Investment management for independent minds.
Capital stewardship for a world of uncertainty.
Q: What exactly is Vermillion Private Wealth?
A: It’s just me. I handle portfolio management, financial planning, writing, and answering the phone. There is no junior analyst, no investment committee, no intern building model allocations, and no separate “relationship manager” whose job is to keep you from bothering me.
If you work with me, you work with the person actually making the decisions.
Q: Really? Another wealth manager? Why?
A: Because most financial advice runs on borrowed assumptions. Everyone’s using the same frameworks: modern portfolio theory, efficient markets, Monte Carlo simulations, and retirement plans that assume the future will behave like the recent past.
I don’t think that’s how the world works. Markets aren’t mechanical systems to be optimized. They’re complex, adaptive systems shaped by incentives, uncertainty, and human behavior.
Q: So you're contrarian?
A: Not by temperament. I’m skeptical of consensus when consensus hasn’t examined its premises. My thinking is informed by Austrian economics (Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises) and Popperian epistemology (Karl Popper). Most advisors study finance. I study how knowledge, incentives, and error actually work, and then apply that to money.
Q: That sounds... academic.
A: It's the opposite. Academia gave us the efficient market hypothesis and sixty-year retirement plans that assume stability. I'm interested in what actually survives contact with reality.
Q: So you’re an active manager?
A: Guilty. Index funds work well for many people, much of the time. But they can’t step aside when nothing is cheap, reduce exposure when risk becomes asymmetric, or concentrate in a great business trading at a genuine discount.
I can. And sometimes I do nothing at all, which is also a decision.
Q: Who are your clients?
A: The money I look after belongs to a group of families who take wealth seriously enough to want someone thinking about it full-time.
Q: Do you beat the S&P 500 every year?
A: No. Anyone who promises that is selling something (usually fear, greed, or a very selective time period).
Q: Then how do I know you’re any good?
A: Read my essays and whitepapers. If you like how I think about risk, uncertainty, money, and human nature, we’ll probably be a good fit.
Q: You're a writer?
A: I'm an investment manager who writes. Or a writer who manages investments. The point is: if I can't clearly explain why I’m doing something, I shouldn't be doing it. Writing is how I test my own thinking before your capital ever gets involved.
Q: What's your investment philosophy?
A: Prices don't reflect perfect information; they reflect humanity: millions of people making provisional guesses with incomplete knowledge, distorted incentives, and varying time horizons. That single insight reshapes everything about portfolio construction, risk, and resilience.
Q: Are you always this philosophical?
A: Yes. Philosophy clarifies decisions. But I know the difference between metaphysics and the moment your kid’s college tuition is due.
Q: What do you actually do all day?
A: I read obsessively, write, think, study markets, meet with families, adjust plans, review risks, and check the assumptions behind the assumptions. If that sounds unglamorous, that’s because real investment work is. But I love it.
Q: How do you get paid?
A: A percentage of assets under management that gets smaller as your account grows. No commissions, no kickbacks, and no performance cuts. The full schedule is in the firm ADV if you’re into legal prose.
Q: Favorite book most clients haven’t read?
A: The Inner Game of Tennis. It’s ostensibly about tennis (which I love), but it’s really about why people seize up under pressure. The same mental habits that cause a double fault on match point cause investors to buy at the top and sell at the bottom.
I reread it whenever I catch myself overthinking.
Q: What kind of clients don’t work well with you?
A: People who want hot tips, guaranteed outcomes, or someone to blame when markets misbehave. I work best with people who value long-term thinking, intellectual honesty, and transparency, even when the answers are uncomfortable.
Q: This seems like a lot.
A: Wealth is a lot. It deserves serious thought.
If you want someone to nod along and rebalance a 60/40 portfolio once a year, I’m not your guy. If you want someone who’s thought carefully about uncertainty, incentives, and what it actually means to steward capital over decades, we should talk.
Q: Can I have lunch or coffee with you before deciding?
A: Yes, but only if you’re willing to talk about Stoicism, jazz, books, or monetary policy.
Q: What next?
A: Let’s chat.
What clients say:
All testimonials have been provided by current clients. No client was compensated for providing these testimonials. Vermillion Private Wealth gained each clients permission to publish their testimonial. Outcomes are personal and specific for each client and one client’s results do not guarantee identical outcomes in the future for another client. The testimonials shown have been selected from among all client feedback.
Still here? Then you’ll like what comes next.
Planning dinner for a household is a test of coordination. Ingredients must be available, likes and dislikes remembered, dietary restrictions respected, time managed, and budgets followed. And this is a simplified case. Even at the scale of just a single family, ingredients can go missing or stale, schedules collide, and minor miscalculations make for a stressful supper time.
Now imagine attempting the same task for an entire city.