Frequently Asked Questions

At many firms, the portfolio is shaped by people you will never meet, assembled from approved lists and product shelves. The business is judged by how many assets it gathers, not by how those accounts perform for clients. The incentives favour the growth of the firm, not the growth of your capital.

WPM is built the other way. One portfolio manager makes the decisions, holds a concentrated set of companies he knows well, and answers for the results directly. We are independent, so no head office hands us a product to sell. We are a fiduciary, so the law requires us to put your interest first. We are small on purpose, because a boutique can hold a few things with conviction where a giant has to hold a little of everything.

A robo-advisor solves a different problem: cheap, automated, index-tracking exposure for people who want it. That is a reasonable product. It is not active management, and it is not what we do. You will not be one account among thousands here, and you will not reach a call centre. You reach the people managing your money.

Discretionary means you hire us to make the investment decisions, then get on with your life. Within the mandate you agree to, we buy and sell without asking you to sign off on each trade. That is the point. You are paying for judgment, not a stream of permission slips.

Before it begins, we learn your circumstances, goals, time horizon, liquidity needs, tolerance for risk, and the portfolio has to stay suitable for you as those change. Tell us when they do.

You give us authority to manage your investments, not to hold your assets. The account remains yours, held in trust in your name at an independent custodian.

James McKnight makes the final investment decisions. A team supports his work, but the call, and the accountability for it, rest with the founder and Portfolio Manager who built the record.

This is what boutique is supposed to mean: fewer people standing between you and the person responsible for your money. You will not explain your situation to a stranger every time you call.

A fiduciary is legally bound to act in your best interest, not merely to sell you something suitable. The distinction matters more than it sounds. Much of the industry works to a suitability standard, which leaves room for an advisor to recommend the option that pays them more over the one that serves you better.

As a registered portfolio manager, WPM is a fiduciary. In practice that means we earn no commissions, push no proprietary products, disclose what we charge, avoid conflicts of interest, and do not trade your account to manufacture activity. Suitability advisors in Canada are held to a different standard. It is worth knowing which one governs the person managing your money.

A model portfolio means clients in the same strategy hold the same securities in the same target weights. When WPM changes the model, that decision is implemented across eligible accounts rather than selectively, one client at a time. The goal is for clients to receive the same security, on the same date, for the same price.

That matters for two reasons.

First, fairness. What you own should not depend on whether you are called first or when you return your advisor’s call. Model portfolio trading applies the same decision across the strategy, so no client gets a better version of an idea, and no one waits at the back of the line.

Second, focus. Instead of monitoring thousands of holdings across hundreds of accounts, bought at different times and prices, we hold a concentrated portfolio of companies we know well. That lets us spend more time deciding what deserves to be owned and less time maintaining a patchwork of one-off portfolios.

The principle is simple: one strategy, one set of decisions, applied consistently.

Concentration allows us to put meaningful capital behind the businesses we consider most attractive. It increases potential profit, and company-specific risk. We accept that trade-off deliberately.

Research by Professor Hendrik Bessembinder, covering U.S. stocks across more than nine decades, found that most stocks either lost money or failed to outperform Treasury bills, while only a small minority of exceptional companies accounted for essentially all of the market’s gains.

We would rather own fewer businesses for better reasons. You do not beat the market by blending into it.

The United States has the deepest, most competitive, and innovative equity market in the world, with a peerless roster of global titans. Many of these companies are American by listing but global by operation. Owning them provides exposure to economic growth well beyond the United States.

Canada is a fine place to live and a narrow place to invest. The domestic index leans heavily on banks, energy, and materials, and it has trailed the U.S. market by a wide margin over the long-term.

For many investors, a low-cost index ETF is a sensible choice. It offers broad diversification, low fees, and little dependence on human judgment. And most managers fail to beat it: over 95% of Canadian equity funds have underperformed the S&P/TSX Composite over the past 10 years.¹

WPM offers something different: active security selection, a concentrated portfolio, ongoing research, and decisions made by a Portfolio Manager who is directly accountable for them. Indexing settles for the market’s average return (minus fees). We are not in this to be average.

¹SPIVA data is for industry context only and not a direct comparison to WPM’s strategy or results.

Bonds solve a problem the Growth model is not trying to fix. Their job is to steady a portfolio and produce income, which they do by giving up growth. Over the past decade Canadian bonds returned very little, less than 2% a year, and inflation and tax took much of what remained. For an investor whose real risk is not a bumpy ride but a portfolio that grows too slowly, a large bond allocation is a real drag.

There is also a tax point worth knowing. Interest income is generally taxed at your full marginal rate every year, while gains on equities are taxed more lightly and only when you sell. For the same headline return, the after-tax result is not the same. Your own situation will vary, so confirm the details with your accountant.

None of this makes bonds useless. For investors with significant assets who value safety and income over growth, we offer a dedicated Income mandate and recommend it for a portion of their investments.

The Growth model is our flagship, not our only mandate. We run three, each for a different job.

The Growth model is a concentrated portfolio of large-cap U.S. equities, built for long-term capital growth. It is the strategy behind the performance record.

The Dividend Aristocrats model is all-Canadian and all-equity, for investors who want a rising income stream. Every holding has raised its dividend for at least five straight years, while both its share price and dividend have grown by at least 10% a year. It suits investors with a horizon of five years or more and a tolerance for moderate risk.

The Income model is conservative by design: a laddered portfolio of government bonds and/or bank-issued deposits, for investors who value steady, predictable income over growth. It fits those who are already wealthy enough that safety matters more than compounding.

Modern Portfolio Theory, or MPT, is the framework behind most conventional advice: spread your money widely, add bonds, and you optimise return for a given level of risk. It is influential and mathematically tidy, but built on assumptions we think are too shaky to stake a retirement on.

MPT treats volatility as risk. We do not. A price that swings is not the same as capital permanently lost, and if you are not forced to sell, a bad Tuesday is noise rather than damage. The theory also assumes markets are efficient, investors are rational, returns follow a tidy distribution, and correlations hold steady. Each of those is highly questionable.

Our position is practical, not academic. Diversify widely enough and you have effectively bought the index, then paid an active fee to trail it. We prefer to concentrate on a select group of businesses that we understand deeply and believe will outperform over time.

Honestly, we cannot tell you, and anyone who names a number is guessing or worse. What we can show you is what the strategy has actually done.

Since June 30, 2017, the Growth Model has compounded at 18.15% a year¹, in Canadian dollars, before our 2% fee, a figure independently recalculated by an outside accounting firm rather than asserted by us. That covers more than eight years and more than one kind of market. It is a record, not a forecast.

Past performance does not promise future results. If it did, investing would be easier and a good deal duller. There will be years we do better and years we do worse. What we offer is a disciplined process applied consistently, and our own capital invested the same as yours.

¹ CAGR independently recalculated by DeVisser Gray LLP. Click here for their report. Return is shown in Canadian dollars, gross of WPM's 2% fee. Past performance doesn't guarantee future results. Investing involves risk, including the possibility of losing money. WPM was registered with the BCSC in March 2023, though the same portfolio manager, James McKnight, has managed the Growth Model Portfolio continuously since inception. Details on benchmark selection here. Details on performance calculations here.

The figure reflects the actual performance of a funded client account in our Growth Model, not a hypothetical portfolio or back-test. The client who opened it agreed at the outset to make no deposits or withdrawals for the life of the account, which lets the return reflect investment decisions cleanly, without the distortion of money moving in and out. Every client enrolled in the model is managed to the same target weights.

DeVisser Gray LLP, a Vancouver accounting firm, examined the account statements and recalculated the return themselves. The result is 18.15% a year since June 30, 2017¹, in Canadian dollars, before our 2% fee.

¹ CAGR independently recalculated by DeVisser Gray LLP. Click here for their report. Return is shown in Canadian dollars, gross of WPM's 2% fee. Past performance doesn't guarantee future results. Investing involves risk, including the possibility of losing money. WPM was registered with the BCSC in March 2023, though the same portfolio manager, James McKnight, has managed the Growth Model Portfolio continuously since inception. Details on benchmark selection here. Details on performance calculations here.

A concentrated, all-equity, U.S.-focused portfolio carries real risks, and naming them is part of doing this honestly.

Concentration risk. A small number of companies means each one matters. A single bad result lands harder than it would in a fund of hundreds.

Equity risk. The portfolio is fully invested in stocks. In a broad decline it will fall, and it can fall further than a portfolio cushioned with bonds.

Currency risk. The holdings are priced in U.S. dollars. A rising loonie works against you, a falling one for you.

Divergence risk. A concentrated portfolio does not track the index. It can trail the market for stretches, sometimes long ones, even when the strategy is working as intended.

We take these trade-offs deliberately. For most investors the larger danger is a complacent portfolio that grows too slowly to fund the life they want. That is the risk that never shows up on a monthly statement.

One quick test is the Rule of 72. Divide 72 by your annual return and you get the rough number of years it takes your money to double. At 5% it doubles in about 14 years; at 10%, in a little over 7; at 15%, in under 5.¹ The power of compounding means small changes in performance become enormous differences in wealth over decades.

Apply it to your own portfolio. Look at the return you have actually earned over the past several years and the time you have left until retirement. Then ask whether the implied doubling time gets you where you need to be. If the math works, you may not need us. If it does not, let’s have a conversation and see if there’s a fit.

¹This is a hypothetical return. It is not guaranteed, and investing carries the risk of loss. Based on their objectives, risk tolerance, time horizon and personal circumstances, pursuing a high rate of return may not be suitable for all investors.

We charge a single fee of 2% of your assets, billed monthly. No commissions, no trailing fees, no embedded fund charges, and nothing hidden in the account agreement.

A headline fee and the true cost are not the same thing. A portfolio advertised at 1% can carry fund charges, trading costs, and platform fees that push the real figure closer to 1.5% once everything is counted. Cheaper on the brochure is not the same as cheaper in practice.

But price is only half the story. The most expensive portfolio is not the one with the highest fee. It is the one that grows too slowly to meet your goals.

Our fee is the only thing WPM charges you. No commissions, no trailers, no custody fees, no payments from any product provider. Nothing we earn depends on trading your account or selling you something. And we cover the transfer fees brokers charge when a client moves an account to us.

A few costs come from the market or the custodian rather than from us. These can include the bid-ask spread on trades, currency conversion, and interest on margin accounts. We do our best to minimize these for clients in our choice of custodian.

One fee does not mean no cost exists anywhere. It means our incentives are aligned. We are paid to grow your portfolio, not to trade it or to sell you products.

Yes. We invest our own capital in the same securities we hold for clients, and either trade alongside clients or place client trades first.

That alignment matters. When a holding succeeds, we benefit alongside our clients. When it disappoints, we feel the same result in our own portfolios. Few things sharpen judgment more effectively than having skin in the game.

We eat our own cooking.

Your assets are held in safekeeping and segregation by an independent third-party custodian, not by WPM. Depending on the account, that is either Aviso Wealth, owned by a group of leading Canadian credit unions, or Interactive Brokers, one of the world’s largest financial services providers. The account remains in your name, separate from WPM’s assets and from the custodian’s own corporate assets.

The key distinction is that we decide what your portfolio holds, but we never hold the money itself. We can trade within your account, but we cannot withdraw it, send it to anyone but you, or spend it. Trading authority and custody are separate by design.

If WPM ceased to exist tomorrow, for any reason, your assets would remain safely with the custodian and available to you directly.

We treat your information the way we would want our own treated. Client data is protected with encryption and multi-factor authentication, held on secure, enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure, and handled in line with Canada’s federal privacy law, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), and the applicable provincial legislation.

We collect what we need to manage your account and meet our regulatory obligations, and no more. The full details are in our Privacy Policy.

Our clients tend to arrive from one of three places. Some already have an advisor and are not satisfied with their returns. Some manage their own money but want a professional hand as the stakes rise. Some are sitting on cash that has no clear job and is quietly being eaten by inflation and taxes.

You may be a fit for our Growth Model if you value long-term growth and can live with the ups and downs of an equity portfolio because you understand what you own and why. More conservative priorities may be better served by the Dividend Aristocrats or Income Models.

You are probably not right for us if you want a guarantee, prefer passive indexing or a heavy bond allocation by default, or are looking for short-term trading and market timing. No honest manager can promise a return, and we will not insult you by trying.

We manage the account types most Canadians hold, including but not limited to RRSPs, TFSAs, RRIFs, RESPs, locked-in retirement accounts, cash accounts, margin accounts, and corporate and trust accounts.

We’re based in Vancouver, but you absolutely do not need to be located here to benefit from our expertise. The magic of technology allows us to work effectively with clients across Canada – and even the United States, subject to the appropriate registration and compliance requirements. Our focus is on delivering exceptional Portfolio Management, not on your postal code.

Getting started is deliberately low-commitment. It begins with a short fit call: we ask our questions, you ask yours, and we both decide whether it is worth continuing.

If there is a fit, we learn more about your goals, timeline, risk tolerance, and current holdings. We then complete the required Know Your Client and suitability work before anything moves.

Existing investments can usually be transferred electronically. We handle the paperwork, cover the transfer fee, and make the process as painless as possible.

Changing advisors is a serious decision. Starting a conversation is not.