Schwab Managed Account Marketplace
Schwab Managed Account Marketplace
After every close, the live record is re-tested against a benchmark we committed to before trading began, and the reading is published on the Statistical Validation page, favorable or not, never repainted. The current reading: significant at the 95% confidence level. The strategy rebalances on signal and generates short-term gains by design, so IRAs and tax-deferred accounts are its natural home.
40+ years in finance, predictive modeling, and corporate strategy: Wall Street derivatives and M&A modeling, CFO and corporate development roles across multiple industries, co-founder of FrontBridge (acquired by Microsoft, 2005). MBA, UCLA Anderson. Author of “Where Alpha Cannot Be Measured: Regime-Conditional Performance Attribution,” forthcoming in the Journal of Investment Management. Vetted contributor, Advisor Perspectives. Mark invests alongside clients, in the same positions at the same prices. Mark designed the models, built this site, and gives the tours personally.
The portfolio may look familiar. The process behind it isn’t.
Two independent scoring systems assess every candidate, one reading the information, one reading the behavior. A position may open only when both give it at least a pass. If either fails it, nothing happens. It is the dual-confirmation discipline hedge funds use, two separate reads that must agree before capital moves, run long-only and by rule, not by hunch.
The two models are built to be organically uncorrelated, and that independence is what sharpens signal against noise. That separation is usually bought with expensive alternative data; ours comes from the construction of the models themselves, and both must agree before we consider the stock for portfolio inclusion.
While we cannot promise the next number, the process behind it does not bend. Before each new portfolio is drafted, we screen more than 1,300 US-traded equities, over 1,000 of them large- and mega-cap, and a name is eligible only when it clears both.
“Two independent systems must both approve every stock before we buy it, the portfolio holds 22 of them equally so no single bet can sink it, and we watch market conditions all day so we know when the environment favors us and when it does not.”
Twenty-two equal-weight names, two in each of the eleven sectors with sub-sector diversity wherever possible: concentrated enough that selection actually shows up in returns while broadly diversified enough that no single name, sector, or theme can sink the book. It runs at lower beta than the market by design, so it tends to move less than the index and give back less in a drawdown. That cushion is regime-dependent, not a floor: in the most severe, high-volatility dislocations, cross-sectional correlations converge and the convexity compresses. Like every strategy that carries market exposure, we do not expect excess returns in extreme market stress (VIX sustained above 35) until markets return to normal operation.
We watch conditions all day, every day, from a custom-built command center. The monitoring, the regime classification, and the live data pipeline behind it are proprietary and engineered in house, which is the point: managing this book is as much an engineering discipline as a selection one, and that is our primary competitive advantage. Our monitors tell us whether the market is in a calm regime, where alpha can register, or a stress regime, where beta forces drag us around, so the positions are run with eyes open rather than on autopilot. Our regime telemetry also watches the environment for unusual moves that merit increased attention, so we are looking for trouble before it explodes on us. That is investment risk management. Risk is also managed where it is created, in the names themselves, through the two-screen selection, equal-weight diversification, and lower-beta construction, not papered over with a sleeve.
Want to see it? We give advisors the Cockpit Tour, a live screen-share of the command center driven by the principal, not a slide of it after the fact. Book the tour →
Come see how we transform a noisy market into something we can absorb at a glance. The board below is one example: the day's regime, volatility, breadth, risk appetite, and sector action, compressed into a single fast orientation. It is live, and it is ours.
Four more of the instruments are open to you. Drive them yourself.
A full regime decomposition for any ticker, and how a name scores for alpha potential. This is where the alpha lives.
Open →Run any ticker through historical crises and see projected drawdown, beta-day density, and months to recovery.
Open →Regime, environment, breadth, and threat level in one panel. The same read we watch all day.
Open →A live relative rotation view of the eleven sectors: which are leading, weakening, lagging, and improving, and what that means for stock-picking conditions.
Open →The common thread is dispersion. We are dispersion investors: when names move differently, selection has something to separate; when they move in lockstep, it does not. Both lag cases are the same story told twice.
The firm-wide client track record covers every client account across all firm strategies since January 2022, net of the fees actually billed, against a segment-blended benchmark, with full disclosures. One scope note: this is the whole firm, including mandates with fixed-income sleeves; the record of the pure equity strategy offered on this page is live in the performance card above and on the AC Market Monitor. This document is here as proof of how we treat client capital over time, updated monthly.
Net and gross since inception against RSP, both significance readings, risk, construction, terms, and where the strategy is likely to lag. Generated from the live record.
Download →Annual and cumulative results, actual billed fees, segment-blended benchmark, concentration and methodology disclosures. PDF, updated monthly.
Download →A walkthrough is a live screen-share of exactly what we are watching, driven by the principal at the command center. New here? Start with the orientation on FlightDeck.
The strategy runs on an automated schedule, not on any one person being at the desk. The wider team is in the Team →
Get the weekly Statistical Validation Report by email: the same test battery this page links to, every week, favorable or not.
Request the weekly report →