Durham, NC Office

SJBenen Advisory serves individuals—including high-net-worth clients—along with small businesses, pension and profit-sharing plans, and nonprofit organizations, providing portfolio management, financial planning, and ERISA plan advisory (including solo 401(k)s). Like many peers, the firm also offers hourly financial planning and delivers a regular client newsletter called “The Benen Report.”

The firm uses a tiered management framework (passive, long-only active, and long-short active) and documents client objectives and constraints in an Investment Policy Statement to guide discretionary trading and asset allocation. Its methods include fundamental, technical, cyclical and quantitative analysis, and clients can be positioned in strategies that range from low-turnover index exposures to strategies that employ leverage, margin, options, futures and short-selling.

Distinctive features disclosed in the brochure include a regular subscription newsletter and the explicit use of borrowing and derivatives within separately managed accounts—naked option writing, short sales, margin transactions, leveraged ETFs and futures are part of its long-short offering, which is less common among similarly sized advisory firms. The firm manages all assets internally (it does not select third-party advisers), requires certain custodians for managed accounts, and oversees roughly $400 million in discretionary assets with a small advisory team.