The approach
Sightline runs money the way good engineering teams run production: written policy, measured drift, alerts that fire on a threshold rather than a mood, and a quarter that closes to one auditable number. Here is the whole of it, in the order it happens.
A mandate is only as good as the things it refuses to do on a bad morning. These four are written into every one we run, and they are the same four whether the account is five million or five hundred.
Target weights, permitted ranges, a liquidity floor, and the exact conditions under which any of them may be broken — agreed in writing, signed by you, versioned like code. Nothing is bought because the market felt a certain way on a Tuesday.
Every sleeve carries an absolute band of ±3.0 points and a relative band of ±20%. Breach either and the order is generated that night. Nothing drifts quietly, and nothing waits for a quarter to end because a quarter happens to be ending.
The rationale, the alternatives considered and the expected cost are recorded at the moment of the decision, not reconstructed at review. Your file reads the same way to you, to your accountant, and to whoever inherits it.
A blended 0.71%, all in, billed quarterly in arrears. No performance fee, no product commission, no custody spread, no execution markup. If a number is charged to you, it is printed on that page — and that page is one page.
Most of this firm is a schedule. The parts a client sees — the statement, the committee note — are the two slowest lines on it. Everything above them has already happened by the time either one is written.
Intervals are contractual, not aspirational.
Onboarding is the only part of this relationship that asks much of you. It is scheduled, it is finite, and it ends with a number you can audit.
Every account, entity, trust, loan, option grant and private holding is mapped into one live model. Most families see their whole balance sheet on a single screen for the first time in this step, and it is routinely the part they remember.
Deliverable — the model, read-only, yours
Spending, obligations, tax position and genuine risk tolerance are turned into target weights and bands. We show you the two or three policies we rejected and why, because the rejected ones are how you tell whether the chosen one was reasoned.
Deliverable — signed policy statement
Existing holdings move to policy against a tax budget agreed in advance, in tranches, with concentrated positions handled on their own schedule. Nothing is liquidated on day one to make our reporting tidy.
Deliverable — transition ledger, line by line
The first quarter closes to one auditable number, with every fee, every basis point and every tax lot traced to source. From here the loop runs on the published cadence and does not need you in it.
Deliverable — the statement, one page
Constraints are cheaper to publish than to explain later. If any of these matters less to you than it does to us, you should hire a different firm — and we will say so on the first call.
Sightline runs no funds, no products and no in-house strategies. There is nothing on our shelf we are paid more to recommend.
A carry is a paid incentive to run more risk in December than you agreed to in March. One blended rate removes the argument entirely.
From any manager, custodian or insurer, in any year, in any form. Our income is the fee on your statement and nothing else appears behind it.
Custody sits with a third-party custodian, in your name, with your own login. We hold discretion to trade — never the ability to move money out.
Not yours, not a family member’s, not on a phone call that sounded urgent. Everything is confirmed in writing before it executes.
Public sleeves settle T+2 or better. Illiquidity is a decision you make deliberately in the private sleeve, with the horizon written down.
A confidential review takes forty minutes and produces the first cut of your own policy statement — including the version we would advise against.