Fee-Only Portfolio Architecture

Who it's for

Building it, or living off it.

Two routes into the same discipline, pointed in opposite directions. The starting question differs. Everything after it - the frameworks, the structure, the fee - does not.

Route 01 - Accumulating

You are building it, or about to start.

The portfolio grew position by position, not to a plan - or nothing is invested yet while you decide.

Recognise yourself

Concentrated equity compensation - RSUs, options, or a vesting schedule you haven't sequenced. Or you've just left a percentage-fee advisor and are managing for the first time yourself.

Nothing invested yet - savings sitting in cash while you decide what to buy first
Holdings that look diversified and correlate at 0.8
A portfolio assembled from whatever each platform happened to offer
No written allocation, no rebalancing rule - headlines instead of a mandate

→ Replaced by a written Investment Policy Statement - allocation, rebalancing rules, concentration limits

Route 02 - Decumulating

You are living off it.

Converting a stock of capital into an income stream that has to survive thirty years - and usually more than one tax authority.

Recognise yourself

A pension lump sum, a business sale, a divorce settlement, an inheritance, or a change of tax residence - a dated, irreversible decision that just happened or is about to.

A sustainable withdrawal rate, stress-tested against scenarios rather than averaged
Sequence-of-returns risk - a bad first decade does damage what an identical average return would not
Which assets to draw from, in what order, and from which jurisdiction
Base currency mismatched to your platform, and no plan for who manages this when you no longer can

→ Replaced by cross-border architecture - fund domicile, base currency, a withdrawal plan modelled against ten thousand paths

0.82

Correlation illusion

Five holdings, 1.8 effective positions. Fix: Ledoit-Wolf shrinkage.

€3.2K–€6.4K

Annual cost drag, €300K portfolio

Embedded fees and FX, invisible on any statement. Fix: a full TER/FX audit.

30% → 15%

Tax inefficiency

Default US withholding on dividends - most portfolios hold one. Fix: an Irish-domiciled UCITS.

The same fee,
charged once

€750 once - or €50,000–€200,000 in AUM fees over ten years.

An AUM fee is a percentage of everything you own, charged every year: €5,000 a year on €250,000, €20,000 on a million, at 2.0% all-in.

Engagement Examples

The work performed,
and the outcome.

Real client engagements, shown as work performed and outcome, not endorsements. What's shown per client - a name, a verification link, a redacted work product - reflects what that client agreed to share, not a marketing preference.

★★★★★ 4.9 average · 4 verified engagements

Accumulating · Paying client

★★★★★ 5.0

“The honest probability behind the number - not just the number.”

30-year-old Berlin-based IT professional, self-directed, high risk tolerance - wanted a professional-grade growth portfolio and an honest read on a self-set long-term wealth target.

◈A=2.92 risk-aversion coefficient — placed him in the "Growth" tier via behavioural calibration, not a generic questionnaire
◆82% equity / 18% gold, five holdings — Black-Litterman posterior allocation across a five-fund global portfolio
◎UCITS correction — a non-UCITS gold holding swapped for a UCITS-compliant equivalent
◇30-year contribution model, 10,000 Monte Carlo paths — the gap to his self-set target quantified precisely, and exactly what contribution change closes it

Decumulating · Paying client

★★★★★ 4.9

A thirty-year drawdown plan, pressure-tested before the first withdrawal.

70-year-old non-US-resident retiree, commuting a pension into a lump sum, self-directed via Interactive Brokers - wanted a sustainable withdrawal structure and full downside stress-testing before committing.

◈Explicit risk limits — portfolio built against drawdown, CVaR, and volatility ceilings, not just a return target
◆35% equity / 55% fixed income / 10% private credit — strategic allocation built via policy-weight optimisation across a global multi-asset sleeve
◎Cross-border tax structure — BDC distribution income re-characterised under IRS §871(k), cutting effective withholding well below the 30% non-resident default
◇Withdrawal sustainability — a 30-year drawdown plan stress-tested against a Monte Carlo ruin ceiling, with the safe withdrawal range mapped rather than assumed

Accumulating · Paying client

★★★★★ 4.8

A lump sum turned into a policy - not a bet.

29-year-old EU-resident marketing specialist who received a lump sum and wanted it structured toward an ambitious long-term growth target, not left to drift in ad hoc picks.

◈A=3.3 risk-aversion coefficient — calibrated to a "Growth" mandate via revealed-preference profiling, not a generic questionnaire
◆Fixed nine-holding strategic policy — 50% core index (QQQ/SPY), the rest spread across single-name and diversifying satellites (tech, financials, energy, gold, bonds)
◇44% probability of reaching his self-set target — quantified via a 3,000-path Monte Carlo simulation, not assumed
◉Explicit risk ceilings — drawdown capped at 40%, tail risk monitored via Basel III-consistent VaR/CVaR, long-only with no leverage

Accumulating · Paying client

★★★★★ 4.9

A ten-year growth target, priced as a probability - not a hope.

31-year-old EU-resident professional with a decade-long horizon who wanted his growth target priced as a probability, not a guess - and a portfolio built to hold up under full downside stress-testing along the way.

◈A=4.4 risk-aversion coefficient — calibrated to a "Growth" mandate via revealed-preference profiling, not a generic questionnaire
◆Nine-holding fixed strategic policy — 35% core S&P 500 index, the rest spread across emerging markets, Japan, and single-name equity/credit satellites
◉87.7% probability of reaching his self-set target — quantified via a 10-year, 3,000-path Monte Carlo simulation
◎HHI concentration check — flagged "Moderately Concentrated" at construction, monitored against the portfolio's covariance risk model rather than left unmeasured

Add Your Engagement

Past or current client? If you'd like your outcome featured here too, submit it below. Nothing is published without your review and consent.

Strategic Session

€750 one-time

One session.
An investment framework
built to last.

The Strategic Session is a 60–90 minute, €750 one-time engagement for self-directed, non-US-resident investors that produces a concrete, implementable deliverable: your personal investment mandate, including a written Investment Policy Statement, strategic asset allocation, and cross-border implementation guidance, constructed to institutional standards.

◈

Your risk profile, in plain numbers

ML-derived risk aversion coefficient, loss-tolerance calibration, and behavioural bias assessment - the same methodology institutional desks use before constructing a mandate

◆

Your allocation, built for your goals

Black-Litterman and Markowitz MVO applied to your specific goals, horizon, and capacity - not a model portfolio. A personalised allocation built from first principles

◇

The odds you actually reach your goal

10,000 forward market scenarios stress-tested against your target wealth. You'll know the probability of reaching your goal - and exactly what levers move it

◉

A written mandate you keep

A formal document you keep: rebalancing thresholds, drawdown protocols, concentration rules, and a written decision framework - your personal governing mandate

◎

Which broker, which account, which fund — decided

Which brokers - Interactive Brokers and other execution-only platforms - which account types, which fund domicile and which share class - structured for your country of residence, not a generic European default. Covers UCITS and Irish-domiciled implementation for non-US-resident investors

◐

Implementation & cost audit

ETF selection, TER analysis, FX cost review, and execution sequencing. Every drag on your compounding identified and addressed

◑

30-day follow-up window

Questions that arise after implementation reviewed directly by Anton. Email access for 30 days to ensure the plan is executing as designed

Accepting up to 10 new client mandates per month

Book a Strategic Session

€750

one-time · IPS included

Anton reviews every application personally and will respond within 24–48 hours.

Full Name

Email Address

Your Background

Total Investable Assets (Approx.)

What brings you here?

Pick a time on the calendar, then check out securely via Stripe.

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Or send an enquiry first

✓

Application received.

Anton reviews every application personally and will be in direct contact within 48 hours.

📅 Schedule a time now →

Skip the wait - pick a slot directly

Proprietary instruments

The same analysis your bank
runs - except you see it.

Three instruments, three stages. Stages I–II are free tools that build the analytical foundation - permanently free, no signup, no trial. Stage III - the Portfolio Health Check - is the first paid service: an expert-written diagnostic that translates your data into actionable findings, delivered personally by Anton within 48 hours.

Stage I · Complimentary · Instant

Asset Lens

Single-asset deep-dive: fundamentals, momentum, risk metrics, and valuation - before the portfolio is built.

Live Tool

Free

01

Fundamental Scorecard

P/E · EV/EBITDA · Forward earnings · Dividend yield

02

Risk & Momentum Profile

Beta · Sharpe · VaR · 52W momentum · Volatility surface

03

Analyst Consensus & Signals

Price targets · Recommendation distribution · Insider activity

AAPL

Apple Inc. · Technology · NASDAQ

P/E

28.4

Beta

1.24

Sharpe

0.91

Analyst Consensus

58% Buy 24% Hold 18% Sell

Any ticker · Live data · Instant analysis · No login required Launch Asset Lens →

Stage II · Complimentary · ~10 min

Risk Assessment

Live Tool

Free

3.4A coeff

Moderately Growth-Oriented

Risk aversion coefficient solved via revealed preference theory. Capacity score: 72/100.

Global Equities

62%

Fixed Income

22%

Alternatives

10%

Cash / MM

20 questions · 5 modules · Black-Litterman MVO

Complimentary · No registration required · Immediate results Begin Assessment →

Stage III · Paid Service · Expert-Written · 48 Hours

Portfolio Health Check

Submit your holdings. Receive an institutional diagnostic - correlation matrix, concentration score, cost audit, and one high-leverage action - written personally by Anton.

Human Expert

€150

01

Pairwise Correlation Matrix

Full cross-correlation - reveals diversification failure invisible to the naked eye

02

Concentration Risk Score (HHI)

Herfindahl index benchmarked against institutional norms for your AUM

03–05

Factor Attribution · Cost Audit · One Action

Sector & factor exposure · TER/FX drag quantified · Single highest-leverage rebalancing recommendation

Written by Anton Ladnyi, CFA personally · No templates · PDF delivered within 48 hrs

62 /100

Portfolio Health Score

Corr: 0.84 HHI: 0.31 Cost: €2.3K/yr

Pairwise Correlation Matrix

4/5 positions correlated above 0.78

Highest-leverage action

Replace 15% QQQ → MSCI World ex-US. Correlation 0.84 → 0.61. Saves €420/yr in TER.

Request Health Check · €150 →

Frequently asked

Questions prospective
clients ask first.

Why not just use my bank's wealth management service?

Bank wealth management is a product distribution business. The advisor is compensated by product sales - not by your outcomes. I work on a fee-only basis: no products, no commissions, no structural conflict between what serves you and what generates my revenue. You also gain direct access to the same analytical frameworks applied inside J.P. Morgan Wealth Management - applied by the person who actually built them there.

What exactly happens in the Strategic Session?

A 60–90 minute structured working engagement - not a discovery meeting, not a sales call. We review your quantitative risk profile, construct your strategic asset allocation, run Monte Carlo simulations against your goals, and produce a written Investment Policy Statement with your complete decision framework. You leave with a concrete, implementable deliverable: your personal investment mandate, including broker and account architecture - which brokers (Interactive Brokers among them), which account types and which share classes suit your residence. You keep custody and place your own orders; I do not hold assets or execute trades. The Strategic Session fee is €750, paid at booking. No hidden charges, no ongoing commitment.

Do I need a minimum portfolio size?

There is no hard minimum, but there is a point below which the fee is hard to justify. As guidance: the Portfolio Health Check earns its €150 from roughly €50,000 upward, where correlation and cost drag start to cost real money. The Strategic Session is generally worth its €750 from around €150,000 upward, or at any size if the situation is genuinely complex - a concentrated single-stock position, assets across more than one jurisdiction, a currency mismatch between where you hold and where you will spend, or a portfolio being converted into income. Below those levels a low-cost global index fund is usually the honest answer, and I will tell you so rather than take the fee.

Who is this not a good fit for?

If you want ongoing discretionary management - someone else deciding for you, rather than advising you - this isn't that. Same if you're after stock-picking or options-strategy calls rather than a strategic allocation framework. I never hold your assets or place trades on your behalf: you keep custody and execute your own orders. If that's not the working relationship you're looking for, a discretionary manager or full-service broker is the better fit.

What is an Investment Policy Statement and do I really need one?

An Investment Policy Statement (IPS) is a formal governance document that defines your allocation targets, rebalancing rules, concentration limits, and drawdown protocols. Every institutional investor - pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds - is required to operate under a written IPS. Private investors rarely have one, which means every market dislocation forces a decision made without a framework. The IPS removes emotion from the equation: you follow the process, not the news cycle. It is the single most important governance document your portfolio can have.

How is this different from a robo-advisor or passive ETF strategy?

Robo-advisors and passive ETF platforms provide generic, segment-based allocations - the same portfolio construction for thousands of clients with a similar risk score. They cannot account for your specific tax jurisdiction, liquidity constraints, existing holdings, behavioural biases, or concentrated positions. The Strategic Session produces a bespoke mandate: your actual risk aversion coefficient (not a questionnaire bucket), your actual constraints, and a Bayesian allocation calibrated to your goals - not to a product tier. It also produces a written IPS, which no algorithm delivers.

What does the Portfolio Health Check provide before a Strategic Session?

The Portfolio Health Check (€150, credited toward the session) is an expert-written diagnostic of your current holdings. It delivers: a full pairwise correlation matrix revealing hidden concentration; a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index concentration score benchmarked against institutional norms; factor attribution by sector; a quantified cost audit identifying TER and FX drag; and one single highest-leverage rebalancing action. Written personally by Anton within 48 hours as a PDF. If you proceed to the Strategic Session, the €150 is credited - you pay €600, not €750.

Do you charge hourly, or a percentage of assets?

Neither. Fees are flat and per engagement: €150 for the Portfolio Health Check, €750 for the Strategic Session (€600 if the Health Check preceded it). There is no hourly rate, no percentage-of-assets fee, no commission, no product shelf, and no ongoing retainer. You pay once for a defined deliverable and you own it.

Do you cover UCITS portfolios and Irish-domiciled funds?

Yes. For an investor who is not a US resident, fund domicile is a structural decision rather than a detail. A US-domiciled fund and its UCITS equivalent can hold identical underlying exposure while differing in the withholding treatment applied to distributions and in exposure to US estate tax rules that apply to non-US persons holding US-situs assets. Irish-domiciled UCITS vehicles exist largely because of that difference. The Strategic Session covers which domicile and which share class - accumulating or distributing - fits your circumstances, and sets an explicit base currency: what matters is the currency your future spending is denominated in, not the currency your platform reports in, so hedged versus unhedged share classes and the FX drag on contributions and withdrawals are decided rather than inherited. Treaty positions and thresholds vary by country of residence and are checked against your situation rather than quoted generically; tax filing itself remains with your tax adviser.

Do you work with clients outside Germany?

Yes. Clients are private investors across Europe and other non-US-resident investors. US residents are not accepted. The practice is built for the cross-border case: residence in one country, accounts in another, income or liabilities in a third, and a portfolio assembled from whatever each platform happened to offer. This service is not directed at residents of Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, or Poland.

Do you handle decumulation - converting a portfolio into retirement income?

Yes. Accumulation and decumulation are the same discipline pointed in opposite directions, and the second is the harder one. Turning a stock of capital into a durable income stream introduces problems that never arise while you are still contributing: sequence-of-returns risk, where a bad first decade does permanent damage that an identical average return in a different order would not; a sustainable withdrawal rate that survives the scenarios rather than the average; which assets you draw from first and in what order; and capital preservation as an explicit constraint rather than an afterthought. The Monte Carlo engine models withdrawals directly - amount, start year, and frequency - so a decumulation plan is stress-tested against ten thousand paths, not a spreadsheet average. The Investment Policy Statement then writes the drawdown rules down so they survive the moment you least want to follow them.

Most of my wealth is in one stock from my employer - can you help with that?

This is one of the most common situations here and one of the least well served. Equity compensation - RSUs, options, vested and unvested stock, an employee share purchase plan - tends to produce a portfolio where the concentrated position, the sector funds bought alongside it, and the index fund holding the same name at index weight are all, quantitatively, the same bet. The Health Check measures exactly that: pairwise correlation across every holding, a Herfindahl-Hirschman concentration score, and marginal risk contribution showing how much of your total portfolio risk that single position actually carries. Usually it is far more than the position size suggests. The Strategic Session then covers what to do about it - sequencing, what to hold versus diversify, and how fund domicile and share-class choice affect the reinvestment if you are not a US resident.

What is the $60,000 US estate tax threshold for non-US investors?

US federal estate tax applies to non-resident aliens on US-situs assets above $60,000 - a threshold fixed in 1988 and never indexed - with rates rising to 40%. US-domiciled shares and ETFs count as US-situs no matter which broker holds them or where you live, so a mid-six-figure position in a US-listed index fund is largely exposed. The structural answer is not insurance or a trust; it is domicile. An Irish-domiciled UCITS fund tracking the identical index is not a US-situs asset. Where an estate tax treaty exists between the US and your country of residence the position can improve further, and the terms differ considerably between countries. The Strategic Session establishes which rules apply to you and builds the portfolio accordingly; the estate planning itself stays with your own legal adviser.

How much dividend withholding tax am I losing on US ETFs?

The default US withholding rate on dividends paid to a non-resident alien is 30%. An Irish-domiciled UCITS fund accesses the US–Ireland treaty rate of 15% at fund level, and Ireland levies no further withholding on distributions to non-Irish investors. On a broad US index yielding roughly 1.3%, the difference is in the order of 0.2 percentage points a year - more than the total expense ratio of most of the cheap funds investors work hard to select, and charged every year without ever appearing as a fee. Choice of accumulating versus distributing share class then interacts with how your country of residence taxes fund income, which is a separate decision with a definite answer.

Why does an accumulating ETF change my tax position?

A distributing fund creates a taxable income event every time it pays out - withheld at source, then generally taxed again in your country of residence. An accumulating Irish-domiciled UCITS distributes nothing: income is reinvested inside the fund, so for most non-US residents there is no investor-level income event at all, and the return is taxed on disposal as a gain instead. Combined with the 15% treaty rate the fund already accesses at source, that is a materially different outcome from holding the same index in a US-domiciled distributing vehicle. The caveat matters as much as the rule: some countries impute an annual taxable amount on accumulating funds regardless of whether anything was paid out - Germany among them - so this is decided against your country of residence rather than assumed. Rebalancing inside the wrapper rather than across it follows the same logic.

Still have
questions?

Applications are reviewed personally. Every response comes directly from Anton - not a template, not an assistant.

Book a Strategic Session →

Fee-only
portfolio architecture
for self-directed investors.

Building it, or living off it.

You are building it, or about to start.

You are living off it.

The work performed,
and the outcome.

Not a mockup. The real document.

One session.
An investment framework
built to last.

Fee-only advice,
institutional rigour,
private accountability.

Six frameworks.
One rigorous methodology.

How your risk tolerance is measured

How your allocation is built: Black-Litterman

How your plan is stress-tested: Monte Carlo

How bad the bad case is: CVaR & tail risk

Why correlation estimates mislead: Ledoit-Wolf

What you keep: the Investment Policy Statement

The same analysis your bank
runs - except you see it.

Questions prospective
clients ask first.

Portfolio Construction
Under Parameter Uncertainty

Add Your Engagement

Fee-onlyportfolio architecturefor self-directed investors.

Building it, or living off it.

You are building it, or about to start.

You are living off it.

The work performed, and the outcome.

Not a mockup. The real document.

One session. An investment framework built to last.

Fee-only advice, institutional rigour, private accountability.

Six frameworks. One rigorous methodology.

How your risk tolerance is measured

How your allocation is built: Black-Litterman

How your plan is stress-tested: Monte Carlo

How bad the bad case is: CVaR & tail risk

Why correlation estimates mislead: Ledoit-Wolf

What you keep: the Investment Policy Statement

The same analysis your bank runs - except you see it.

Questions prospective clients ask first.

Portfolio Construction Under Parameter Uncertainty

Add Your Engagement

Fee-only
portfolio architecture
for self-directed investors.

The work performed,
and the outcome.

One session.
An investment framework
built to last.

Fee-only advice,
institutional rigour,
private accountability.

Six frameworks.
One rigorous methodology.

The same analysis your bank
runs - except you see it.

Questions prospective
clients ask first.

Portfolio Construction
Under Parameter Uncertainty