FAQs
How do I invest with 8AM?
What are your fees and how do you charge them?
We charge an ongoing management fee of 0.15% deducted straight from the investment platform – no transactional, incidental, entry or exit fees!
We believe in fair and transparent charging. For an investor utilising one of our ‘Balanced’ strategies investing £150,000.00 we would charge an annual fee of £225 pa or around £18 per month. This investment strategy has produced annualised returns of 7.77%, so in an average year might generate growth in excess of £10,000.00 pa for £18 per month – roughly the same as a monthly premium streaming service!
What platforms are your services available on?
Our model portfolios can be found on the majority of the UK’s leading investment platforms, including Quilter, AJ Bell, Aviva, Nucleus, James Hay Partnership, Standard Life, Transact and Wealthtime.
Tactical asset allocation can add a huge amount of value; and is a major driver of returns. Why don’t you use active allocation to attempt to outperform?
Our investment process is driven by a simple mantra: “If we can consistently add value in a clear and measurable way, we do it”. We use a simple, floating, responsive asset allocation model based on market neutrality with a measured slant towards top performers. Qualitative, large scale speculative tactical asset allocation is an effective but inconsistent way to produce outperformance.
Our investment process allows for tactical allocation, but does so utilising an accurate ‘crowd-sourced’ ‘true-neutral’ short term allocation to give consistent context to all allocation decisions we make. We run two target allocations for each risk outcome (one focused on long term efficient exposure and the other the short term consensus view of our peers) which allows us to make simple, repeatable decisions that we communicate to you clearly.
On top of our allocation process we layer our robust, evidence-based fund selection that produces outperformance in over c.70% of rolling 12-month periods. This strategy creates long term positive returns for our investors, with allocations that soften short-term relative shocks.
Surely the markets are unpredictable. If everyone could predict the rhythms, then surely everyone would manage portfolios in this way?
Our fund selection methodology is borne of creating a repeatable, robust process around clear patterns and momentum in Fund Manager Performance. We cannot predict the markets, but the herd response to market events is clear.
By way of example;
Imagine a herd of sheep spread evenly across two fields, one field with rain cover and the other open to the elements with a single gate linking the two. The field that is open is likely to have an abundance of grass, but is exposed to poor weather. The covered field is sheltered, but the grass yields are poor.
Nobody can predict exactly where all the sheep will be on a given day.
But what we do know is; how wide the gate is, how many sheep can fit over time, historic data about the grass coverage and weather reports about the rain!
This is very much like the investor response to a changing market narrative. Our “gate” is the standard speed of news, dealing and execution vectors. The “weather reports” are akin to the macro market cycle and “grass coverage” tallies nicely global economic conditions.
As our process is focused on re-testing and re-optimising everything we know at each 2-monthly review, our strategy relies on frequency, volume and following a robust process to the letter.
There are myriad of reasons other managers strategies deviate from our own, but they are usually a side-effect of legacy process or mechanical necessity.
Surely you need a huge team to offer a service like this?
Not necessarily. To scale the way we have done, we embrace technology and have hand-picked a team with a huge amount of passion and focus. The 8AM team was assembled based on individual areas of expertise and experience from adviser firms, platforms and risk profilers. We are adviser-led in everything we do, with all aspects of the service being designed to add value. We are a high-functioning, high-value business.
How often do you optimise your portfolios?
We review, optimise and report on our portfolios every two months, but can be responsive to market events as required. As such, you can be assured that our portfolios are always positioned in funds and are allocated allocations based on current data and evidence and not a speculative point of view.
What are your model ranges?
We have three core model ranges: 8AM AQ Classic MPS, 8AM AQ Global MPS, 8AM AQ Sustainable MPS. All function using our fundamental tenets of clarity, consistency and fundamentally repeatable evidence-based processes, but have slight differences to their filtration methodology for fund selection and to geographic allocation.
We also offer our services as Bespoke MPS Partnership providers; building investment strategies to order as well as a variety of research and data services to appropriately regulated clients.
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