On August 27th, Acropolis turned 20 years old. We’re not great about celebrating that kind of thing, so it took an email from Bob Schramm to even raise the subject. I’m embarrassed to say that I knew it was at the end of August but thought it was either the 26th or 28th (and being right ‘on average’ doesn’t work with dates). In some ways, it feels like just the other day. I vividly… Read More
**UPDATE** We’d like to share an update to the original post below. Acropolis has re-opened our office. Details below: Acropolis employees have returned to the office. Clients are welcome to visit according to their comfort level. Client Zoom meetings will still be available. As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your Portfolio Manager or any of our leaders with any questions or concerns. ___________________________________________________________ Original Post – March… Read More
Today, I thought I would cover two topics. First, I want to update you on how Acropolis is operating, and, second, offer some thoughts on what one prominent economist is saying about the impact of the coronovirus. Regarding Acropolis, it appears that our regular disaster recover preparations were worth their time and energy. As a Registered Investment Advisor, Acropolis is required to have a disaster recovery plan in place and… Read More
When I was in college, I read Liar’s Poker, by Michael Lewis. It’s the true story of Lewis’ job out of college on the trading floor at Soloman Brothers, the most powerful bond trading firm in the world at that time. Many of the characters like John Meriwether, Lewis Reneri, and John Thain are still staples of the financial media, but no one became more famous than Lewis himself. He’s… Read More
I am pleased to announce that for the second time, Acropolis has been named a top Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) by the Financial Times (FT). The FT starts by looking at firms with more than $300 million in assets under management, which is about 1,500 RIAs. They invite firms to fill out a questionnaire and then evaluate the companies based on six key attributes: assets under management (AUM), asset growth,… Read More
We have another special posting from Michael Lissner today, who will be writing Daily Insights more regularly. Also, there was a large typo yesterday, which said that we had traded $223.2 billion worth of stocks and ETFs. Far from it: we traded $223.2 million in stocks and ETFs, which is still a lot, but less than what I wrote, which makes more sense given our $1.2 billion in assets under management…. Read More
Some things are easy to measure, like the internal costs of a mutual fund or exchange traded fund (ETF) or how much we spend in commissions at our custodian to buy or sell stocks, bonds, mutual funds and ETFs. It’s much harder to measure the market impact of your trading, or how much you pay as a price-taker (like us) between the price to buy a security (the offer) and how… Read More
I had the great pleasure of attending the St. Louis Business Journal’s Most Influential Business Women event on Friday to celebrate the success of my business partner, Dannelle Ward. The luncheon at the Chase drew 750 people to honor 25 women that the Business Journal selected from nearly 150 nominations. It was fun to hear all of their stories, which were obviously all impressive. The feature in Friday’s paper provides… Read More
The end of the second quarter is always a relief for me because for the past six years, it has meant that we are finally through getting our CEFEX certification. As you probably already know, we serve our clients in a fiduciary capacity, which means that we are required to act in the best interest of our clients. You may think that everyone in the financial services industry has to… Read More
While I was in New York over the weekend, my sister walked me past a six-story townhouse right off of Fifth Avenue that now belongs to one of my (very few) high school girlfriends. It’s a pretty nice house with views of Central Park and apparently cost them a cool $26 million (not including any renovation and decoration costs). This woman married her college boyfriend who is now the… Read More
