I spent nearly two decades building quantitative investment platforms for major institutional asset managers, including fourteen years leading quantitative stock-selection strategies at one of the largest asset managers in the world. I built those models and used them to invest. After that, I served as Chief Investment Officer of Radiant Global Investors.
I am grateful for that experience. It gave me a clear, unsentimental view of how the industry actually works, and where the model fails the people it claims to serve.
I’ll be direct about three things I came to believe.
Fees should reflect the work and expertise, not the brand and distribution costs.
A meaningful share of the “active management” sold by large institutions to wealth management clients delivers something that, after fees, looks a lot like an index. When a client pays well over one percent for that, the fee is no longer compensation for skill. It’s compensation for distribution. Clients deserve to know what they’re paying for, and they deserve a process where the price tag matches the effort and expertise.
Fee laddering is the quiet problem nobody discusses.
Many institutions charge an advisory fee at the top of the relationship, and then invest those same client assets into the firm’s own proprietary funds, which charge a second layer of fees underneath. The client sees one fee on the statement. The firm captures two. That’s not a service model. It’s a distribution model dressed up as advice.
At Rubric, we charge one transparent fee. We don’t put clients into affiliated or proprietary funds that quietly stack a second layer of fees on top of your advisory fee. We don’t take commissions or referral compensation from product issuers. One fee. The advisory fee you see is the advisory fee you pay. Read more on how fee laddering works.
The best tools shouldn’t require a billion-dollar mandate.
Portfolio construction. Direct indexing. Tax-loss harvesting. Options overlays for income and downside risk management. Access to private markets. We built such strategies for the largest clients in the world. For most of my career, they sat behind institutional minimums of twenty-five million, fifty million, or more.
That’s no longer a necessity. The infrastructure has matured. Technology stack has matured. Custody platforms have matured. The barrier today is mostly business-model preference. Many firms keep these gates in place, because gating is profitable.
We don’t. Rubric brings institutional-grade portfolio construction to clients starting at much lower thresholds than the firms I came from, with transparent, competitive pricing. Private markets remain limited to qualified clients, but at thresholds well below the institutional minimums I came from.
What this looks like in practice.
We are a fee-only, fiduciary Registered Investment Adviser. Our advisory fee schedule steps down with assets. We do not charge performance fees. We do not sell proprietary products. We use independent custodians. We disclose every conflict of interest, real or potential, in writing.
Every portfolio decision is run through the same lens: what is the after-tax outcome for this client, given their goals and constraints? Markets are uncertain; we don’t pretend otherwise. What we control is process, cost, and tax, and we work hard at all three.
I have a conviction that markets reward discipline far more reliably than they reward narrative. That conviction hasn’t changed. Rubric is what it looks like when that experience and discipline are brought to bear directly for clients, without the layers, the cross-selling, or the gatekeeping.
If that resonates, I’d welcome a conversation.