Getting Started is quite simple. It basically boils down to taking a bit of initiative, opening your own trading account with our preferred Brokerage, funding your account to trade on your behalf and then configured to suit your personal risk tolerance and financial goals. The rest is on auto-pilot.
Our belief with the Crypto market is that money is never really made nor lost, but only changes wallets. Diversifying heavily into one major asset class such as Crypto, is in our view, one of the few markets that will work with this type of diversification strategy. Non correlated strategy diversification is important from one strategy to another to take advantage of this concept. In our collective opinion, although volatile, the market itself is as close to “crash-proof” investing as one can come. This makes Crypto's a unique asset class for diversification. Experienced traders can always find a profitable trend to ride somewhere in the markets, as long as they understand the key factors that move the market.
3.) What is the minimum investment amount?
Broadly speaking, our minimum investment is $5,000 USD or equivalent in EUR, GBP, AUD, (JPY, NZD, and HKD coming soon!). This can be allocated in to any number of funds, as the minimum does not apply to a single fund. Note that in some cases however, some of our funds may have unique minimum investment restrictions imposed on them. This is clearly displayed and made transparent to investors prior to joining.
This is good ‘ol technology coming to save the day again, and is in our opinion, an industry game changer! We utilize custom software which is very, very, very important for investors. It is called a Custom Stop Equity tool. This ensures an investor never needs to worry about a rogue trader breaking rules, or technical problems with an algo, or black swan market events and crashes. It’s a “safety net” that catches ALL and lets investors sleep easy at night knowing that they will never lose a penny more than they decide. So investors can now easily cap their downside risk, and leave the upside open-ended. It’s basically safety – taken to a whole new level.
Sure, here is an example: if an investor’s initial deposit for participation in a managed account is $100K USD, and they decide that they do not want to ever lose more than $10K USD, they can set their own personal kill switch (Stop Equity) at a value of $90k USD. So if account equity reaches as low as $90K their account will systematically be disconnected from our trading software service (called a PAM), and any open trades will be closed. At this point they are disconnected and their funds are safe from incurring any further losses.
Investors need to be realistic of course when setting this and allow for drawdowns to occur, as these are a normal and an inevitable part of trading. Setting these stop losses to tight on your account, means they may be triggered more often than they should be. Most investors set this at a value slightly higher than what we ever expect to encounter naturally and use it as a safety brake (and thus, hopefully it never actually gets triggered, ever). Some investors get clever with this, and use it as a “trailing stop” and increase or decrease it each month based on profit or losses incurred on their account over time.
5.) What do you mean by the fact that we can Customize Our Own Risk? How is this possible?
Have you ever looked an an investment and thought “I like it, but it’s too conservative for my risk appetite, or alternatively, it’s too aggressive for my taste?” Investors participating with our Managed Accounts, can now simply focus on a strategy’s risk-adjusted rate of return, and determine their own risk level.
This is extremely valuable, as risk is like beauty … it is in the eye of the beholder! What we have learned over the years is that every person has their own unique perception of risk. What one person finds risky, another may not see as risky at all. This can depend on many factors such as age, experience, financial savings, investment amount, investment goals, and net worth. This can all impact ones perception of risk. Now, investors have the ability to customize any of our funds (using a multiplier) to their preference which best suits their own specific risk tolerance.
The Managed Account structure is the best in the entire investment industry. Period. Don’t let anyone tell you anything different.
Most investment vehicles require you to send your money away to someone, get limited access/transparency and just hope for the best
Not with a Managed Account. This is YOUR account! You simply give us permission to trade it for you by way of a signed LPOA / Limited Power of Attorney. Funds stay segregated in your own personal trading account(s) at all times, in your own name, at highly reputable and regulated Broker. You remain in full control of your funds, in full control of your risk, and can close at any time!
What we are trying to say here, is that you keep the keys! Your investment is always fully secure, in your sole control, fully transparent, and liquid at all times. No other investment vehicle brings together so many favorable conditions for an investor.
Please read through each trading program’s profile carefully. We provide much more due diligence on the strategy itself with our core funds, than we do with our market place funds. We have included as much information as humanly possible to make it easy for prospective investors to make an informed decision.
We offer detailed prospectuses, detailed performance analysis, 3rd party CPA audits, 3rd party analysis via social trading and verification utilities, and finally live forward trading results on real money. If there is anything more we can do, please contact us and we will be happy to help get you the comfort level you are looking for.
In our experience, many people coming from the traditional investment space often over-analyze alternatives, and do so improperly. We advise any paranoid or fearful investors who may interested not to invest if it provides any feelings of discomfort. This type of investment may not be suitable for all people. The key points to remember is that your investment is always transparent, and liquid, and your risk can be restricted, and your risk level can be customized to your preference. Therefor your risk of loss is defined and “risk-limited” by yourself.
There are no surprises. Starting slow and dipping a toe in the water is always a smart approach. Taking a disciplined approach to new investments is an intelligent plan. Smart investors focus their analysis on the data (performance and risk – most importantly the risk adjusted rate of return. Meaning how much risk is being assumed to generate said returns).
Yes it is. It would be irresponsible for us to say otherwise. Because our Managed Accounts are Alternative Investments, they carry a high level of risk and may not be suitable for all types of investors (please see our Risk Disclaimer for more information). This is especially true for the more aggressively traded funds in the Marketplace.
We believe the key to a successful investment is exposure to enough risk to generate a decent return, but not so much as to give rise to sleepless nights. A disciplined approach and utilization of risk management technology, restricts the risk and reduces the exposure to volatility in the marketplace.
Our Managed Accounts have been designed to specifically mitigate against many different types of risk as efficiently as possible. We try to first and foremost clearly define, and then protect our downside risk, and leave the upside open ended on a best efforts basis.
Yes. This has been the foundation of this entire project – to make complex alternative investments available to the average investor in a safe, transparent, and simple method. This type of investment is now a solid contender which is available to those who want diversified investment exposure but who previously have only had very limited choices. There is no need to be a professional trader yourself to successfully and safely invest in a managed account.
This alone is one of the biggest advantages to a managed account. It gives the modern investor the ability to have their account traded by professional money managers (someone with a significant and established edge in the markets, tons of experience, and who trades for a living). Our team does all of the back ground work and heavy lifting to package these up and offer them as managed investments. That being said, we always encourage prospective investors to educate themselves about trading and different types of Alternative Investments in general. Our opinion is that the best investor is an informed one!
This depends on the program. Some of the funds we have developed “in house”. Others, we are primary stake-holders in, and have full discretion over the trading and management of the trade strategies. Other systems we are partial stake-holders, and other systems we enter into joint venture arrangements with the developers and/or owners of the systems to be able to offer these to our investor base. Many trade teams simply want to focus on the markets and not have the distractions of running a business, acquiring capital, or be client facing. We agree that this is also a good model for success. Keeping traders and coders obsessed with the markets is actually a good thing.
Getting Started is quite simple. It basically boils down to taking a bit of initiative, opening your own trading account at a Brokerage, funding your account to trade on your behalf for you (or asking us for advice on which ones), and then (easily) configuring these to suit your personal risk tolerance and financial goals. Then all you need to do is go about your life. The rest is on auto-pilot.
Yes! Why should we not reap the rewards of our labour as well? Our incubation phase is intense, and it involves real cash in the real market. It’s not always pretty during this phase. But after it is complete and a finished product emerges, things get much better!
Almost selfishly, Managed Account Services was designed originally as a product to be used by ourselves. We continue to invest company and personal capital not only in to our business, but into our investments. We want skin in the game! And thus we have been part of the whole user experience ourselves since the get-go, and we are happy to share this with other like-minded investors (lets ride the cliché).
We work with traders and strategy developers of almost every asset class, although we are focused on Crypto trading due to the unique benefits it provides. In time we hope to have multiple offerings including CFD indices, metals and commodities.
We charge a performance fee and only make money if investors make money. Simple. Transparent. Fair. We use this model because we keep our costs down and have confidence that our programs will make money over the long term.
Our operating costs are reduced highly vs. traditional managers as we exist globally and online, which helps to streamline our compliance, negates the need for branch visits, and increases our ability to provide global coverage and fast and efficient support. This also means we don’t set up shop in expensive ivory towers on Wall Street or Canary Row. We don’t advertise on yachts or sponsor football teams. We focus on substance and instead pass these savings on to clients under this business model.
The High Water Mark is truly a measure designed explicitly as an investor-friendly provision that essentially prevents a manager from taking a performance fee on the same gains more than once. Simply put, it ensures that investment managers and advisors are not making profits unless their clients are. We simply can’t think of a fee structure that is more aligned with client interests than that.
Incentive Fees are paid ONLY in asset value. If a temporary decline occurs, it must be recouped before new incentive fees are paid. Thus – profits come first, fees come afterwards.
Generally speaking, here is basic example how it works…
1.) When a Client deposits their initial funds, that balance becomes the first High Water Mark (HWM). In this example the Client deposits $100,000 USD.
2.) After 1 month the Trader/Advisor produces 10% in gross profit (for easy rounding in this example) which brings the Client account up to a gross value of $110,000 USD.
3.) $110,000 USD in equity, minus the last HWM ($100,000 USD) = $10,000 USD in new profit.
4.) In this example the Performance Fee is 20%. So 20% of $10,000 USD new profit is $2,000 USD Performance Fee (PF) which is payable to the Trader/Advisor.
5.) After paying $2,000 USD Performance Fee to the Trader/Advisor, the Client retains $8,000 USD of the profit. His account balance after paying the Performance Fee is $108,000 USD, which is then reset as the new High Water Mark for the following cycle. There will be no more fees charged to the client if the balance declines in value. Only if the trader/advisor makes profits and brings the account higher than the new High Water Mark of $108,000 USD.
Oh-oh you are opening a big can of worms now. This is a biggy to answer, and an ongoing debate. However we strongly feel that machine has the edge over man when it comes to trading. Hence we prefer algo’s over discretionary trading strategies. For investors who like human/discretionary trading, we advise building a mixed portfolio of both man and machine.
Our software is PAM software, but with many unique features similar to a signal service – but without the hardship and downsides that comes with copying and signals such as slippages and latency etc… All orders from all of our invested clients go through to the market together as one single “block order”. There is no complex 3rd party copy or duplication software used. Clients open an account. Set up funds in their account, and go on about their merry way and receive the exact same trades as every investor. The similarity to trade copying comes from the client tools at hand that empower the investor to manage, customize, and protect their investment.
We certainly can. Contact us and lean on our existing Brokerage relationships by way of our introductions. We are happy to help other industry professionals with our leverage, and believe in ways of finding true mutually beneficial win/win outcomes! There is no need to reinvent any wheels. Contact us at your earliest convenience, tell us what you are up to, and we will be happy to help formulate a plan to fit your requirements!investment.