Sheet A-000 · Cover
Investment Management
Your statement says one thing. Your returns say another.
The same holdings, different results. The difference is where each lives, how it’s taxed, and how it’s protected. Some of what you own can also lower the tax on your paycheck. We decide all of it together.
Sheet A-001 · Margin Note
§ 02 · A Note from Shaun
I left Wall Street.Here's what followed.
Size is how much you make. Shape is where it comes from, how it gets taxed, and how much of it survives a bad year. Most people only ever get to work on size.
From what I saw, the platform wasn't built for clients. It was built for the firm. The investment bank under the same roof made products and we placed them. Sponsors paid for shelf space. Nothing about this is dishonest, but it still decides what you're offered. I'll come back to why.
I built my early practice on traditional investment management, running a tight portfolio of twenty-five to thirty stocks with the research group that supports hedge funds and institutional analysts.
It worked and my clients did well, but I don't run that model anymore. Structure proved more efficient, and it freed me to work where I could do the most good.
That focus came from somewhere specific. I went to work for a multi-billion-dollar family office, and saw strategies I had never come across at my old firm.
What those strategies had in common was structure: which account holds what, how you own it, and when it gets taxed. That's the part that doesn't depend on the market. It decides how much of a return you keep after tax, and how much of a loss you take. That's money you keep whether the market goes up or down. That's return through structure.
Once I saw what my clients weren't being offered, I knew that was the work that mattered. Tax and investing under one roof. That's the gap I want to close for you. You can find our tax practice at quantus.group.
Sheet A-101 · Exploded View
§ 03 · The Platform Gap
Why you haven't seen this.It wasn’t anyone’s job.
I said I'd come back to why. Here it is, and it has two halves.
Beat 01
The first half is inertia.
Most advisors aren't bad at their jobs. They're doing what worked for the last 30 years, but the playbook has expanded. There are institutional strategies that weren't available to individual investors in 2008. The advisors who learned the business before these existed generally aren't the ones out looking for them.
Beat 02
The second half is harder to say politely.
Most large wealth management firms are part of larger institutions. The investment bank under the same roof designs its own investment products. The wealth management arm sells them. Nobody has to do anything wrong. The model decides what ends up in your portfolio.
Beat 03
A third-party tool isn't in the morning meeting.
By a third-party tool we mean an investment built outside the firm. It isn't going to be featured. It isn't going to be the thing the advisor finds by accident. Anything that interferes with that natural order has a hard time getting traction on the platform.
Beat 04
None of this is a conspiracy. It's gravity.
And gravity determines what you've been offered. That's the gap our firm closes. We source it, we vet it, and we bring it in from outside.
Sheet A-102 · Existing Conditions
§ 04 · The Thesis
The market changed.Has your portfolio?
For more than a decade the market did most of the work. That era is over, and most portfolios were built for it.
Beat 01
The easiest conditions in a generation.
From the financial crisis to the end of 2021, interest rates hovered around zero. Inflation was non-existent. Buying the dip worked. Holding worked. The more risk you took, the better you did. Portfolios built for that environment looked brilliant inside it.
Beat 02
That environment is gone.
Rates have reset. Inflation didn't go away like everyone said it would. And the tech cycle that drove the last decade is changing. Software was cheap to build. AI isn't. Supply chains, defense budgets, and energy systems are getting repriced right now.
Beat 03
Most portfolios haven't adjusted.
Allocations drift. Winners grow into a bigger share than you chose. A few names end up deciding your results. The playbook stays the same. Sitting still used to be a strategy. Now it's a bet.
Beat 04
So control what you can control.
You can't move rates. You can't move inflation. You can't move the cycle. You can control structure. Which account holds what. How you own it. Whether the gains get taxed later, or never at all. That's what decides how much of the return you keep, and how far it can fall.
Sheet A-100 · Index
§ 05 · Where to start
Depends where you are.
Sheet A-201 · Specification
§ 06 · The Analysis
You’ll finally know.What your portfolio costs you.
A portfolio costs you in three ways. Tax on what it earns, fees to hold it, and the return you give up because of where things sit. Two of those show up somewhere. The third one never does.
It's a written deliverable, not a sales call. We read every account as one portfolio, through both an investment lens and a tax lens, and we put all three costs in writing. It's a paid piece of work, and it stands on its own. Some people take it and act on it themselves. If you want us to do the work, we manage the portfolio from there, and the structural work that goes with it is part of managing the money.
Schedule · What you leave with
- 01What you actually own. Every account read as one portfolio instead of a drawer of statements. What you hold, where you hold it, and what it costs you to hold it there.
- 02Where each dollar should sit. Asset geography, account by account, against where it sits today.
- 03Where the two collide. The places your investments and your tax situation work against each other, and where after-tax return is being left on the table.
- 04What we'd change. Specific recommendations, ranked in order, with enough detail that you could act on them without us.
The first step is a 30-minute call to see whether the analysis fits your situation.
Cross reference · The tax practice
That was the investments.This is the tax side.
These sheets cover one half of what we do. The other half is tax: the deductions and structures that decide how much of a gain you keep before any of it is invested. Same firm, same people, a different set of drawings.
See the tax practice →Sheet A-900 · Stamp Block
§ 07 · The Principals
The people who do the work.One for investments. One for tax.
Shaun Eck
Managing Partner · Co-FounderCame from Merrill Lynch and a family office. Runs the investment side.
Jordan Frenkel, CPA, MBA
Managing Partner · Co-FounderCame from PwC, hedge funds and Guggenheim Partners. Runs the tax side.
Sheet G-001 · General Notes
§ 08 · Questions
What people ask.Answered honestly.
Next step
Next Step
Book a 30-minute call.
We'll figure out whether working together is the right next step for your situation. No sales pitch, no follow-up sequence. Thirty minutes with Shaun and Jordan.