I say "plain old cash" I don't mean that it is not earning an interest. It is. I just mean cash that is outside of any Folios for the purpose of maintaining some liquidity to make it easier to debit fees, re-balance Folios without Folio crapping out, etc.

2) Cash kept in...

CRM

trond24

3 months

TFI

I started using Highrise. It seems to be simple to use. I like its integration with Dropbox.

Cheers,
Gopal

QR codes

trond24

4 months

TFI

Interesting idea. I have seen my friends put QR codes on their iPhones as background/screensaver image. I am not sure how effective it is on a business card. If you put QR code on the business card, probably you should make sure that your website is optimized for viewing on mobile.

Cheers,
Gopal

Happy Holidays

TFI

5 months

TFI

Congratulations ! One more hurdle cleared.

Incentives etc

plandfreedom

6 months

trond24

Hi Mike,

If you really want to go that route, I'd suggest their very first dinner at your annual investor's meeting is on you. All the "newbies" get to have a private dinner with you where they can ask questions, etc.
I think that ties in with your "exclusive club" feel?

I'd like to hear from other Spokes on their feelings about incentives.

-Trond

New blog site - The Interloper

trond24

7 months

trond24

Saw a mention on The Reformed Broker... This new one is really good.

http://interloping.com/2011/10/25/has-wall-street-abstracted-itself-from-america/

Maybe some lessons for us, or at least another salvo against Wall Street?

Regards,
Trond

Measuring performance

trond24

7 months

trond24

Great point about risk adjusted... but I'd prefer to just beat it outright. :-)

I'm kind of obsessing about the benchmark, probably because I'm in the last week of studying all the S-65 crap and they hammer on disclosure.

I'm probably going to compare to S&P 500 and the Russell 2000 Value Index. I like the 2000 because it includes a relatively big segment of smaller and mid caps.

More FOLIOfn notes

trond24

8 months

plandfreedom

Trond, that's my Folio rate too. Yes, I am having to subsidize smaller accounts. Hopefully, through your quarterly communications, clients will be convinced to invest more.

I wish Folio got rid of the silly minimum fee.

-Mike

Folio questions

aab

9 months

aab

Follow-up after talking to someone at Folio.

It looks like they are not set up to have non-interest bearing cash accounts. I plan on talking to the sales rep in my area to see if there's any other way to satisfy the "no interest" requirement for my clients.

Also, they said that the limit on the number of stocks in a folio is negotiable. (That sounds kind of strange to me.)

Will keep you updated as...

Folio set up

trond24

10 months

plandfreedom

I just signed up with Folio per Cale's rec. I got them down to 25 bps or $150, whichever is greater. My fee will be 75 bps, so no more than 1% for the folks who...

...Have at least 60k to invest!

Still wondering whether to subsidize or not, and how to do it in Folio. Cale, I hope you cover this in your conference.

Ideas on Spoke Fund Conference for 2011

calesmith

10 months

plandfreedom

I'm in. I wonder how many people will be there...

Website note & License

trond24

10 months

calesmith

Ah, good catch. Boards are customized, so those template changes don't take there right away, apparently. Will get on that.

And the right time to apply would be before you start publicly discussing your fund. You'd want to have it prior to plugging your spoke on your website, for instance...and assuming you can still fill out the info on that License tab, I'll pick back up with you there on that process. Thanks!

Cale

Cheap way to get a track record

jb85

10 months

jb85

After some more searching, has anyone used Covestor.com? It is free to manage a tracking portfolio (free advertising because others can see your results). They also have a option to manage other poeple money at no ongoing cost to you (the manager)...however the big negative is they take 50% of the management fees.

At first glance it seems like a low risk option, if I completely fail, then there will be no cost to me. Anyone...

Tracking Account

AdamW

11 months

calesmith

Hi Adam,

Sorry for the delay. Man, I gotta lift my head up once in a while during these market downturns...too much fun looking at new companies.

To your question - I established a tracking account just for performance measurement - or more specifically, to enable a third party to verify the portfolio's performance numbers independent of me and FOLIO. So, once I figured out what I wanted my portfolio to contain on...

Answers on LLP set-up for DM

calesmith

11 months

DM1

Thanks for that very thorough response. It was very helpful. DM

E&O

johnrothe

11 months

calesmith

I have not contacted these guys yet, but this was a note I made to myself a month or so ago:

Get E&O insurance for $1250 per year here:

http://www.naplia.com/riainabox/

Found them off the RIA in a Box site, which is as good a reference as I could hope for there..

Interactive brokers

plandfreedom

1 year

itconsultant

i love IB.

They have 3 ways to trade. Web, Phone and desktop. Desktop is richest in feature. Cannot do block trades via Phone/Web.

The fee structure takes a while to understand. Its $10 a month minimum per client in general. But the way it works really is if you have 10 clients and the advisor master account, thats 11 accounts. IB wants $110 from this group. If you don't trade enough, then each account will pay the...

List of Brokers

MrBook

1 year

itconsultant

The min fee for IB is $10 a month. So if you do trades worth $5, then the client will see $5 in commissions and $5 in other/inactivity charges.

IB lets you do block trades and the commission is split proportionately to the size of the order per account. Min trade commission is $1 for 200 shares. So, you could have bought 200 shares across 10 accounts (equal sized) and it be 20 cents for each account.

Nice little milestone

1 year

1 year

I got a similar question last week from another future spoke manager - specifically with regards to structuring the investment advisory contract given that everyone is going into the same fund, regardless of risk tolerances. Here's my response to him from that email thread, which I think might apply to your question, too:

"The short answer is, I'm 'selling' the fund, not a whole suite of advisory services, and that comes with a...

password protect forum

johnrothe

1 year

calesmith

Hi John,

Yes, been giving some thought to the idea of an intranet of sorts, albeit for different reasons. Let me get back to you/everyone on that in a bit...think it's going to figure into this whole platform idea if I can figure out how to stitch it all together.

Thanks!

Cale

Spokesters in Omaha?

calesmith

1 year

kporeilly7

I'll be there as well. Send me a note - kevin.oreilly @ foothillsplanning dot com and we can try to hook up.

Kevin

Value Firm in D.C. is Hiring

calesmith

1 year

calesmith

The below is from Whitney Tilson:

A money manager who has been interviewed in Value Investor Insight is looking for a senior-level hire for his growing firm in the Washington, D.C. area:

"The candidate should be an experienced deep-value-oriented investor, but not a 'religious' thinker. I want a person who is anchored in valuation as being the principal allocation trigger, but who nonetheless has an...

Beginners Summary for FolioFN

ameichtry

1 year

itconsultant

Hi,

When i called Foliofn, they said they charge $200 a year to the clients. They said they don't charge any AUM to advisors or clients. Weird. Sounds like they charge AUM fees to clients plus a certain minimum $amount.

IB charges a min of $10 a month whether you trade or not. Also, I dont know of a way to build a model using IB. Plus the Advisor creates a master account which will also be charged $10 a month if the...

Video for my firm

calesmith

1 year

kporeilly7

Thirty minutes, eh? I've spent more time than that positioning my Flip to balance the picture. I guess that's why we call them professionals. Looks great, and you look like you're in a regular old commercial building.

Thrift Savings Plan transfers for soldiers

slkiel

1 year

slkiel

Hey guys, I had this situation come up with a TSP transfer and made a post out of it. Hopefully it will be helpful if you guys have a similar situation. You can find the whole post here. If anyone knows the answer to the last question, let me know.

My investor was an active duty Army soldier and had contributed to a TSP account while on active duty. He then left the military completely and came back in as a Reservist. He is...

IIF: Black Scholes; More Money Than God

dwhunter10

1 year

calesmith

Thanks, Dustin! I confess I've been reading Matt Taibbi's latest, too, Griftopia. Bombastic but highly entertaining.

Happy Thanksgiving, guys.

Cale

Seeking input: Do we need an oath?

calesmith

2 years

calesmith

And to Kevin's point, yep, basically all riding on Tarpon at this point for me. Still got a bit in Gecko, but have some plans to address that before too long, as well. More soon there.

Thx again.

Wealthfront(Kaching) platform

itconsultant

2 years

AAOI

Adib,

Sorry for the delay...I'm waiting for a call back from my contact at wealthfront to get complete clarity on a few issues (given all of the changes recently). So I will chime back in after the fact. Anyhow...

1) Regarding having a real money account, as far as I understand at the moment, I don't think so (although I do know it is highly recommended...eating your own cooking that is).

2) See above, but...

Thoughts on execution of trades

calesmith

2 years

calesmith

Matt asked a good question in the comments here, and I wanted to post some thoughts on the boards in response.

Matt asked specifically about trade execution on FolioFN, which has some overlap with this question I'd gotten previously from a poster on my Cale in the Keys blog:

“Do you see any issues or limitations with the window trading as your AUM grow? Also, with the market these days even a Mega cap like Apple can...

Feeds to F Wall Street & Seeking Alpha

calesmith

2 years

AAOI

Nice!! It's funny how things work out, as it was Joe's FWall Street that actually motivated me to start Above Average Odds in the first place. Pretty serendipitous if you ask me. If I can say one thing about being a part of our little revolution its that it's filled with some incredible company (and I'm honored to be a part of it).

Presto Chango: Kaching becomes Wealthf..

2 years

2 years

Thought this might be of note for value investors:

http://buffettfaq.com/

Hard to find anything new when it comes to Buffett on websites, but I thought this was pretty novel. It's a record of 463 questions and answers about all manner of things from Warren Buffett. With, of course, a little Charlie thrown in there, too.

Spoke funds and Covestor/Kaching

itconsultant

2 years

calesmith

Also, FWIW, here are a few slides from the workshop last spring in which I shared some brief thoughts on Folio, Interactive Brokers as well as KaChing and Covestor.

It's great that there are multiple options for custodians out there, and I think KaChing and Covestor are on to something. I had opened accounts at both firms (as well as the now defunct Vestopia) in order to kick the tires and, potentially, consider moving assets from...

Marketing

slkiel

2 years

calesmith

Yep, I keep coming back to the online channel as the key...the economics of acquiring those new investors at zero cost are just too compelling.

Actually been neck deep for a while now in all things online marketing related...search engine optimization, pay-per-click, and local search/maps, too, actually. Been quite the learning experience, and hope to summarize my thoughts there soon.

IIF Schwartz, Gladwell, Visteon

dwhunter10

2 years

AAOI

Oh ya, are you an Indy native (I ask b/c I grew up in Indy and went to IU)?

Ideas from an emerging RIA

ameichtry

2 years

calesmith

You're quite welcome, Andrew, and thanks for the thoughts!

I'd echo Kevin's comments re: the golden rule. And I think it's important to differentiate between an empty model, which as you correctly point out you can set up anytime at Folio, and one that is immediately funded with your own net worth and forms the core of a spoke fund. Perhaps the most relevant thought that pops to mind there is this:

If you're ever going...

Tips for FOLIOfn

calesmith

2 years

calesmith

Here's another tip for PMs using FOLIOfn when it comes to admin and compliance.

For longer than I care to admit, I would, at the end of every month, go through all client Filing Cabinets on FOLIOfn and save all monthly statements and/or trading confirms onto my computer, and then re-upload them to client folders I had created using DropBox. To have copies, just in case.

It's obviously important to have copies of any...

My Biggest Marketing Mistake

calesmith

2 years

kevino

Couldn't agree more about the yellow ages, although my AT&T seemed to be a decent guy. I did it my first year and got zilch. I think there's a default assumption that a business has to be in the phone book, but it's a legacy concept and I can't see myself picking it up again later. The web aspect of it seemed logical to me, and they touted some impressive numbers, but I got very few hits and no inquiries even via the web. The Google/Bing...

First Time Here?

calesmith

2 years

calesmith

Welcome to the SpokeFunds.com message boards.

This forum is primarily intended for spoke fund managers, but all are welcome. Please consider this a place to post anything at all related to spoke funds.

I'm plenty busy in my day job, so I don't intend to actively police these boards, but if you're posting here, let's just agree you will abide by the Ron Burgundy rule:

Stay classy, people.