Frequently Asked Questions

Santa Fe Advisors manages investment portfolios for individuals, families, and institutions. We build long term relationships with our clients, who value our experience, integrity, and our open, transparent approach.

Normally, Santa Fe Advisors seeks investment relationships with clients with a minimum of $1 million or more to invest, but we may waive that minimum on a case-by-case basis.

In order to best align our interests with those of the client, we accept only one form of compensation: an advisory fee based on a fixed percentage of client assets. We accept no commissions, hidden charges, or product based fees. We therefore have no reason to recommend one investment over another, unless we think it is better for our clients.

Our alignment of interests with our clients is demonstrated in two important ways. We believe that excellent investment advisory services can best be provided when the incentives of the advisor are aligned with those of the client. Our only revenues are the fees that clients pay, which are based on the size of a client’s account, so as a client’s portfolio grows, we benefit along with the client. Just as importantly, Santa Fe Advisors requires that all founding partners invest personal assets in the same portfolios and funds that we recommend for our clients. We eat our own cooking.

We provide comprehensive investment advisory services, including an assessment of the client’s overall balance sheet, a review of each client’s risk tolerance, advice on an appropriate investment strategy, and discretionary management of diversified, global multi-asset class portfolios.

All Santa Fe Advisors client assets are held in custody by Fidelity Investments, which provides each client with independent verification of the assets held in their account. While Santa Fe Advisors has trading authority over the account, both we and Fidelity have state of the art controls in order to assure the security of each client’s assets.

All clients receive an Investment Policy Statement, which sets portfolio risk guidelines resulting from a consultation with Santa Fe Advisors. Investment Policy Statement risk guidelines may be amended over time as the client’s needs and circumstances change.

Santa Fe Advisors is a manager of diversified, global multi-asset class investment portfolios. We have a disciplined, valuation based approach. Our portfolio construction is a two step process involving global asset allocation, and investment vehicle selection. We conduct our proprietary research and ongoing due diligence on approved investment vehicles. We are benchmark agnostic in our approach, as we believe that strict adherence to benchmarks is dangerous, and generally leads to mediocre results.

No, we invest only in approved funds and other managed investment vehicles. The majority of our investments are in mutual funds and ETFs; we occasionally invest in separate accounts and limited partnerships for clients where these specialized investments are appropriate, after a full discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of these vehicles. We are always keenly conscious of liquidity and fees, and seek to keep the former high and the latter low.

The three Santa Fe Advisors founding partners have a great depth and breadth of expertise serving clients, and average over 25 years of financial market experience. Collectively, the partners have worked at major money center banks, trust banks, and investment banks, as well as boutique investment advisory firms. They have served in roles on institutional trading desks, as M&A bankers, and private client advisors.

We welcome the opportunity to interface with our clients’ other professional advisors to help ensure that our portfolio design and management takes into account each client’s legal, estate, tax, and other considerations.

A hallmark of Santa Fe Advisors’ approach is our openness and transparency. We believe that our clients’ best interests are served if we regularly and openly communicate our process, our views, and how we are managing their risks. Clients can see their portfolio on-line on a daily basis. We send comprehensive quarterly portfolio performance reports. We provide quarterly market commentaries which express our current views on global financial markets and risks, and often send interim updates as market conditions dictate. Every other Friday morning, we open our market strategy meeting so that current and prospective clients can attend and hear what we’re thinking, and observe our decision making process. These meetings are very popular; we encourage you to check our schedule on the home page and join us for an open strategy meeting soon.

Our business is one of personal relationships and trust, and we take the confidentiality of client information very seriously. We never share client information outside the firm for any reason, unless required to by the SEC or other regulatory authority.

Call us at 505-501-6200 or contact us to have a conversation or to set up a meeting.