Our Company Structure
Krasney clients benefit from our company structure. We are an independent firm, not held ‘captive’ by proprietary products and/or traditional investment strategies. As a fee-only investment advisor, we have completely eliminated any potential conflict of interest that exists in a commission based system. We sit on the same side of the table with our clients. Our incentive is to keep our clients’ costs low while making their assets grow. As registered investment advisors, we have a fiduciary responsibility that does not exist when you deal with traditional brokers. A fiduciary has a legal obligation to act in the best interest of you, the client. Most investment salespeople are not registered investment advisors, nor are they obligated to act as your fiduciary.
Fixed Income
Krasney Financial offers clients special knowledge and experience in the fixed income sector. Jonathan Krasney spent the first 17 years of his career as an owner of a bond firm prior to starting Krasney Financial in 1987. This expertise allows clients of our firm to benefit from investment opportunities that other firms might not have experience in finding.
These types of investments are particularly beneficial for people who are retired or close to retirement, seeking a degree of safety in their portfolio, or are withdrawing money on a regular basis. The amount of fixed income included in a portfolio will vary based upon different factors. However as a rule of thumb, we believe any portfolio can benefit by allocating a portion of assets to fixed income.
Why We Like Fixed Income
Individual bonds are used in client portfolios in most cases, because when held to maturity, they produce positive returns regardless of stock market conditions or interest fluctuations. This predictability provides income and an element of stability to the portfolios. Because individual bonds have a known date that they will return principal, they provide the ability to plan more effectively than bond mutual funds which never mature.
As with all of the investment vehicles that we utilize, we do not receive commissions or markups on fixed income products.
Our Definition of Performance
We believe the ultimate performance benchmark is the difference between achieving and not achieving your specific goals. Our investment process is designed around identifying, testing, and tracking progress toward your personal goals.
The premise of our advice is:
- Confidence in achieving goals YOU value
- Avoid undue sacrifice to YOUR lifestyle
- Avoid unnecessary investment risk
Our Process
- We IDENTIFY all of your major life goals, the purpose and need for your investments
- We IDENTIFY and DISCUSS priorities important to you
- We CREATE an acceptable, ideal, and recommended strategy
- We TEST your personal plan to achieve a high confidence for success in meeting your goals
- We IMPLEMENT, manage, and maintain your balanced portfolio
- We TRACK your progress toward meeting your goals, and if necessary, MODIFY your plan to accommodate for new priorities
Confidence Calculation
Central to our process is a "Confidence Calculation". This process evaluates and analyzes your most ideal aspirations (Ideal), compromises you are willing to make to your goals (Acceptable), assets, and investment allocation, to determine how confident you can be that your goals will be met. We subject your goals and strategy to a sophisticated "stress testing" process simulating both positive and negative market conditions. The "Recommended" plan we present is the mix of goals most important to you, custom tailored and tested to achieve a mix which provides confidence and comfort in achieving your goals.
Avoiding Unnecessary Risk
A confidence level between 75% and 90% indicates a set of goals that is manageable and avoids unnecessary investment risk. You may find minor changes may be suggested at some future date, but they are likely to be nominal, easily manageable and exposed well in advance through ongoing monitoring.
Our Service
Staying in touch with clients is critical to managing your portfolio appropriately. As people's lives change, their goals and priorities will likely change; so too should their portfolio. We maintain regular contact with our clients, who can also call our office any time to discuss their portfolio. When you call our office not only will you get answers more quickly than at larger investment firms but during regular business hours, you will always speak with a person, never a machine.
We Get Heard At The Top
In 1999, AMERITRADE Institutional created an "Institutional Services Advisory Board" made up of 11 Investment Advisors from across the United States. Krasney Financial was one of the firms asked to participate. The purpose was to provide feedback on financial industry trends and help AMERITRADE Institutional offer better services to independent Registered Investment Advisors.
Krasney Financial was subsequently invited to join a permanent "President's Council", made up of past Advisory Board members. Today, Krasney Financial continues as a member of the TD AMERITRADE President's Council and the Institutional Services Advisory Board.