Your Frequently Asked Questions, Answered

As a registered investment advisor, Desmond Wealth Management has a fiduciary obligation to act at all times for the sole benefit and interest of our clients. This is the highest act of loyalty, trust, and care as established by law.

As such, we provide Fiduciary Advice:

• Conflict-free advice – we have no incentive to ever recommend a product that isn’t in your best interest because we are never compensated by commissions on products we recommend to you.

• We adhere to the strict guidelines of the fiduciary standard of care as defined by The Institute for the Fiduciary Standard so that your best interests always come first. As fiduciaries, we are bound by the six key fiduciary duties:

  • Serve the client’s best interest

  • Act in utmost good faith

  • Act prudently – with the care, skill, and judgment of a professional

  • Avoid conflicts of interest

  • Disclose all material facts

  • Control investment expenses

We are 100% independent. As an independent wealth management firm, we don’t have allegiances to a particular fund family or product. Independence and method of compensation help an advisor be objective when making recommendations.

Independence also matters when a client is in need of other services, such as life insurance or banking.

As an independent wealth manager, we will make referrals to other professionals when clients need insurance or other products, based on what we believe will be in the client’s best interest.

Absolutely! We work with many families and individuals across the country and even a few abroad. We are happy to meet and collaborate with you via phone or video conferencing software (Zoom).

Asset Allocation / Investment Policy

Asset Allocation is a diversification strategy whereby investments are spread over a variety of different asset classes and management styles in order to capture growth and returns while also managing risk considerations. Allocating capital according to a carefully planned diversification guide enables investors to achieve risk-adjusted growth and returns, commensurate with their individual needs and willingness to bear risk. Alternately, lack of proper diversification may cause investors to miss unexpected opportunities and/or expose them to unforeseen investment pitfalls.

We believe in maintaining a forward-looking, strategic asset allocation for core holdings and only revising that allocation when needed and warranted. We believe in broad rebalancing to the strategic asset allocation; notably, both tax and transaction costs are also a part of the equation that guides our rebalancing strategies for clients. 

Core and Tactical Satellite

Core-satellite is a common-sense investment approach where we maintain disciplined control of the client’s portfolio by using low-cost, broadly diversified funds and ETFs as the primary building blocks for their portfolio. This is achieved through implementing a stable, indexed core. Once this core allocation is in place, satellites can be chosen that then tilt a portfolio towards a particular sector or style, or to manage to a certain objective such as outperforming the broader market. This core-satellite concept recognizes the fundamental differences between index and active fund management and combines the best aspects of both approaches. 

Growth versus Value

We believe in the conclusions of the Fama/French research that there is a "value" factor, and over time, value equity portfolios will provide superior returns, but with potentially higher risk. We also believe that eliminating growth allocations will result in interim performance divergence from the broad markets and that our clients would find this an unacceptable option, therefore at times we may overweight value but do not exclude growth.

Active versus Passive

We believe the choice between active and passive management is not an either/or tactic; we use both. In general, we believe diversification among traditional active strategies should be combined with passive strategies, subject to the constraints of expenses and taxes.

For your safety and convenience, Desmond Wealth Management uses Fidelity Investments as a third-party custodian for our client investment and retirement accounts.

Fidelity administers more than $11.7 trillion in assets for more than 40 million retirement savers (Aug 1, 2023).

As a trusted custodian, Fidelity safely holds your investment accounts and provides reporting to you and the IRS each year. Your accounts can be viewed at any time at www.fidelity.com or through the Desmond Wealth Management Client Portal.

We are currently accepting new wealth management clients who have at least $2,000,000 in investable assets. If you are expecting a large future windfall and don’t currently meet the asset minimum, please contact us to discuss your personal situation.

Investable assets most commonly include current retirement plans, retirement accounts from previous employers, IRAs (traditional, rollover, Roth, SEP, inherited, SIMPLE), brokerage accounts, trusts, proceeds from an IPO or liquidity event, and cash you wish to invest.

We are solely compensated by fees paid by our clients directly to our firm. We receive no commissions or referral fees. This is part of our fiduciary standard. A copy of the fee calculations is sent to all clients every quarter so that there is no ambiguity.

We charge an annual fee based on a client’s Assets Under Management, billed quarterly in advance. Our clients can elect to terminate the relationship at any point in the future and have the pro-rated fees for the remainder of the quarter refunded back.