Institutional Partners
Outside of your 401(k) we often recommend using Fidelity Investments as your custodian (brokerage firm). They are more stable financially than any other firm, in our opinion, have over $5 trillion in client assets, low to no annual fees, will do securities transactions for as little as $1 (you may pay $150 to $850 through a broker at many "brand name" Wall Street firms), and have excellent client service and responsiveness. There are some firms that will do trades for less (a few dollars less) but we don’t believe anyone is as stable as Fidelity and that is why we recommend them. Your investments at Fidelity are insured by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation which will reimburse you for up to $250,000 in cash or $500,000 in securities in case of a default of a brokerage firm (which virtually never happens and is extraordinarily unlikely to happen at Fidelity in our opinion but may happen at less financially secure brokerage firms).
However, we are open to clients using a variety of firms and some of the more popular ones amongst our clients include: Charles Vanguard, Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, JPMorgan, Etrade, Robinhood and others. We have worked with all of these companies before and feel that you won't go wrong opening a brokerage account with many of them but we do tend to think all else being equal Fidelity has the best combination or low prices and good service. Due to our independence we are able to work with any brokerage firm of your choosing in nondiscretionary accounts and virtually all firms with discretionary asset management.
We often utilize the following investment companies and frequently recommend their index and other funds: Vanguard, BlackRock (iShares), State Street (SPDR etfs), and Invesco.
For bonds we tend to recommend Nuveen for municipal bonds and BlackRock, Vanguard or Schwab for low cost taxable bond funds.
Finally, we may utilize specialists to help address your wealth planning and financial needs. Because we go to the same advisors over and over again we believe that we can often get better information than you can on your own.