Margin

Margin is a fee-only independent advisory firm that provides discretionary investment management, comprehensive financial planning, tax planning, outsourced tax preparation, and consulting primarily for high-net-worth individuals and families, while also serving corporate or business clients, foundations, endowments, and ERISA retirement plans. Services are delivered through ongoing portfolio management engagements, written planning deliverables at onboarding, and options for limited fixed-fee or quarterly flat-fee arrangements.

The firm typically builds diversified, long-term portfolios using low-cost ETFs and mutual funds and emphasizes asset allocation, rebalancing, and tax-aware decisions, while engaging active managers when deemed appropriate. It maintains discretionary trading authority and employs a broader toolkit than many peers — including margin borrowing, options strategies, derivatives in separately managed accounts, structured notes, private investments (client-directed), and cryptocurrency ETFs — with formal quarterly reviews and written reporting.

Several aspects of the practice are atypical for independent advisors of its size: it provides ERISA-focused services (including acknowledged 3(21) or 3(38) fiduciary roles and pension consulting for profit-sharing and defined benefit plans) and explicitly discloses use of borrowing and derivatives within separately managed accounts. The firm also integrates tax-focused planning (Roth conversions, equity compensation analysis, mega/backdoor Roth review), contracts with outside firms for tax preparation and strategic tax consulting, and may recommend structured or illiquid instruments while leaving selection or execution of certain private investments under client control.